Enzo Tedeschi
Forum Replies Created
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…and viola, Malcolm, you have hit it. The Art of the Edit is, at the end of the day, “making it work”. There are arguably more finely honed skills at work when you are restricted to cuts and dissolves – making these work is often more challenging than being able to step in with a push, wipe, page peel (ugh!), or razzle-dazzle swirly thingy that is far more style than substance… :o)
Ultimately, the drive will come from the person signing the cheque – if they can respect the subtlety of a cut as opposed to the extra bell on top of the whistle, then that rocks for us editors. But those bells and whistles can often sound like the glorious noise of the local pokey paying out a jackpot!
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Thanks, Jerry.
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David,
I don’t think music poses a problem – I find it a really interesting challenge. I cut for a travel show here in Australia, and we are always using commercial music. The challenge is to find a piece that works for message / mood, and the cutting to suit. Don’t forget that when you’ve got a piece of music into the NLE, you can cut it like you cut images. I am forever trimming bits out of the middle of music to make it suit the piece I am cutting. At the end of the process, it’s almost like a score. Recently I cut a story that was about 5 and a half minutes, and had 7 different pieces of music through it!
e.
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Not a bad list – but it’s missing one omy favourites: the Jump Cut.
Also a fundamental concept in editing is parallel action, or parallel editing. Sergei Eisenstein pretty much invented and refined this concept,and it probably would get missed in a list like this because it’s now an assumed technique, particularly in cutting drama.
Example, a shot of a speeding train followed by a shot of someone tied to the tracks suggests that the train is headed straight for them, even though we haven’t seen the train and the person in the same shot. Taking it one step further, this also extends to intercutting scenes that are meant to be happening at the same time.
Examples for reference: Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” sometimes known as “Potemkin”. There is a classic scene with a baby pram. Ground-breaking stuff when most films at the time were locked off cameras on wide. You’d be lucky to get a closeup!!
Brian De Palma reworked the pram scene in “The Untouchables”. Goes to show the timelessness of the technique!!
Hope this helps!
e.
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https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=27&postid=854904
Perfect example of what can be achieved by omitting the right things and using the right music. Hilarious!
e.
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Hello again, David!
It’s always a really good way to see how something is communicating an idea by watching it mute. This works for drama, but I don’t think it will always apply to documentary – especially something built entirely out of archival material.
As for soundtrack being an editor’s curse – most definitely not!! You can tell you’ve come from a stills background! 🙂 Kidding, kidding…!!
The soundtrack is yet another extension of the toolset you have available to you when you are cutting. The right piece of music, or the right inflection in someone’s voice can lift a good scene into a great scene. Sadly something that is often overlooked, especially with music – it has often become simply filler for when a scene feels empty, rather than a tool to enhance a scene.
IMHO, the same way a director should be listening to input from his or her heads of department when shooting, an editor should be paying close attention to what is happening in the soundtrack. Not just adding what they think should be there, but letting the sound that IS there speak to them just as much as the images.
I recently attended a Q & A with Director / Editor / Composer John Ottman, where he lamented the poor use of score in a lot of flims today. His was a fascinating viewpoint, being both the editor AND composer on a lot of his films. Possibly the standout moment in his dual career is “The Usual Suspects”.
I think this chat might need to spill over into an new thread….
e.
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[antelope] “Which in turn led me to wonder where the border lies between direction [or is it production?] and editing. It must be a very grey overlap.”
Absolutely.
Have a read of this article: https://dga.org/news/v29_1/craft_dir-eds_504.php3
The editing is like re-writing the story for a third time. There’s a script, then this gets interpreted through production, and then the film has another re-birth in the editing suite. Often it is not a drastic change, but there are times when it’s night to day – one such example is Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Not only was the film being re-written on the set while shooting, but the cut was really an intense process, and then revisited all those years later, and recut again into Apolcalypse Now Redux, an entirely different film.
The Director / Editor relationship is crucial. Ultimately, you are both there to serve the story. I have directed / edited a lot of my own stuff, and there are pros and cons. The main advantage is that you can shoot for what you imagine your cut will be like. One very big problem is that it can be difficult to take on change, and step back from your involvement to produce a truly objective cut.
“I know that shot does’nt work perfectly, but it took 15 people standing in the rain for 5 hours to get it…” As an editor, you need to be able to make those hard calls for the benefit of the story you are telling. You’ll get more of this in Conversations and “In The Blink of An Eye” if you ahppened to order that one too. I should be asking Murch for commissions… ;o)
I’ll trade you an anecdote – I’m cutting a short film at the moment. The Director was also the Writer. The first cut of the film (as per the script) was long-winded and boring. Even slightly confusing. No having an emotional attachment to the script etc, I was able to delete entire scenes, drop a whole subplot (I even had to remove a scene that I really liked the cut of… bugger…), and all off a sudden, the film has a very clear focus, it is paced better, and doesn’t feel like it runs for 12 mins (even though it does!).
That short film competition certainly sounds like a sign to me. 🙂
Xpress Pro will definitely come in handy later on if you get into some serious work. If you can afford it (and run it) snap it up. I found that FreeDV and XpressDV have just enough subtle changes in the interface etc to be really annoying. Xpress Pro’s interface is pretty much identical to that of a Media Composer. But I am nitpicking!
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David, with that attitude, you’re definitely on the right track.
[antelope] “I once heard someone say that the reason they liked classical music was not for the notes or the melody but for the transitions between the notes”
You’ve hit it on the head, David. The notes that aren’t being played are just as important as the notes that are. I’m pretty sure that Murch somewhere actually refers to the importance of not only what images are side by side at any given edit point, but what is happening “between” the cuts.
And I don’t know if you are aware of Avid Free DV… https://www.avid.com/freedv/
Best way to get your head around the interface if you can’t get into a basic course.Good luck with it all, David. I know you’ll enjoy Conversations – you will likely be making several trips to the video store in coming weeks… :o)
e.
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antelope,
The only thing I’d like to add to the above is that on top of all that, study what you watch. Pay careful attention to the craft being played on the screen before you. Walter is so right it’s not funny – knowing which shots best tell the story when put together is just as important (possibly more so!)than knowing which sequence of keys to press to put them there.
When I was a student, I learnt bucketloads about technique (nothing technical, just the art of joining images) by paying attention to what I was watching. If something strikes you, go back and watch it again and again, step thru stuff frame by frame, find out who cut it and seek out more of their work.
As for Murch’s books, they are obviously well-loved (read: worn!) when you see them on my bookshelf – they’ll possibly need replacing soon! Those books and a couple of films in particular are where I go for inspiration if I get bummed from time to time. Conversations makes some very good parallels with another for of storytelling – writing.
The first NLE I ever learnt was Premiere – the transition to FCP and Avid (cause I wanted more serious work) was pretty smooth.
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Nice work!
Just addressing some of the comments made by others:
Music: It didn’t bother me at all. After reading the comments while downloading (before viewing) I was expecting to not even be able to hear the voice! Music was fine in my opinion, did’nt even nreally notice it (which means it didn’t jar..)
Cuts: I agree that at one point especially, the dip to black was a little long. Personally I think that most of the other dips could be made straight cuts, and it would probably add, rather than detract. I love a good conspiracy theory (moon landing one of my personal favourites), and one of the things I like about conspiracy docos is the feel that I am being presented with a wealth of info. By cutting instead of dipping to black, it would add a bit of pace, therefore the impression of more info being presented (even though it’s not!).
As also mentioned, opinions are like backsides: everybody’s got one, and this is just mine – well done I think it’s a good piece.
Although not a documentary, Oliver Stone’s JFK is a masterful bit of cutting – very good at presenting or alluding to information through the visuals that isn’t said at all in dialogue. And very pacey. It holds up for me viewing after viewing (no medan feat for a three hour marathon!) It’s a very clever pice of filmmaking, and also combines a lot of different media (archival footage, recreations, etc) very convincingly, whether you agree with what’s being said or not.
e.