How to cut several people answering the same question without repeating
Tell Vizard Agent that each person should add something the others did not. It transcribes every interview, groups the answers by speaker so the same question can be compared across all of them, and picks one voice per point rather than the best clip from each person in turn.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Name the failure you're actually worried about. "Make it engaging" is not something anyone can act on. "It shouldn't drag out or get repetitive" tells Vizard Agent exactly what to optimise against, and repetition is a measurable property of a set of transcripts. Give permission to cross-cut as well, or Vizard Agent won't make that move.
Cut the interviews and B-roll together so each person shares their perspective, but it doesn't drag out or get repetitive. You can cross-cut two people on the same question.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It reads everybody before it cuts anybody. Each interview is transcribed with timecodes, the answers are separated from the interviewer's chatter, and the transcripts are organised by speaker so the same question can be compared across all of them at once. In the session behind this article it:
- Sampled the start, middle and end of every clip to separate interviews from usable B-roll.
- Transcribed the interview clips in parallel, keeping exact timecodes for clean cuts, and isolated the athletes' actual answers from the interviewer's talk.
- Organised the transcripts by speaker and clip, and grouped consecutive phrases into complete sound bites rather than fragments.
- Read each interview looking for a distinct voice, explicitly avoiding a point the previous person had already made.
- Found repeated cutaways in the review pass, the same shot used twice, then mapped each back to its place in the edit and replaced it individually.
When does this not work well?
When the repetition is itself the point. A testimonial reel where several customers independently say the same thing uses that agreement as its evidence, and de-duplicating it removes the argument, so tell Vizard Agent if that's what you're making. If six people gave only three distinct answers, three is what you get back. Cross-cutting also needs interviews recorded in rooms that sound alike.
Common questions
Can two people be cross-cut on one answer? Yes, and it often reads better. Say so and Vizard Agent will do it.
What if everyone said the same thing? Then Vizard Agent tells you, rather than including all of it.
Why did a shot repeat? Limited cutaway coverage. Vizard Agent flags repeats and swaps them.