Film editing

Learn more about Film editing

Film editing, also called montage, is the connecting of one or more shots to form a sequence, and the subsequent connecting of sequences to form an entire movie.

1 The development of film editing processes
2 Film Editor
3 The Founding Father of Film Editing
4 Post-Production
5 Continuity
6 Methods of montage
- 6.1 Soviet montage
- 6.2 Classical montage sequence
7 Continuity editing
8 Alternatives to Continuity editing (Non-Traditional or Experimental)
9 Editing techniques
10 References
11 See also
- 11.1 Wikibooks
- 11.2 Wikiversity

[edit] The development of film editing processes

Film editing evolved from the process of a film editor physically cutting and taping together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as a Moviola, or "flatbed" machine such as a Kem or Steenbeck.

Image:Steenbeck-rollers.jpg

Steenbeck film editing machine rollers

Before the widespread use of non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film workprint. Today, most films are edited digitally (on systems such as Avid) and bypass the film positive workprint altogether. In the past, the use of a film positive (not the original negative) allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wished, without the risk of damaging the original.

When the film workprint had been cut to a satisfactory state, it was then used to make a negative cutting list. The negative cutter referred to this list while processing the negative, splitting the shots into rolls, which were then optically printed to produce the final film print. Today, production companies have the option of to bypass negative cutting altogether. With the advent of digital intermediate or "DI," the physical negative does not necessarily need to be physically cut and hot spliced together; rather the negative is optically scanned into computer(s) and a cut list is conformed by a DI editor.

[edit] Film Editor

A film editor is a person who practices film editing by assembling footage into a coherent film. Film editors often are responsible for pulling together all of the elements of story, dialogue, music, sound effects, visual effects, rhythm and pace of a film. In the making of a film, the editors play a dynamic and creative role.

Film editors can also be 9 to 5'ers who have little to no interest in what they're working on, especially in television. Some directors, well worn in weekly dramas where time is of the essence, are hired simply because they shoot fast, do one or two 'takes' and give the editor, if he or she is creative, little to nothing to work with. The editor's job in that situation is to simply splice it together and hope for better with their next film. ~ But woe is to the soul who thinks editing is a path to creative satisfaction. They have a script in front of them which tells them the only shots they can use (because those were the only ones printed) and a director sitting behind them telling them where to use them. On the whole there's nothing creative about an editor's life.

[edit] The Founding Father of Film Editing

Main article: Edwin S. Porter

Edwin S. Porter is generally thought to be the American filmmaker who first put film editing to use. Porter migrated to the United States as a young sailor and worked as a mechanic before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890s.

Early Edison films were short films that were typically shot in one long static locked down shot. When Edison's motion picture studio wanted to increase the length of the short films he came to Porter. Porter made the breakthrough film The Life of An American Fireman in 1902. The film was among the first that had a plot, action, and even a closeup of a hand pulling a fire alarm.

Other films were to follow. Porter's ground-breaking film, The Great Train Robbery is still shown in film schools today as an example of early editing form. It was produced in 1903 and was one of the first examples of dynamic, action editing (the piecing together scenes shot at different times and places and for emotional impact unavailable in a static long shot). Being one of the first film hyphenates (film director, editor and engineer) Porter also invented and utilized some of the very first (albeit primitive) special effects such as double exposures, miniatures and split-screens.

[edit] Post-Production

[edit] The Editor's Cut

There are several editing stages; and the editor's cut is the first. An editor's cut (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the "assembly edit" or "rough cut") is normally the first pass of what the final film will be when it reaches picture lock.

The film editor often starts work while shooting is still in progress, and, in the first stage of editing he or she will work alone to create an "editor's cut" of the film. Because it is the first pass (and the first chance for a director to see most of the material that has been shot) it is often somewhat longer than the final film will be. Often the editor collaborates with the director, who gives the first set of "notes" on the editor's cut. Likely, the editor and director will also have seen and/or discussed "dailies" (raw footage shot each day) as shooting progresses. The editor continues to refine the cut while shooting continues, and often the entire editing process goes on for many months and sometimes more than a year.

[edit] The "Director's" Cut

When shooting is finished, the director can then turn his or her full attention to collaborating with the editor on cutting the film. While collaborating on what is referred to as the "director's cut," scenes are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked according to the intent of the director in the story or missing segments require that new scenes be shot.

The word "collabroating" has often been misused to describe the relationship between the editor and the director. 'Final Cut' (the director's cut) is something studios and directors fight over constantly. Suffice to say there are no 'coin toss' decisions between directors and editors. The director's decision is final. That's not to say that a director won't accept an editor's idea, but it is far from a collaboration. ~ The editor is a journeyman the same as the cameraman and the other crafts, and has little or nothing to say about the final form of the film.

[edit] The Producers Vs. The Director

Often after the director has had his or her chance to oversee a cut, the subsequent cuts are supervised by one or more producers, who represent the production company and/or movie studio. At times, the final cut of films produced by the major studios is the one that most closely represents what the studio wants from the film and not necessarily what the director wants. Because of this, there have been several conflicts in the past between the director and the studio, sometimes leading to the use of the "Alan Smithee" credit signifying disownership or the aforementioned "director's cut" re-issues in subsequent years after the original theatrical releases.

Some directors are also the producers of their films, and, with the approval of the funding studio, have a much tighter grip on what makes the final cut than other directors. The most well-known example of a director who lorded over all aspects of his films, with little studio intervention, and worked completely outside of the Hollywood system is Stanley Kubrick. On the other hand, Orson Welles is an example of a director constantly dogged by studio supervison and many times had films taken away from him. Independent directors who work outside of the "studio system" are usually more free to have a final cut; thus independent films often take more risks and have more creative rewards than studio films.

[edit] Continuity

Often a film editor is blamed for improper continuity. For example, cutting from a shot where the beer glass is empty to one where it is full. Continuity is, in fact, very nearly last on a film editor's list of important things to maintain. Continuity is typically the business of the script supervisor and film director, who are together responsible for preserving continuity and preventing errors from take to take and shot to shot. Generally speaking, the editor utilizes the script supervisor's notes during post-production to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot. However, to most editors what is more important than continuity is the editing of emotional and storytelling aspects of any given film - something that is much more abstract and harder to judge - which is why films often take much longer to edit than to shoot.

[edit] Methods of montage

Main article: Montage (film)

In motion picture terminology, a montage (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.

There are at least three senses of the term:

In French film practice, "montage" (meaning "editing" in that context) simply identifies a movie's editor. That is, if you see "montage" in a film's end credits, then that is the film editor's credit.
In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was theorized to be the essence of the cinema. Different filmmakers had various ideas about what that essence was; the two different camps of thought being from Sergei Eisenstein or Pudovkin. Largely the argument came down to the power of storytelling or the creation of meaning by the juxtaposition of images.
In classical Hollywood cinema, a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.

[edit] Soviet montage

Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema — that which could be duplicated in no other medium — is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.

Although, strictly speaking, U.S. film director D.W. Griffith was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing — mastering cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.

Sergei Eisenstein was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.

Like Kuleshov, Eisenstein was a theorist in addition to being a filmmaker. He established five "methods of montage" [1]:

Metric — based solely on the length of a shot (metric example from October)
Rhythmic — based on the length of a shot, plus the visual composition of the image
Tonal — based on the dominant visual style of an image
Overtonal — based on the interaction of dominant visual styles
Intellectual — based on the symbolic content generated by two (or more) juxtaposed images; a film metaphor.

[edit] Classical montage sequence

The second kind of montage consists of a series of short shots that are edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed.

Many films are well known for their montage scenes. Examples include the training montages in Sylvester Stallone's Rocky series of movies, Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, several of director Sam Raimi's films and the satirical self-referential montages in the South Park episode Asspen and the film Team America: World Police. Even the Disney Channel movie High School Musical displays a montage sequence. In nearly all of these examples, the montages are used to compress narrative time and show the main character learning or improving skills that will help achieve the ultimate goal. The song "Montage" used in both Asspen and Team America's montage parody described this perfectly:

Show a lot of things happening at once
Remind everyone of what’s going on
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take too long
That’s called a montage
Oh we want montage

[edit] Continuity editing

Main article: continuity editing

What became known as the popular 'classical Hollywood' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the 180 degree rule, Establishing shot, and Shot reverse shot.

[edit] Alternatives to Continuity editing (Non-Traditional or Experimental)

Early Russian filmmakers such as Lev Kuleshov further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature. Sergei Eisenstein developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.

Alternatives to traditional editing were also the folly of early surrealist and dada filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel (director of (1929's) Un chien andalou) and René Clair (director of 1924's Entr'acte which starred famous dada artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray). Both filmmakers, Clair and Buñuel, experimented with editing techniques long before what is referred to as "MTV style" editing.

The French New Wave filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut and their American counterparts such as Andy Warhol and John Cassavetes also pushed the limits of editing technique during the late 1950s and throughout the 1970s. French New Wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960s used a carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of Hollywood films. Like its dada and surrealist predecessors, French New Wave editing often drew attention to itself by its lack of continuity, its demystifying self-reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they were watching a film), and by the overt use of jump cuts or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative.

[edit] Editing techniques

Stanley Kubrick noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of filmmaking originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. In Alexender Walker's Stanley Kubrick Directs, Kubrick was quoted as saying, "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of filmmaking. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."

In his book, On Film Editing, Edward Dmytryk stipulates seven "rules of cutting" that a good editor should follow:

"Rule 1. Never make a cut without a positive reason.
"Rule 2. When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short" (Dmytryk, 23).
"Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'" (Dmytryk, 27).
"Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'" (Dmytryk, 37).
"Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continuing action" (Dmytryk, 38).
"Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'" (Dmytryk, 44).
"Rule 7: Substance first—then form" (Dmytryk, 145).

According to Walter Murch, when it comes to film editing, there are six main criteria for evaluating a cut or deciding where to cut. They are (in order of importance, most important first):

emotion — Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment?
story — Does the cut advance the story?
rhythm — Does the cut occur "at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and 'right'" (Murch, 18)?
eye-trace — Does the cut pay respect to "the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame" (Murch, 18)?
two-dimensional place of the screen — Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule?
three-dimensional space of action — Is the cut true to the physical/spacial relationships within the diegesis?

[edit] References

Dmytryk, Edward. On Film Editing: An Introduction to the Art of Film Construction, Boston: Focal Press, 1984.
Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye: a Perspective on Film Editing, Silman-James Press, 2d rev. ed., 2001. ISBN 1-879505-62-2
Nuffer, Eberhard. "Filmschnitt und Schneidetisch" ("Film Editing and Editing Equipment"), in Weltwunder der Kinematographie—Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Filmtechnik (vol. 7), Joachim Polzer, ed., Potsdam: Polzer Media Group, 2003 (available through amazon.de). ISBN 3-934535-24-0
Read, Paul. "A Short History of Cinema Film Post-Production (1896—2006)," in Zur Geschichte des Filmkopierwerks/Weltwunder der Kinematographie—Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Filmtechnik (vol. 8), Joachim Polzer, ed., Potsdam: Polzer Media Group, 2006 (available through amazon.de). ISBN 3-934535-26-7