The best way to learn about editing a conversation is to get the film dailies for a scene and edit the scene.
The story
Two men are talking about law cases in a cafeteria. Their partner arrives with news about an important case.
A challenge
This scene was shot quickly with only a few shots to get all the coverage. Not all the shots match perfectly. The performances change from the wide angle shot to the close up shot.
So you must worry about a lot of things, not just how to create "L-Cuts".
A simple scene from a TV drama
DVD-Video disk
The Star Movie Shop has a disk which shows a three way conversation. The disk is called "Hearing Voices"
The disk is both a DVD-Video with a demonstration of how this scene can be edited. You just watch the demos and see the many options.
Also the disk is a DVD-Data disk containing all the film dailies for use in your editing program.
Enough points?
If you have enough points, let me know and the disk will be send to you.
Who do you want to emphasize?
Speaker 1, speaker 2, speaker 3?
This disk contains the unedited film footage of one scene which has three people.
The dialog is fixed (more or less). But the picture can changed by making "L-Cuts" and adding cut-away or insert shots.
Making "L-Cuts" and adding cut away shots changes the way that the audience interprets the scene.
In short, you editing creates the emotional content of the scene.
Who's in charge?
Which is the actor's point of view is the most important?
In this scene, you do not know what happened before this scene. Therefore, it is not clear who is the most important person in this scene.
Therefore, you should try editing this scene three ways. Each way emphasizes a different actor.
Using editing, you can emphasize one actor over the others. Watch the DVD-Video content and see how it is done for this scene.
The next page
The next page discusses the first disk about "L-Cuts".
