Techniques for Editing a Good Film

Sunday, October 18th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

An adage in the filmaking world has it that a movie is created three times: 1) When it is written, 2) When it is shot and 3) When it is edited.

This is not strictly true. Ideally the three stages should be the work of refining a core theme or idea, the act of creation should be a single ongoing event. It’s only if you are presented with footage shot by a clueless director using a poorly conceived script that you might find yourself in the unenviable situation of creating something new.

In an ideal world, if the screenwriter and director have done their jobs, the editor should simply have to tidy up what they started. Let’s assume that the best of all situations has occurred and a director has handed you a well shot set of rushes.

First log all of the footage, and I don’t mean just the bit between when the diorector shouts ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’ - watch the actors as they prepare, lookout for glances, twitches, smiles and reactions~First log all of the footage, and I don;t mean just the bit between when the diorector shouts ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’ - watch the actors as they prepare, lookout for glances, twitches, smiles and reactions}. Note these down.

You’ve done that? Right, let’s move on.

Depending on how much of a vision the director has, it should be fairly obvious where to take an edit and your first cut will be probably closest to what the director had in mind.

Even though a good director might have had the editing stage in the back of his mind while he was shooting and have a clear idea of how it will cut together, it will, in all probability, still be way too long.

Good directors love to work with actors, to encourage them to try new things and wring out the best of them. The focus on the actors can unfortunately lead to a dearth of dialogue and exposition if not handled properly.

It’s now your job to ratchet it all up a gear and make it into a proper movie, rather than a series of monologues and heartfelt interchanges.

How can we do this?

A couple of years ago Apple created a stir when it introduced a new version of iMovie. The primary cry of the infuriated videographers across the world was, ‘Where have all the fancy transitions gone?’

The only real answer Apple needed to give was ‘Why should you care?’

In the world of editing there are two types of transitions that are of any use; the cut and the dissolve (and the dissolve should be used sparingly). This leaves us with the cut.

The cut! Ah, the cut. In the battles of the editing suite, the cut is your most powerful weapon. The cut has the power to break a heart, to change fear to loathing in an instant, to cause grown men to cry.

The cut is all powerful! Not the images either side of the cut (though these are important) the cut itself.

For in that fraction of a second, between the two images, resides a peculiar magic.

If the human mind has a weakness, it’s that it insists on trying to infer meaning to everything it sees and hears - in one word, Paranoia. This weakness the fundamental building block of films. Take two shots, any random shots - for example a zebra grazing on the savannah and a man drinking coffee in a Parisien cafe. Splice them together with a cut and show them to an audience.

Every member of the audience will try to make sense of the two images they have seen. An innate paranoia kicks in and they will believe that because they are cut together, the two shots are somehow linked. Feats of mental logic will ensue as they try to form explanations for what they have just seen. And the explanations will be eminently plausible - because the audience is clever.

Even the simpler members of society are capable of watching a good film with the volume turned down and understanding what is going on. People can turn up twenty minutes into a film and still get into the story. People are smart when it comes to films.

With this in mind you can begin to edit in earnest. Be on the lookout for shots that can be cut together to provide depth and meaning. Rip out the five minute monologue about how much a man loved his recently departed mother and find a couple of shots; a shot of him with a tear in his eye and a gravestone. Job done.

In that brief flicker between the two shots, we (the audience) put ourselves in the man’s shoes. We wonder why he is crying, and then we see a gravestone. We work out it’s someone he cares about. If we know his name we could infer from the inscription on the gravestone a relationship between them. We’ve all experienced loss of one type or another, and we feel empathy for the man.

Once you have your audience in the head of the protagonist, feeling empathy for him, then you are on your way to a good film.

To follow this logic to it’s conclusion all films would be silent. But this would be to the detriment of our enjoyment of well written witty repartee and emotional soliloquys. These are important, but must only be given credence if they serve the story.

An editor worth his salt will strike the balance between visual storytelling and clever dialogue, at all times guiding the film with the story as his pole star. Do this and you will take the audience on an adventure, tugging them along by both their heartstrings and their minds.

But you must be ruthless. Cut the idle chatter and the banal conversation, strip out the long shots of flamingoes swooping across the sun dappled bay. It may be award winning, but if it doesn’t serve the story, out it goes. This may pain the director greatly, but if he’s worth his salt, he will understand.

Good actors understand these things. They will replace half a page of expository dialogue with a single glance. Not all actors are this experienced, but you can help them. Work through the Slate Roll; see if there are any useful looks or glances that the actors give. See if you can work these into the story and remove extraneous dialogue. Invite the viewer to wonder what’s going on inside the characters head, and provide clues by using a well-placed cut to another meaningful shot that explains or deepens the previous shot.

A compelling story invites the audience to fall iinto the film, allows their imagination to slip between the cuts and immerse themselves in the action.

I first saw Star Wars when I was five years old. I didn’t understand a word of it; Rebel Alliance, Traitors, Hermits, Smugglers. Most of it was meaningless. But George Lucas showed me a story that I could relate to; a story about a boy who lost his family and wanted help rescue a Princess. He showed me a bad guy, I saw what he did and the fear in the eyes of those around him. I understood the story perfectly.

Lucas let me fall into the story at a visual level. I didn’t need to understand the words, the images were enough. As an editor it is your job to do the same with every film you edit.

The are no rules set in stone, no magic bullets that will work in any situation. The quality of the script, the skill of the director and the footage he has shot, the abilities of the actors and the requirements of the story all place demands on the editor and will all play their part.

No matter whether you’re editing a high budget thriller or a low budget feature, the same rules apply. If you can find ways to allow the audience in, to provide opportunities for them to question, to wonder, to empathise purely from what they are seeing - then your film will become more compelling.

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