Left Brain, Right Brain and Video

Whose side are you on?

My old friend, the late Dr. Leonard Shlain was both a highly accomplished surgeon and an author.

He wrote a book that had a lasting influence on my life , The Alphabet vs. The Goddess.

Len viewed history in many ways as a surgeon might, and in his case, it was Left Brain v. Right Brain.

The left brain, he wrote, dominates a world of linear thinking, of which writing is a major part.  When you write things down you are living in your left-brain side.

Images however, are right brain functions.

Television and video production, ironically, straddle both worlds – a situation which often does not work very well.

Video and TV are image based media.  They are completely right-brain.

However, when we come back from a shoot (a purely right brain experience), we often transcribe what we have shot or interviews we have recorded into log notes and transcripts.  In this moment, we move from the world of right brain to left brain.

By transforming video into text (log notes and transcripts) and then manipulating those texts when we physically write out a script, we leave behind, indeed we are in basic conflict with the part of our brain that drove us to the images in the first place – the right brain.

If we end up writing a TV or film or video script from text; if we end up with a text based script to take to the edit room, we have created a product in the script that is entirely a function of our left brains.  Linear, calculated and disciplined.

But we have sacrificed the right brain – image driven, emotional and intuitive, for the script.

When we then take that written script and translate it back into video or film in the editing process, we jam the left brain product back into a right brain world. It’s a bad match.

Until recently, there was little you could do about this.  But non-linear editing software such as FCP or Avid allow us to eliminate the ‘written’ steps in video and filmmaking.

Instead of ‘writing’ a script, it is now possible to build a ‘script’ directly on the timeline.

This is what we teach at the Travel Channel Academy and everywhere else we run video seminars. And I am starting to think that it is this process that makes the results so good so fast.

By building the ‘scripts’ directly on the timeline and by working purely in video as opposed to log notes or transcripts (those who have taken the course will know that we ban pencils and paper – so to speak, from the scripting process), I think we remain in the right brain world.

Final Cut and other Non Linear Editing systems (NLE) are remarkably powerful tools. But all too often in the world of conventional TV and film, they are used as linear edits would be. That is, the editor or producer simply begins at the start of the piece and works their way to the end in a very linear fashion, often directed by a written script.

But NLEs, by definition, allow you to start anywhere you like, work in chunks, move stuff around and manipulate the script whenever and where ever you like.  It’s a really powerful tool that rarely gets used.

But, by scripting by manipulating images and sounds – physically manipulating them on the screen, instead of working off a text based script, you are in much closer contact no only with the video but also with your right-brain self.

This is the part of your brain that controls creativity, emotion and images.  Isn’t this exactly the part that you want dominating the video you are making?

It has never ceased to amaze me how creative the TCA students are when they are in the throes of th course.  I think it also amazes them as well.  People, many of whom have never touched a video camera before – and others who have worked in the business, but in the old way, produce in some cases, astonishingly powerful pieces in only a few days.

I used to think it was our brains that made the whole thing work out so well. But now I am beginning to understand that it is their brains that drive the product.  The trick has been to stay on the right side.

If you are a professional in the business I strongly suggest you try this experiment on your own. Next ‘script’, no paper. No word processor. No writing at all.  Get your hands dirty, ‘grab’ the video and manipulate it like you might wet clay.

Stay in your right brain.

I think you’ll be surprised at the results.

I still am, even after 20+ years.

And if you have the time, get a copy of Len Shlain’s book.

It might change how you see the world.