My mission at work this week is to cut 20 minutes worth of interview clips down to a 3 min. video.

So I started my usual process — printed a transcript of the interview, and highlighted the best parts to keep.

Then I went back to Premiere Pro (video editing software) to start trimming the clips.

And then I got stomped by this recurring issue..

Choosing the best parts looked fine on paper, but on the actual videos, I couldn’t trim it well because the interviewee/s often don’t end their sentence right away.

Ending the sentence means: finishing your thought with the last word in falling intonation.

A common mistake I have noticed is that first-time interviewees tend to extend their sentences with “and”, “uhm”, “also” — because they feel they still have more to say. What could have been a 5-sentence narrative turned into a one, super-long sentence.

So yeah, try to end your sentence often.