10.1. The Power of Editing The editing process is crucial in any kind of movie, from a home movie to a Hollywood thriller. Clever editing can turn a troubled movie into a successful one, or a boring home movie into one that, for the first time, family members don't interrupt every three minutes by lapsing into conversation. You, the editor, are free to jump from "camera" to "camera," angle to angle, to cut from one location or time to another, and so on. Today's audiences accept that you're telling a story; they don't stomp out in confusion because one minute, James Bond was in his London office, but showed up in Venice a split second later. You can also compress time; that's one of editing's most common duties . (That's fortunate, because most movies tell stories that, in real life, take days, weeks, or years to unfold.) You can also expand time, making ten seconds stretch out to six minutesa familiar effect to anyone who's ever watched a final sequence involving a bomb connected to a digital timer (and heroes racing to defuse it). Editing boils down to choosing which shots you want to include, how long each one lasts, and in what order they should play. 10.1.1. Modern Film Theory When you're creating a rock video or an experimental film, you can safely chuck all the advice in this chapterand in this book. But if you aspire to make good "normal" movies, ones that are designed to engage or delight your viewers rather than shock or mystify them, then you should become familiar with the fundamental principles of film editing that shape virtually every Hollywood movie (and even most student and independent films ) of the last 75 years. For example: 10.1.1.1 Tell the story chronologically Most movies tell the story from beginning to end. This part is probably instinct, even when you're making home movies. Arrange your clips roughly in chronological order, except when you're representing your characters ' flashbacks and memories or deliberately playing a chronology game, as in Pulp Fiction. DV ETHICS
The Home-Movie Dilemma | | As you edit your footage, you're altering reality; you're showing the audience only what you want it to see. When you create movies that have a story line, that's no problemthe audience knows perfectly well that what it's seeing didn't actually happen the way they're seeing it. When you edit home movies, however, you have a dilemma. How true should you be to real life? iMovie 2 came with a tutorial movie, in which you worked with footage that showed a muddy dog being unsuccessfully washed by two noncommunicative children. In real life, those events might have constituted an unpleasant experience involving a ruined carpet and yelling parents. But with the help of a little sweet guitar music and some selective editing, the entire affair becomes a sunlit, nostalgic snapshot of idyllic childhood. In a way, you've already pre-edited your life, simply in selecting what to film. Most people don't film the family bickering at dinnertime, the 20 minutes when the baby screams inconsolably, or the uneventful hours family members spend sleeping or watching TV. You're probably more likely to film the highlightsthe laughter , the successes, the special events. But when you edit this footage in iMovie, you'll probably weed out even more of the unpleasant, the boring, and the mundane. You may even be tempted to rearrange events, making the movie funnier, more entertaining, and more cohesive. When it's all over, you'll have a DV cassette filled with sunny, funny , exciting footage that may have come a long way from the much less interesting reality it was meant to capture especially if you add music to your movies. (Music gives footage enormous emotional overtones that weren't there at all when the scene was originally filmed.) All of this introduces a fascinating ethical challenge that's new to the iMovie era. In the past, few people could edit their home movies, so every home movie was pure documentary. With your DV camcorder and iMovie, you must decide whether you're a documentary maker, a storyteller, or bothand in what combination. |
10.1.1.2 Try to be invisible These days, an expertly edited movie is one where the audience isn't even aware of the editing. This principle has wide- ranging ramifications . For example, the desire to avoid making the editing noticeable is why the simple cut is by far the most common joint between film clips. Using, say, the Circle Opening transition between alternate lines of the vows at somebody's wedding would hardly qualify as invisible editing. Within a single scene, use simple cuts and no transitions. Try to create the effect of seamless real time, making the audience feel as though it's witnessing the scene in its entirety, from beginning to end. This kind of editing is more likely to make your viewers less aware that they're watching a movie. 10.1.1.3 Develop a shot rhythm Every movie has an editing rhythm that's established by the lengths of the shots in it. The prevailing rhythm of Dances with Wolves, for example, is extremely different from that of Natural Born Killers. Every scene in a movie has its own rhythm, too. As a general rule, linger less on closeup shots, but give more time to establishing and wide shots. (After all, in an establishing shot, there are many more elements for the audience to study and notice.) Similarly, change the pacing of the shots according to the nature of the scene. Most action scenes feature very short clips and fast edits; most love scenes include longer clips and fewer changes of camera angle. 10.1.2. Maintaining Continuity As a corollary to the notion that the audience should feel that they're part of the story, professional editors strive to maintain continuity during the editing process. This continuity business applies mostly to scripted films, not home movies; still, knowing what the pros worry about makes you a better editor no matter what kind of footage you're working with. Continuity refers to consistency in: -
The picture. Suppose we watch a guy with wet hair say, "I'm going to have to break up with you." We cut to his girlfriend's horrified reactionbut when we cut back to the guy, his hair is dry. That's a continuity error, a frequent by-product of having spliced together footage that was filmed at different times. Every Hollywood movie, in fact, has a person whose sole job it is to watch out for errors like this during the filming process. -
Direction of travel. In the effort to make the editing as seamless as possible, film editors and directors try to maintain continuity of direction from shot to shot. That is, if the hero sets out crawling across the Sahara from right to left across the scene to be with his true love, you better believe that when we see him next , hours later, he'll still be crawling from right to left. This general rule even applies to much less dramatic circumstances, such as car chases, plane flights , and even people walking to the corner store. If you see her walk out of the frame from left to right in Shot A, you'll see her approach the corner store's doorway from left to right in Shot B. -
The sound. In an establishing shot, suppose we see hundreds of men in a battlefield trench, huddled for safety as bullets and bombs fly and explode all around them. Now we cut to a closeup of two of these men talkingbut the sounds of the explosions are missing. That's a sound continuity error. The audience is certain to notice that hundreds of soldiers on both sides were issued an immediate cease -fire just as these two guys started talking. -
The camera setup. In scenes of conversations between two people, you may notice that, even when the camera cuts from one person to the other, the degree of zoom, lighting, and positioning in the frame is roughly the same from shot to shot. It would look really bizarre to show one person speaking only in closeup, and his conversation partner filmed in a medium shot. (Unless, of course, the first person were filmed in extreme closeupjust the lips filling the screenbecause the filmmaker is trying to protect his identity.) -
Gesture and motion. If one shot begins with a character reaching down to pick up the newspaper from her doorstep, the next shota closeup of her hand closing around the rolled-up paper, for exampleshould pick up from the exact moment where the previous shot ended. And as the rolled-up paper leaves our closeup field of view, the following shot should show her straightening into an upright position. Unless you've made the deliberate editing decision to skip over some time from one shot to the next (which should be clear to the audience), the action should seem continuous from one shot to the next.
Tip: For this reason, when filming scripted movies, directors always instruct their actors to begin each new scene's action with the same gesture or motion that ended the last shot. Having two copies of this gesture, action, or motionone on each end of each takegives the editor a lot of flexibility when it comes time to piece the movie together.
This principle explains why you'll find it extremely rare for an editor to cut from one shot of two people to another shot of the same two people (without inserting some other shot between them, such as a reaction shot or a closeup of one person or the other). The odds are small that, as the new shot begins, both actors will be in precisely the same body positions they were in as the previous shot ended. 10.1.3. When to Cut Some Hollywood directors may tell their editors to make cuts just for the sake of making the cuts come faster, in an effort to pick up the pace. The more seasoned director and editor, however, usually adopts a more classical view of editing: Cut to a different shot when it's motivated. That is, cut when you need to cut, so that you can convey new visual information by taking advantage of a different camera angle, switching to a different character, providing a reaction shot, and so on. Editors look for a motivating event that suggests where they should make the cut, too, such as a movement, a look, the end of the sentence , or the intrusion of an off-camera sound that makes us want to look somewhere else in the scene. 10.1.4. Choosing the Next Shot As you've read elsewhere in this book, the final piece of advice when it comes to choosing when and how to make a cut is this: Cut to a different shot. If you've been filming the husband, cut to the wife; if you've been in a closeup, cut to a medium or wide shot; if you've been showing someone looking off-camera, cut to what she's looking at. DV ETHICS
The Internet Continuity-Screwup Database | | It's fine to say that the film editor's job is to attempt continuity of picture, sound, direction, and so on throughout a movie. The trouble is, that's not nearly as easy as it sounds. Remember that the editor works by piecing together individual clips from many different camera shots that may have been filmed on different days. When the production is as complicated as a Hollywood movie, where several different film crews may be shooting simultaneously in different parts of the world, a few continuity errors are bound to slip inand sometimes they're hilarious. Catching continuity errors in Hollywood movies has become a beloved pastime for thousands of movie fans. Premiere magazine, for example, carries a monthly feature called Gaffe Squad, in which readers point out continuity errors in popular commercial movies. An Internet search for film continuity errors yields hundreds of Web sites dedicated to picking apart the movies. Among these, the Internet Movie Database Goofs page (http://us.imdb.com/Sections/Goofscapitals count) is Ground Zero; it's probably the largest collection of viewer-submitted movie errors ever assembled . They run along these lines: Raiders of the Lost Ark: "During the firefight in Marion's bar, Indy's gun changes from a .38 revolver to the Colt .45, back to a .38, then back once again to a .45. This might be the reason that he is able to fire his gun seven times with every loading." Back to the Future: "When talking to George at the clothesline, both of Marty's shirt pocket flaps are out, but in the next shot one of them is tucked in." Pulp Fiction: "When young Butch is receiving the watch from the Army guy, the time changes twice as it is flipped over in his hand." Jurassic Park: "As the helicopter lands on the island, we get a nice overhead view of the landing area, featuring a waterfall and two Jeeps waiting to take the passengers to the visitors ' center. But when we see the ground-level view of the helicopter landing in the next shot, we see the Jeeps backing up to the position they were already in three seconds earlier." Titanic: "When Capt. Smith orders, 'Take her to sea, Mr. Murdochlet's stretch her legs,' they're standing to the right of the wheelhouse looking forward with the sun coming from their left. When Murdoch walks into the wheelhouse to carry out the order, the sun's behind him." The Shining: "We see Jack Nicholson chop apart only one of the door's panels with his axeand yet after we see him listen to the arrival of the Snow-Cat, both panels are chopped." In other words, making a perfect movie is almost impossible . Of course, as an increasingly experienced film editor yourself, you already knew that. |
Avoid cutting from one shot of somebody to a similar shot of the same person. Doing so creates a jump cut, a disturbing and seemingly unmotivated splice between shots of the same subject from the same angle. (Figure 3-3 shows a deliberate jump cut, used as a special effect.) Video editors sometimes have to swallow hard and perform jump cuts for the sake of compressing a long interview into a much shorter sound bite. Customer testimonials on TV commercials frequently illustrate this point. You'll see a woman saying, "Wonderglove changed [cut] our lives, it really did [cut] My husband used to be a drunk and a slob [cut] but now we have Wonderglove." (Inevitably, a fast cross dissolve is applied to the cuts in a futile attempt to make them less noticeable.) As you can probably attest if you've ever seen such an ad, however, that kind of editing is rarely convincing. As you watch it, you can't help wondering exactly what was cut out and why. (The editors of 60 Minutes and other documentary-style shows edit the comments of their interview subjects just as heavily, but conceal it much better by cutting away to reaction shotsof the interviewer, for examplebetween edited shots.)  |
