Editing Observations From Someone Not an Editor
Hey look, a breadbasket!
Sweet baby goats, I am tired. I’ve been trying to track in my journal what I’ve been doing every single day. All I know is that the time has whizzed by and I’ve been going to bed between one and four a.m., pretty much every night. My circadian rhythm is totally shot, and last night I only got up and worked on some writing after being unable to sleep for an hour.
This is a problem in and of itself, because I should be writing every day. For some reason, how to carve out the time to do so has been an absolute mystery. I’m starting to think the most successful people are able to do what they want to during the day because they have concrete routines. They don’t have to think about when they’re doing something; they just know that this is the time every day that they do it.
I’ve been editing between 10:00 - 3:00 p.m. every day with Stephen the Fantastic Editor, after which my brain devolves into a complete puddle. Monday I took a nap after editing, and I think that was what led to me getting three hours of sleep last night. Tonight I was planning to go to bed around 12:30 a.m. so I could get a decent amount of shuteye. After exercising I’m now getting a second wind, and I’m not tired at all. I’ve been meaning to write in this blog for two weeks about my experiences editing, which may possibly prepare me for the next project, and will hopefully help newer filmmakers in the future.
This is probably going to be a LONG post, so here we go:
In my elective drama class at college, I was taught a concept called “The Moment Before.” It’s basically, whatever emotion you’re acting at the start of a scene usually has to do with how your character was feeling BEFORE the scene actually takes place. I have learned over the course of editing on this project that the same concept really guides me in which takes to pick in the edit. I usually don’t pick a selection from the performance takes on the timeline without considering what’s shown/felt/performed in the previous shot that makes it in the cut. The best performance take from an actor may no longer be the appropriate take to use, if it’s not the appropriate reaction to what’s in the previous shot. And it’s all a puzzle piece — editing isn’t a collage of best performance takes. It’s genuine actions and reactions. It’s building mood and drama. When editing, you have to consider (in addition to The Moment Before):
matching shots
pacing of the shot (how long it lasts)
timing of the cut between one shot and the next
performance takes
facial expressions, hand movements, eyelines (if you have a great performance from an actor who crosses their eyes accidentally in the shot, you have to use a different take…unless it’s on purpose)
overall mood you’re trying to convey with a full sequence* (*this may be optional, but I’m suspecting good editors think this way. I am not skilled enough to do this yet in conjunction with Stephen the Fantastic Editor. I can barely think one cut ahead. However, I’m reminded of two sequences in Jaws after seeing the movie last Saturday. The first has to do with (SPOILER ALERT) when the dog and the kid get eaten by the shark, and the next sequence has to do with the false alarm of the two kids with the fin in the water. Both sequences feel EXTREMELY different from each other, and I’m pretty sure that’s due to the editing. I’m wondering if Verna Fields and Steven Spielberg had the overall pacing picture of these sequences in mind when cutting them, or simply figured out the pace as they went).
Let’s remember that the pacing of shots is measured in FRAMES, and if the cut is one frame off, it affects the emotional and temporal experience of your story. Thanks to Stephen the Fantastic Editor being so accommodating, and recognizing that even one frame affects the rhythm, fluidity, and emotional experience of the story, I do not fucking settle when it comes to cutting the film. Frances McDormand, who is married to a Coen brother, has said film is an editor’s medium, and I believe she is absolutely right. Sorry, directors! But after watching many, many movies over the course of the past decade with a critical eye, and after editing a couple of extremely modest shorts on my own, I have seen the power of a good edit and how it can affect the viewing experience. I think a good cut is probably the most pure way to communicate a feeling in a particular scene. I’m not saying it’s the only way, or the best way, but I’m saying it’s the purest.
Film may be a visual medium, but I feel like you have to absorb a lot when experiencing visuals in a scene. Editing just is, man. That cut is where it is, and hopefully it means something. Without being super pretentious about it, I strive for every cut to mean something. If the cut is where it is, it’s because I’ve considered any or all of the bullet list above, and made a choice. Sometimes I’ll make an edit because it just works; other times not getting the right coverage in a better take and having to settle for an alternate choice makes the decision for you. But my approach to editing is never, “yeah, let’s put the cut here and move on because I want to go get lunch.” I am absolutely ruthless when it comes to editing. Not in a way that sucks the magic out of the film, but in a way where I want you have the best storytelling experience possible in a visual form.
And yes, editing takes an absolutely long time. If an editing choice doesn’t immediately stand out to me, and I am struggling to piece two shots together, I will try every way possible to eliminate everything that doesn’t work until the choice becomes clear. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re working with until you take a frame off the ending of one shot and add two frames to the beginning of the next, and it just feels right. Sometimes you abandon the pacing approach that comes with cutting or adding frames to a shot, and simply go with making one shot match to the next to achieve fluidity, because that becomes the priority to facilitate a mood or energy depending upon where you are in the story.
Anyway, for me this process is a mixture of instinct and craft. Sometimes the choice is initially apparent, and sometimes it isn’t. But it is always, always a choice. I can’t speak for other filmmaking crafts, but directing, editing, and producing is about making decisions. If you usually have trouble picking where or what to have for lunch on a given day, I would reconsider choosing these lines of work. I have seen people take twenty minutes to decide such things, and I think if they were faced with a bunch of different editing choices to make for one shot, it would be a mental overload. I say this not to be mean or condescending, merely as an observation.
And now that I think about it, I’m sure there are great filmmakers out there who would have trouble deciding where to eat, but would have no problem deciding where to edit in a movie. This is why generalizations are to be avoided!
Now screenwriting, I don’t know what the hell it is. I feel like with screenwriting I’m fumbling in the dark more than I am with any other medium of filmmaking that I’m capable of. For me, editing, directing, and even producing really come down to matters of taste, as well as my decision to be ruthless and tenacious about my choices (keep in mind I haven’t had to answer to anyone as a director and producer, which might affect what decisions I’d make and how I’d make them). My initial lead actress for the C.R.T. project walked, and while I was terribly worried that I wouldn’t find the right choice before the person actually showed up, I also was not going to do the picture until I got someone who I knew was the absolute best I could possibly get either.
I went through hundreds upon hundreds of songs for the music in this film. I knew I didn’t want to pay for a composer that would add to the already obscene cost of this short, but you bet I was going to pore over every song in the database that I’m using until I found something that worked. Anyway, taste, tenaciousness, and an unwillingness to settle are what really drive my creative decisions as a producer, director, and writer.
As a screenwriter, I feel like what I’m most thinking about is how to be true to myself and the spirit of the story, partly because everything I write has a strong personal connection. Yeah, I’m trying to write visually, and not make scenes too long, and use less words to say more in the dialogue and consider the subtext of each scene, as well as how to incorporate tone and mood in the action lines and how to not overwrite anything. So I guess there’s some level of craft there that I’m not thinking about as consciously as when I’m editing or directing, but in screenwriting, I just want the story to feel organic. This probably means I’m relying on instinct a lot more, but maybe this is why I feel like I know far less about what I’m doing.
One last thing, for baby filmmakers: when starting C.R.T., I had completely forgotten you can take an audio from one take and match it to a visual from another take if it better fits the mood you’re trying to go for. It has saved my butt on this picture, numerous times. If you wanted to for one piece of spoken dialogue, you could isolate single words spoken in all different takes and put them in the mouth of the actor in yet another take. Now this would probably sound terrible, but my point is that this is yet another tool you have in crafting a performance and mood in a scene, as well as the overall narrative as a filmmaker. Even on set, knowing that you have a good spoken performance as a director could be a factor to help you decide more efficiently whether you want to move onto another shot or not.
Super tired. 1:30 now. Glad I got all this down. Here’s hoping I fall asleep right away after taking a shower so I can wake up refreshed tomorrow and start establishing a schedule.
P.S. Saw Sometimes, I think About Dying again today and forgot how beautiful it is, in a host of ways.