Film Editing is
the rhythmic manipulation of sounds and images
in time, and it is
this aspect of the filmmaking process that differentiates
cinema from
its component arts.
Performance, design, directing, music, lighting, photography, sound--
each of these can exist
outside of the
motion picture artform--but it
is the
synthesis of these disparate elements through
editing that
makes film unique.
As the Russian filmmaker and theorist V. I. Pudovkin wrote in his classic text,
Film Technique and Film Acting,
"Editing gives film its meaning and its
effect."
By way of example he utilized a simple shot of a woman. He
juxtaposed--edited-- this
shot against others: a man with a gun, a man with a smile, a baby, and then
noted his audience's reaction to his assemblies. When they watched the woman
"see" the gun, she seemed frightened. When she "saw" the man smiling she
seemed playful and seductive. When she "saw" the baby, she seemed maternal.
It should be obvious that the woman "saw" nothing. Nothing about the shot
of the woman had
changed; it was
neutral. But
human nature, in its inexorable need to
make connections, basically
to node, filled in the blanks.
Which brings us to an interesting point, perhaps the thing that makes cinema so
important in the history of art, and that is the
participation of the audience
in the matter of determining a film's "meaning and effect."
The great poet of World Cinema,
Andrey Tarkovsky, has this to say in his
testament on filmmaking, beautifully entitled
Sculpting in Time:
"What is different about cinema editing is that it brings
together time, imprinted in the segments of film. Editing entails assembling
smaller and larger pieces, each of which carries a different time. And their
assembly creates a new awareness of the existence of that time, emerging
as a result of the intervals, of what is cut out, carved off in the process;
but the distinctive character of the assemby is already present in the segments.
Editing does not engender, or recreate, a new quality; it brings out a quality
already inherent in the frames that it joins. Editing is anticipated during shooting; it is
presupposed in the character of what is filmed, programmed by it from the outset.
Editing has to do with stretches of time, and the degree of intensity with which
these exist, as recorded by the camera; not with abstract symbols, picturesque
physical realia, carefully arranged compositions judiciously dotted about the
scene; not with two similar concepts, which in conjunction produce--we are told--
a third meaning; but with the diversity of life perceived."
"In so far as sense of time is germane to the director's innate perception of
life, and editing is dictated by the rhythmic pressures in the segments of film,
his handwriting is to be seen in his editing. It expresses his attitude to the
conception of the film, and is the ultimate embodiment of his philosopy of life.
I think that the film-maker who edits his films easily and in different ways is bound
to be superficial. You will always recognise the editing of Bergman, Bresson,
Kurosawa, or Antonioni; none of them could ever be confused with anyone
else, because each one's perception of time, as expressed in the rhythm of his films,
is always the same."
It is often said by professional
film editors that the best editing is invisible, though
recent action films such as
The Matrix,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
and
Traffic beg the question; the editing styles of these films seem nothing
short of miraculous, and are, in and of themselves, interesting.
On a purely
technical note,
film editors have traditionally
used the
moviola, a noisy 19th century contraption to be sure,
to effect their art. In the
1970's and 80's it was supplanted, for the most part, by the
KEM, a machine
better suited to viewing huge amounts of film and also able to manipulate more
than one sound track at a time.
Digital tools have generally supplanted all of
the
old film-based machines now. After a motion picture has been photographed
in a traditional fashion, on film, the film negative is digitized and edited on
computers utilizing beautifully-coded software.
Avid. Lightworks. Final Cut Pro.
These are the 21st century tools that will thrill future audiences with such
juxtaposition of images as:
the cut from the match being extinguished
to the white hot desert apparition in
David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia
the cut from the prehistoric apeman's murderous
tool
across the ages to the waltzing spaceship in
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey
and, perhaps most beautifully of all:
the penultimate six-and-a-half minute shot
that comprises the hero's repayment
of a debt to God
in Andrey Tarkovsky's
Godhead Masterpiece,
The Sacrifice
As a professional filmmaker, I
prefer the
moviola and the
KEM for editing. They are, after all, the tools on which I first explored
and then honed my art. The picture is gorgeous, compared to video, and
the act of
running the living movie through one's hands cannot be well-described.
However.
Post production schedules and budgets in
Hollywood today do not allow
filmmakers the luxury of editing the "old-fashioned" way. Ironically, it takes the
same amount of time to put a film in first cut (or
editor's cut) as it always
did, whether you're editing on
film or an
Avid--roughly the shooting-period of the
film plus about two weeks for fine-tuning. One cannot edit film
before it is
shot you see, and an editor usually starts working the day the film starts shooting.
But once the film is in first cut, economics start to take over.
The
director is contractually guaranteed the same amount of time s/he took to
shoot the film to work with the
editor, which is fine. No foul. It's the director's
medium. But then the producers and the studios and the marketing department
and the preview process come to the fore. And the
changes begin.
It's
changes that take time. Never was the term
house of cards
more applicable than to a motion picture during the editing process.
Many potentially first-rate films suffer these days from being rushed to the
screen. A good
film is like a living thing during its creation. Sometimes it needs
room to grow, to expand and contract and see what feels right. Most important,
the filmmaker needs the chance to be
wrong. The best producers understand
this and schedule accordingly. But the clock is always ticking...enormous sums
of money accrue interest. Financially,
sometimes it's just
better to get the thing out the door. This is why it's not called
Show Art.
Then there's the matter of Special Effects Films: it's much easier, cheaper,
and better to edit a film like
The Matrix or
Titanic
or
Gladiator electronically. The computer allows the
editor and
director,
again, to try things and make changes. Doing the same thing on film would be
ruinous.
There are some filmmakers who still edit on
moviolas and
KEMs. The
Coen Brothers cut their brilliant
O Brother, Where
Art Thou? on traditional machines. THEN they put the whole thing into a
computer and FINISHED it electronically. What you see on the screen in your
theatre is 100 per cent right out of a computer.
Steven Spielberg's
editor, Michael Kahn, still uses a
moviola, at least for the
first cut. But starting, I believe, with
Saving Private Ryan, the Avid
began to become a useful additional tool in his cutting room too.
And why not? The digital non-linear editing machine is a marvelous gift to
any filmmaker. Computer editing is like word processing. Would you rather
node on a
G4 Macintosh or a
blackboard, cause that's pretty much the choice.
And remember the old filmmaker's axiom:
Films are never finished,
they're abandoned.
On Hollywood and filmmaking:
Below the Line
sex drugs and divorce
a little life, interrupted
- Hecho en Mejico
- Entrances
- Sam's Song
- Hemingway and Fortuna
- Hummingbird on the Left
- The Long and Drunken Afternoon
- Safe in the Lap of the Gods
- Quetzal Birds in Love
- Angela in Paradise
- And the machine ran backwards
a secondhand coffin
how to act
Right. Me and Herman Melville
Scylla and Charybdis Approximately
snowflakes and nylon
I could've kissed Orson Welles
the broken dreams of Orson Welles
the last time I saw Orson Welles
The Other Side of the Wind
ASC
avid
Below the Line
completion bond
D/Vision
Film Editing
Film Editor
Final Cut Pro
forced development
HD Video
insert
king of the queens
Kubrick polishes a turd
movies from space
moviola
Panavision
Persistence of Vision
Sven Nykvist
synthespian
Wilford Brimley
21 Grams
A.I.
Andrei Rublyov
Apocalypse Now Redux
Hearts and Minds
Ivan's Childhood
The Jazz Singer
Mirror
Nostalghia
The Sacrifice
We Were Soldiers
Wild Strawberries