This article came about after a twitter thread that ended up generating a fair amount of conversation about the mentality of editing podcasts, including our own Mike Thornton.

René Coronado was in the depths of editing yet another Tonebenders episode recently, when he decided to procrastinate by tweeting about what he was doing, instead of actually doing what should have been doing. Mike asked René to go a little deeper into that concept for the Production Expert community.  

MT: René what is your first principle when you start editing one of the Tonebender podcasts?

RC: My first principle is to reveal clarity of thought. Tonebenders episodes can take many forms, but we’ve evolved generally into an interview-style podcast, and that’s the process we are going to discuss here.

MT: How do you achieve this, what are you looking to take out?

RC: My goal is to seamlessly remove all of the little vocal hesitations, verbal ticks, and other fillers that are so pervasive in regular natural speech. This is much more than just the “umm”s and “uhh”s that most editors target.  It’s also little phrases that we use to stall while we search for words. Phrases like “kind of” “sort of” “I mean” and “you know”. It’s also about removing repeated words, vocal misdirections, and all of the other things we say while we’re looking for the right phrasing for the thought we’re trying to have.

In practice, this might look like my goal is to keep the podcast moving quickly by removing all filler words, but that’s really not the case.  

Many modern podcasting apps have smart speed functions that skip over the little micro spaces in conversation, as well as faster than realtime playback. This means that whether we like it or not the listener can zoom through the episode.  

Framed a different way, my goal is to get from something like…

“so uhh…so this..this is the way we…we we decide to go about that”

to 

“So this is the way we decide to go about that”

My goal is NOT to get from 14 seconds to 6 seconds.

MT: To illustrate this, René has kindly provided two audio file and screengrabs, before the edit and after the edit, observe the number of edits but also the post edit clip is so much easier to listen to.

RC: This framing difference allows for us to to be creative and aggressive in pruning back speech that obscures the thought. It also allows us the latitude to leave in things like breaths and pauses that actually help convey the context of the thought. Sometimes I end up cutting a lot, but I never end up cutting anything the guest was actually saying.  

MT: When I am editing I can easily take up to 5 minutes out of a 30-minute chat, without taking out any content but are there elements that you choose to leave in?

RC: Yes, firstly the clarity frame allows us to leave an appropriate gap between when a guest finishes an answer and when the next question comes in. This is really important as the audience sometimes needs a little space to process what the guest has said, and the edit should reflect that.  

I also have a few guidelines for what else to leave in. For example, when there’s crosstalk and joking around I tend to leave those moments in to help keep the conversation as natural as possible. I also tend to leave things in when an edit would call more attention to itself than the offending word does on its own. It’s all a matter of interpretation in the moment, and sometimes I’ll make an edit and decide that I don’t like it and I’ll undo it. It’s an iterative process that is as much art as it is science.

MT: Absolutely, the number of times I have done an edit only to decide that the edit is more of a problem to the flow of the conversation than the problem I was trying to fix.

RC: While in the thick of it, each edit consists of a number cascading interlinked decisions and actions:

1.  Play the audio

2.  Identify a phrase that needs to be cut

3. Stop playback

4. Highlight the phrase

5. Delete the phrase

6.  Add a fade as needed

7.  Play across the edit

8.  Evaluate the edit

9.  Revise the edit

10. Move on and repeat

Each individual action in that sequence takes an amount of mental focus and manual dexterity to do efficiently. Sometimes I can get in the groove of this thing, but it’s truly difficult to maintain a high level of this work for long periods of time. 

I generally give myself a break after about an hour, because I’ve found that if I try to push longer than that I start mentally justifying editorial laziness and since the work is so laborious, I really have to have a solid “why” in my mind as I’m doing it.

MT: Absolutely, but being paid by the hour does mean keeping going but taking tea breaks mid-morning and mid-afternoon as well as proper lunch break are my breaks. Also, I find it helps to be able to hold as much of the content in my head so I can spot repetitions that can come out.

Coming back to your aim of not reducing the duration, that;’s a luxury I too enjoy for podcasts when you don’t have to fit a broadcast time slot. Most of my editing is for broadcast radio for the BBC here in the UK and for these, I have to be able to achieve a smooth narrative and hit a tight time slot. For example, the BBC Radio 4 half-hour slots are usually 28’00” including announcements, which usually works out at a programme duration of 27’35” to 27’40”.

That may not sound too challenging but bear in mind you can often start with a rough cut of some 80 to 90 minutes, so it is a lot content to trim as well as redundant stuff to cut out. One series I have worked on for some 7 seasons in called The Choice. This is a one on one interview with someone who had to make a difficult choice in their life. The studio interview is often around 90 minutes and we need to get it down to under 28 minutes and retain the narrative, but processes you go through are exactly the same ones I go through.

RC: Yes I can see the additional challenges that you face editing to a time slot.  Another factor that we both share is while in the depths of the edit the thing we are both staying focused on is a spirit of giving and generosity - both towards our contributors and our listeners.   

The entire reason we do these edits is so that the guests can have their thoughts presented as cleanly and as articulately as possible. A lot of guests can get nervous or self-conscious about how they will come off once the episode goes live. 

Since we’ve established a track record of tight, clean edits most guests that are familiar with the show recognize that we’re going to do the work required to show them in their best light. This is especially important with our guests for whom English is not their first language. When guests know we have their backs in the edit, they feel much freer to go find the thoughts that they’re looking for, in the moment.

The edit also absolves our listeners of having to mentally filter out the things that we’ve cut so that they can more directly tie the various thoughts together.  It’s a very powerful tool for reducing cognitive load.  Sometimes the concepts discussed are intricate or complex, and the verbal filler that inevitably surrounds these thoughts would make it more challenging for the listener to hold in their mind at one time. 

MT: That is exactly the thought processes I go through when I am editing, my aim is to make the finished product as easy to listen to as possible to that the listener is able to take as much on board from what they are listening to. The pauses you mentioned earlier are just as important as what is spoken. The listener needs the time to absorb what sometimes are complex or very emotional topics.

RC: After a good edit, the audience is treated to a dense, information-packed discussion that gets directly to the clear thoughts that everyone was having. Never underestimate the power of the edit.

MT: Amen to that.

I hope this conversation with René Coronado and myself has given you an insight into the processes that we go through when editing speech, it isn’t just about making cuts, it is about pace. Just as a bad edit is mainly obvious in music because it’s not on the beat, my take is that speech is like music in that regard, there is a rhythm to the way we speak and if we mess with that when we edit it shows and makes it a much harder listen for the audience.

There is no doubt that speech editing is very much an art.

What are your experiences when editing audio interviews or documentaries? Do your experiences tally with René and Mike’s, or do you have a different story? Either way, so share your thoughts in the comments below.