Recently we were editing an appearance of one of our hosts on another show. They had edited the episode so tightly, there wasn’t even an exhale between the host’s question, the guest response and the next question. Realizing sometimes there can be uncomfortable silences between question and answer, and the next question, there is also the natural rhythm of a thoughtful answer. A breath. 1-3 seconds. Three is for greater dramatic effect, anticipation for the response. One to two seconds is natural. It’s important to make the listener’s experience be clean, but we caution against over-editing those pauses. Let the conversation breathe. Listen to it again before you publish. Did you find it was abrupt anywhere? Not to worry. Find a blank space you can copy, then paste into the file to give the conversation the air that it needs.
This is not to be confused with audio adjustments that leave you with BIG breaths. We’ll cover that next week.
