Franz Bieberkopf
Forum Replies Created
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https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/96150
[Richard Herd] “Does techne cause episteme? That is, if we change our editing platform does our knowledge (and not just knowledge of editing) change also.”
Richard,
The reason I asked you about your post was that it wasn’t clear to me how you were relating the ideas of theory and practice (or knowledge and craft) to the discussion.
Personally I don’t make such a clear distinction between the two. (So I guess I’m with Xenophon there?)
It’s maybe easy to imagine practice without theory – but I’d balk at that, as it seems to me you’re always working with theory even if it’s unacknowledged. More difficult, maybe, to think that theory requires practice (i.e. easier to think of “pure theory”) and yet if you imagine knowledge as a skill then we’re back to craft and knowledge as one in some sense (and I guess we’re back with Xenophon).
Two things that are interesting to me about the Stanford entry were that all of philosophers discussed struggle to make a distinction between knowledge and practice and that all of them take up the question in terms of ethics.
Which does bring us back to a question I’ve asked here before (in different form) – what makes “good editing”. How do you define it?
In terms of your second question, I’d say in general that the functional difference between the various platforms is small enough that there is not much influence on editing approach. However, as I’ve said before, there does seem to be an emphasis or assumption of browser-based methods in the design of X, so it may influence users to favour that approach.
Franz.
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[Richard Herd] “The main ideas I was referencing are techne and episteme.”
Richard,
Yes, I assumed so base on your link.
I was wondering how you were relating those concepts (and Aristotle specifically) to the discussion.
Franz.
Edit: disregard, I see you’ve taken it up under “Learning”.
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[Richard Herd] ” Bill was bringing up the cognitivist’s point of learning knowledge v. acquiring knowledge. This dialectic does not require behaviorism”
Richard,
What’s “the point of learning knowledge vs. acquiring knowledge”?
Franz.
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[Bill Davis] ” I never implied any “inability to conceive.””
[Bill Davis] “I wonder if it’s every bit as difficult to conceive editing without calling up and addressing some type of timeline thing”
Bill,
Replace “inability to conceive” with “difficulty conceiving” in my post above if you feel that’s more accurate to your original post.
Franz.
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Eric,
I had a further clarifying thought on this.
Putting music to the cut at the end is essentially a traditional scoring model. If you think about it that way, you can maybe see it in a more positive light.
This scene from the Godfather is a strong, simple example (Michael pivotal moment in the restaurant) though I’m sure it’s trivial to think of your own example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9RlWShULR8
(Incidentally I like the interior car scene that precedes the restaurant as a good example of sound fx as music.)Of course, the scene is cut for drama and then score added later (famously starting only after he drops the gun). It probably isn’t as cut and dried as that (cut first, score later) because temp music plays a role in the edit. But you can see that by prioritizing things other than music (in this case, “drama”) you can get to strong piece which music then supports.
I should probably note here that I prefer not to work that way, though I have, and further that this is simply to try to clearly contrast an approach with the idea that music can play a “driving” role in an edit.
In fact, I think this is a better way of instigating my imagined student exercise – have one half of the students cut to music, the other half cut without music with instructions to “score” the piece after. This might lead to more clearly contrasted results, a better understanding of each approach, and better discussion. I like this idea so much I’m going to try to use it next teaching opportunity I have …
Franz.
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Eric,
It’s a good question, because it’s specific.
In a way, I think there’s two questions in there – the first is what is the better way to approach an edit, the second is how do you deal with conflicting approaches in the edit room.
I’d suggest the most fruitful thing in terms of your teaching context would be to try to articulate for your student the strengths of each approach.
Think of all the things that your editor colleagues have said about why they prefer to “ignore the music bed until the end”. Or ask here (as you’ve done) for why people like to work this way.
Then also think of why you might personally prefer editing to the music from the start.
If you can articulate the strengths and reasons of each approach to your students then you’ve not only taught them something specific, but maybe opened their minds to thinking about and trying different approaches. What about an assignment where half the class does it one way and half the other – as a means of sparking a post-screening discussion?
Personally, I would approach this problem (a commercial spot with music) using a kind of hybrid approach.
I’d work with the material without the music to come up with draft assembly that’s probably too long with too many ideas. This kind of exploration makes clear to me what material is strong (and weak), what internal rhythms I might rely on (juxtapositions and visual harmonies), and generally afford me a real knowledge of the material (which takes I preferred and why, etc.).
Once I have that, I’d look to the music on it’s own and come up with a first draft music only cut that works to time. Again, this allows me a strong knowledge of what I like or don’t like about the piece and what might be possible to change in future iterations.
With these two elements each loosely structured (and rattlling around in my head) I’d set to work putting them together. At that point, it might be said that I’m “cutting to music” though I hope you can see that it’s actually more complex than that. The previous work makes this stage easier in the sense that I can rely on my experience with the material in the earlier stages.
[Eric Santiago] “What if the client is adamant that the music should be the basis of the edits?”
This is more about the second question – how to work with people. If your collaborators (or employers) are set in their ways and demand you work a certain way then you might not have a lot of options.
However, it can be helpful to communicate to them a different approach if they have never considered it. Further, while they may know what they want, you are the expert on what you need in order to work (in terms of process), and it’s important to communicate that. There may not be a way of working together, of course, and that’s an important choice to make as well.
Hope that helps.
Franz.
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Bill,
So: people have habits and sometimes habits are bad. Got it. Thanks for clarifying. I’d agree.
Your original post is concerned, however, that if someone achieves success editing with timeline-based approaches, then it might lead to an inability to conceive of editing any other way.
In fact I think there’s been a feast of discussion here about how people use both models in their editing – the very intention has been to articulate and identify different approaches. (I myself touched on how Murch thought of both approaches. And Oliver and Simon have been very patient in articulating their thoughts to ungenerous response, to give just 3 examples.)
So it’s been demonstrated that at least some people who use timeline-based approaches can conceive of editing in other ways. On the other hand, there’s been real resistance to even considering timeline-based approaches from some posters who use browser-based methods. Here’s one example:
[Tony West] “The concept of dumping hours and hours of footage into the timeline that you know very little of is going to stay, is not an efficient way of going about your work.”
So I don’t understand the concern of your original post which seems oddly focused if we’re talking about ingrained habits – unless your claiming that browser-based editing never becomes a habit, which would be an interesting claim.
How do you challenge your own editing habits?
[Bill Davis] “… oh why bother.”
Posting? Responding? Editing? It’s a good question.
Finally, “muscle memory” isn’t a kind of conditioning as you seem to think, but a form of learning connected to procedural memory that allows action without conscious thought. It’s often used as an analogy, though, for ingrained behaviours (conscious or otherwise), which is how I suspect you are using it here. Still you seem to be conflating “learning” with “conditioning” (and very specifically “classical conditioning” for what remains a mysterious reason).
I think this is important because perhaps if you reconsider your understanding of how people learn things, it might assuage your concerns about their ability to adapt and consider alternatives.
Franz.
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[Bill Davis] “Without conditioning – we have to re-learn EVERYTHING anew each time we face it.”
Bill,
This is factually not true.
A casual search on wikipedia lists 17 types of learning. I suspect it’s rather incomplete.
If by “conditioning” you mean “learning” or “memory” in general, then it might be more true, but your title implies you are really more interested in classical conditioning.
[Bill Davis] “… how I learned to swim … Looking back, it’s among the most successful classical conditioning I’ve ever had. A regular behavior – ideally linked with a conditioned mental response.”
I’m not an authority on learned behaviors but as you have described it, this is not classical conditioning.
I’m not sure what your experience was, but it seems like it may be more operant conditioning (if you felt you were being rewarded, which is unclear), or something like imprinting (as you seem to feel your age and the authority of the instructor were factors). In any case, you can familiarize yourself with an overview of classical conditioning at wikipedia.
[Bill Davis] “Addressing prior conditioning is a long standing part of understanding human behavior. … The question isn’t ARE we conditioned.”
Conditioning is, of course, central to behaviorism. Behaviorism is famously not interested in internal processes so much as observable and measurable outcomes. It was popular and influential in 20th century psychology, particularly in the U.S. where its traces are still seen in pop culture, and stands in contrast to another foundation of psychology (Freud) and humanist understanding in general. Noam Chompsky’s 1959 critique of behaviorism began the shift to cognitive psychology which focuses on mental processes that affect behaviour (anathema to behaviourism).
Behaviorism is one school of psychology, and not really current in terms of our understanding of learning. I’m not sure what your question “are we conditioned?” is asking. I think you might be suggesting editing is learned by classical conditioning (thus the title of your post) which I have trouble making sense of, so you’ll have to explain further if that is your meaning.
Any complex skill set is going to be rather difficult to trace in terms of how we learn it, even without considering the relationship between creativity and something like editing or the social contexts in which something like filmmaking or videomaking is undertaken (which are surely quite important).
So I don’t really understand what ideas you are trying to express or what connections you are trying to make.
If your point is that people can be creatures of habit, I’d agree. People are also quite curious, creative, inventive, and surprisingly open minded sometimes. You’ve made no case for why one approach to editing is any more of a habit than any other, or why one editing habit is preferable to another.
Franz.
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[Richard Herd] “… and along the way was contemplating Aristotle’s ideas on the topic.”
Richard,
How are you relating Aristotle to the topic at hand?
Franz.
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Joe,
Thanks for your response. I’ve thought and written quite a bit after your post so thanks for that, but I’ll largely limit this post to Wiseman, Murch, and Editdroid (John Sinclair, Ben Burtt, Ed Burcksen) as you have referenced them. I think they actually open up some of the central tensions of discussion here.
PHYSICAL & DIGITAL
The EditDroid piece you posted largely focuses on the tremendous liberation from physical restrictions that digital NLEs afforded.
Suffice to say that while the physicality of film will continue to be important to some (even as it becomes increasingly rare), for the vast majority the medium will be digital. However, the distinction is informing some of the issues here, and Wiseman might be best on that, if only for raising the idea of craft vs. industrial production:
“There was something artisanal about handling film. Because when you’re editing with film, the rolls of films are hanging on the wall. You have to find the roll, you have to thread it up, you run it down, and you look, you look at the sequences preceding or following what you’re looking for. And you’re thinking about it the whole time.”
https://www.filmjournal.com/features/frederick-wiseman-in-the-heights-documentaryPHYSICAL ANALOGS & NEW MODELS
While not the main focus of the history, The EditDroid piece does discuss how old models – analogs of working with media – were necessary: the controller came from the KEM flatbed, the tracks from a film bench and synchronizer, the source and record monitors come from the KEM or maybe it was video editing. (Were there mixing faders in there?) But things get a bit vague when they talk about the trackball with onscreen “buttons” (or virtual commands) and how unfamiliar that was, and how some the interface was “very much like looking at a computer”.
If you’re interested in NLE history, you may want to have a look at some of David Lawrence’s posts – you can start here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/9060It’s interesting and related for two reasons: the first being that Lucasfilm had more than one NLE project, and the second is that David’s take on the need for analogs contradicts the above:
“One of the project’s big insights was the realization that a physical world metaphor – for example, digitally modeling the physical characteristics of a Steenbeck, as George had done with EditDroid – was unnecessary.”
What I take from this is that new technology will rely both on old familiar models and new ones – it’s not simply one or the other. What might be of interest is where the old ones are important, and where the new ones are necessary.
NON-LINEAR & LINEAR
One thing that is striking about the history of the EditDroid as told in that piece is the assumption of non-linearity. These are film people, accustomed to working in a non-linear fashion where material is available (from bins or reels) to be added to any given moment (distinctly in reels). But digital NLEs radically changed how video editors worked, restricted as they were by master timecode on the destination side. In fact the technology had to be labelled as such – radically different – and therefore “non-linear”; that’s in difference to video models.
Interestingly, as the moviola technology of 20s was replaced by the flatbed technology of the 30s, aspects of linear editing were introduced into film editing. I’ll reference Murch on this further down.
I bring these up because these distinctions again are largely conceptual – you can still work linearly in an NLE if you like and in fact I’ve been confronted by fairly linear sensibilities when working with others – the idea of shots mapped out one by one from beginning to end.
Werner Penzel once told me that when he and co-director Nicolas Humbert were cutting Step Across The Border (1990), they kept coming up against frustration – not getting the film they wanted. It was only when they sort of threw away their plans and started at the beginning, choosing one piece after another, that the film came together. I’d call that something of a linear process. They describe the filmmaking this way on the DVD, perhaps referencing that kind of linear basis for the edit:
“Music and film come into existence out of an intense perception of the moment, not from the transformation of a preordained plan.”
(I love that film; essential viewing if you’re a fan of Fred Frith, John Zorn, Iva Bittová, et al), first part here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHwTF1P2-sQ
SPEED & TIME
The main virtue Sinclair, Burtt, and Burcksen focus on is speed, or maybe it’s better described as the elimination of “wasted time”. Burcksen cites the speed contest between the EditDroid and KEM editors (though no frame of judgement is given except that it was “4 or 5 shots”, if memory serves), and also says “With film material, you just don’t try things out because it take up so much time.” while Burtt says, “I was able to spend my time editing, not hunting and searching for things.”, repeating later that “hunting and searching” for footage was eliminated.
This idea that editing is a specific thing that happens when you’re not searching or otherwise wasting time seems to be shared by you when you speak of Wiseman using an Avid:
[Joe Marler] “He is philosophical about whether it speeds up the overall process, but in no interview has he analytically evaluated this. … If he can find content faster using Avid, then *something* is being sped up, and he’s productively spending that time elsewhere.”But I’m more inclined to trust Wiseman on his on practice here – I don’t dismiss him:
””I regret not being able to work on film, because I like editing film,” he says. “It’s impossible now. The labs don’t exist. It theoretically costs more money—but I’m not really sure it does.”
“I find myself forcing myself to take the time to think,” he says. “That’s why this takes so much time. The fact that you can make changes more quickly on Avid isn’t necessarily a good thing.”
https://www.filmjournal.com/features/frederick-wiseman-in-the-heights-documentary“ … I don’t think that that kind of speed and accessibility on the Avid is necessarily a good thing. Because when I had all the film rushes hanging on hooks on the wall it took more time. I had to find the film roll, put it on the Steenbeck, and roll down to the shot that I was looking for. But that wasn’t wasted time. First of all I was reviewing material, and second of all, I was thinking about why I was looking for what I was looking for.”
https://filmmakermagazine.com/37042-an-interview-with-frederick-wiseman/Your Edgar Burcksen bit misses the mark on the original Wiseman idea that you address it to, I think. Wiseman was saying in essence that it takes time to think about editing – he gives one example of that happening in the shower. In fact, Burcksen supports him in this idea, but in the process dismisses Murch:
“An editor like Walter Murch said that he always got the best ideas when he was winding up the film material. If they ask me if I think film is better in that way, I’d say that is metaphysical b.s. Because that has nothing to do with this profession. When you are winding up a reel and you get this great idea, you could get the same idea on the way to the bathroom.”This moment here – Burcksen’s statement – gets to the crux of my post.
BURCKSEN & MURCH
It’s unclear what statement from Murch that Burcksen is referencing, but here is probably the best known articulation:
“… the advantage of the KEM’s linear system is that I do not always have to be speaking to it – there are times when it speaks to me. … I might say, “I want to see that close-up of Teresa, number 317 in roll 45.” But I’ll put that roll on the machine, and as I spool down to number 317 (which may be hundreds of feet from the start), the machine shows me everything at high speed down to that point … and I find, more often than not, long before I get down to shot 317, that I’ve had three other ideas triggered by the material that I have seen flashing by me.”
– Walter Murch, In The Blink Of An Eye, p.46(Note the use of linear storage for source material.) Further he elaborates by comparison:
“The big selling point of any non-linear system, however is precisely its non-linearity. …but that’s actually something of a drawback because the machine gives me only what I ask for, and I don’t’ always want to go where I say I want to go. Wanting something just give me the starting point. I expect the material itself to tell me what to do next.”
– Walter Murch, In The Blink Of An Eye, p.109That relationship to the material, the idea that “the material itself’ can guide the process in some way, is a central idea to Murch’s approach to editing. (It relates to Penzel and Humbert above, too.) We could think of this as a sensitivity to “bottom up” ways of working in opposition to conceptual “top down” approaches. Of course, Murch sees value in both.
On the question of time, he talks linear vs. non-linear, but of course it’s about value not just speed:
“A system that is too linear (which means that you have to spend too much time searching before you find what you want) would be burdensome. You would quickly become overwhelmed and/or bored with it. So there is a golden mean somewhere. if the system is completely random-access, that is a defect in my opinion. But if it is too linear, that’s a defect as well. …
– Walter Murch, In The Blink Of An Eye, p.48Thinking about this in terms of “browser-based” vs. “sequence-based” approaches, Murch describes his own browser-based editing:
“Random-access systems are highly dependent on the quality of the notes made at the material’s first viewing, because those notes are the key to unlocking and searching the vast library of material for each film. They necessarily reflect not only the note-taker’s initial opinions about the material but also about the film itself, as it is conceived at that time.”
– Walter Murch, In The Blink Of An Eye, p.107He’s speaking of his own note and database driven approach to logging, but it’s clear that this thought applies to categorizing, labeling, tagging, or otherwise conceptually organizing material. Crucially, he goes on from this thought to emphasize that this cataloguing has the danger of calcifying and becoming a hindrance to editing, and that material needs “constant review” so that it can be discovered in a fresh way, and how the demands of the way he organized physical film had the unavoidable effect of forcing a “constant review” (the “thinking while rewinding” moment, or the “responding while fast-forwarding” moment as it is perhaps more properly described).
All of this circles back on his “ideas while rewinding” quote – derided by Burcksen who implies that Murch has claimed “film is better in that way”, and that ideas can come at any time, not just while rewinding. Ultimately, Murch is talking about a relationship to the material. If we use words, phrases, identifiers, codes to categorize material, the danger is that the material becomes thought of in those terms and nothing else. Seeing and hearing the material is a direct experience, and an editor should be open to that experience. If you’ve ever ended up using a shot or bit of sound against your first instincts, or as the result of an accident then you understand what this means – ideas from a direct experience of the material (“bottom up”). He’s talking about the value of systems which are always holding the material in relationship to other material, and therefor putting the material before you in a way that is at least as important as, if not more important than, our conceptual relationship to it. While I’m sure Murch has had his share of ideas in the shower, or “on the way to the bathroom”, and always went into films with conceptual frameworks and ideas (“top down”), he is speaking of something specific here which seems to have eluded Burcksen.
I’d say that is the primary value of sequenced based systems (though not the only one).
SEQUENCE-BASED & BROWSER-BASED
I don’t understand your final statements on Wiseman.
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[Joe Marler] “Of *course* he just collects sequences. That’s all his software can do.”First I don’t know what software you are referring to. He’sused Avid since 2009, and you seem to imply that Avid can only “collect sequences”, so I don’t understand what you mean by that. Second, I think you’ve conflated his method of shooting (which he describes as “collecting sequences”) with editing.
And your final statement:
[Joe Marler] ” We’re now 33 years past EditDroid, and computers can do a lot more to assist than just mimicking tracks of film and mag tape.”
Of course, the implication in your statements is that I “rigidly hold” to an old way which simply “mimics tracks of film and mag tape”. I’m not sure why you would think that, so I’m interested to know what you are basing your opinion on or what you really mean when you talk about sequence-based editing, since you are clearly not talking about how I work.
As a final point on this, I think it’s really important to point out that the two broad categories of organization are just that – broad. While I think I share many priorities and approaches with Murch, there are many differences. (We also share “browser based” methods such as the ubiquitous index cards, but have differences there too). And while the “pancake method’ is a good example of a simple sequence-based approach, I don’t use that method (or very rarely).
Sequence-based methods will vary at least as much as browser based methods (and I think probably more).
Franz.