Editing Today – another Philippic

[Timothy Auld]

I do not have even the slightest idea what you are talking about.

Tim

[Herb Sevush]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Coverage is the great enemy in my view. It makes every film feel like TV, because instead of giving you the freedom not to cut, it imposes cutting as an imperative.”

Agree totally. The equivalent in music production is where musicians are told to play without dynamics so that the final performance can be crafted in the mix.

One of my favorite John Ford anecdotes is about the wedding scene in “How Green Was My Valley” where you see Walter Pidgeon in the far background looking on as Maureen O’Hara drives off on her wedding day. Supposedly the DP asked Ford if he wanted to get a close up of Pidgeon and Ford said, “Lord no. If we shot it some idiot would probably use it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fXKmM1-PVY

As a minor note I will mention that Ford used a wind machine to get the wedding veil to move that way at that spot – which is why they called him John Ford.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

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[Simon Ubsdell]

[Herb Sevush] “One of my favorite John Ford anecdotes is about the wedding scene in “How Green Was My Valley” where you see Walter Pidgeon in the far background looking on as Maureen O’Hara drives off on her wedding day. Supposedly the DP asked Ford if he wanted to get a close up of Pidgeon and Ford said, “Lord no. If we shot it some idiot would probably use it.””

I love it – I’d heard that line before but never knew who said it and in what context.

Great stuff! Can’t really argue with Ford.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com

[Jeff Markgraf]

So, to clarify –

As an editor, you’ve never had to fix a poorly shot or staged scene? And there was no luck involved, I guess, because you’ve been able to choose films that had no poorly shot or staged scenes? Or you’ve edited films with poorly shot for staged scenes but did not fix them? Again, not a matter of luck.

Or perhaps fixing a poorly shot or staged scene is part and parcel of editing to enhancing a scene. In which case, we’d be saying essentially the same thing.

[Timothy Auld]

I don not have the slightest idea what you are talking about.

Tim

[Jeff Markgraf]

Well…

“usually when the story is bad and too short for a feature and both antagonist and protagonist are complete jerks the chance of blocking and staging errors for some reason increases.”

I would say he is suggesting that films in which both the protagonist and antagonist are unpleasant people (“jerks”) one tends to find more poor blocking and staging than in films with non-“jerk” main characters. Add in a bad story and a less-than-feature length running time, and the chances for bad blocking and accompanying odd editing choices increases.

Not sure I agree with the premise, but it seems pretty clear what Michael is saying here.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Then I’ll try to spell it out.

In response to a post I made about often having to fix material in the editing, you said, “I have always looked at my job as not to fix what happened in production, but to enhance what happened in production.”

I replied that I thought you were lucky not to have had to deal with (paraphrasing here) “fixing it in post.”

You replied, “Luck has nothing whatever to do with it.”

So I wanted to clarify the ways in which your experience has been different from mine, and specifically why luck was not a factor. I further wondered if perhaps, “enhancing what happened in production” might automatically include sometimes “fixing” poorly shot or staged footage.

Hope that helps.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Again, I think we need to start comparing apples to apples.

You’re comparing GOATs with average and citing a lack of ambition?

[Misha Aranyshev]

Thanks Jeff.

It all has to do with general misunderstanding of how people react to a movie. People do try identify themselves with the protagonist but the caveat is if you give them a character similar to them: a thick-skinnned, lazy, selfish conformist with a bit of mean steak they’d feel uncomfortable. They want an idealized version. Same with blocking and staging. The principles of placing characters and camera are based on some hard-wired things in our brains.

So if you know it would spoil the reaction to you work why would you do it. Because you don’t know it would spoil the reaction to your work.

[Timothy Auld]

Luck is nonsense. It is an illusion. Luck is not a thing in the real world. You are either working for the success of your current project or you are not. I am really not sure what you are doing.

Tim