The Editor - How To Edit Good

Years ago there was a very funny article in the National Lampoon entitled “How To Write Good” which was obviously a parody on writing course. As a editing teacher myself, as well as an editor, I’m very nervous about courses which teach you how to “edit good.”  Too many of these classes what they’re really referring to is “How To Use The NLE Good” and how to use great tips and techniques and shortcuts in order to do cooler stuff in less time.

Now, I’m not against this at all. I’m a regular consumer of some really great tips and techniques podcasts from places like VAAST, the Pro Video Coalition, Dave Forsyth at Amber Post, Larry Jordan, Diana Weynand and more.  So. I’m not against that.

But that’s such a small part of editing, in my mind. What I’ve been speaking about for years, and what my upcoming book is about, is what I like to call “Thinking Like An Editor.” Now, you’re not going to be able to avoid me talking about this as the pub date for my book gets closer. But, for now, let me just say that the focus of the book is how to look at storytelling in all forms of filmmaking — narrative, dox, television, commercials, long and short films, high and low budgets, etc. etc.

The key to this is figuring out exactly what the story is that you want to tell in your film. I don’t mean your script. I mean the essence of the story. I call it a logline — a two or three sentence description that gets to the essence of your film.  Here is an example for THE GODFATHER.

THE GODFATHER is a story about Michael Corleone, a privileged, clean-cut American war hero, who is the son of Don Vito Corelone, a powerful New York crime boss in the 1940s. The mob business is something that Michael wants no part of, preferring a respectable life and marriage to the non-Italian woman Kay. However, when his father is severely injured during a shooting by men working for Virgil “Turk” Sollozzo, Michael discovers the part of him that he has long avoided (the anger, the power-hungry ability to lead, and the part of him that is just like his father) and rises over his two brothers (the “hot-headed” Sonny and “cowardly” Fredo) to take over the crime family that he has long resisted being a part of.

The beauty of this system, of which I’ll talk more in a month or two, is that it focuses you on what’s important in the story. Then, when you’re having a problem in the editing room, you can decide just what a scene needs to be shaped in the scene. Once you know that, then you can bring your editing head to bear on how to do that.

So, what do I mean by that?

One of the more powerful tools you have in editing is image size. A wide shot of Michael and Sollozzo in the restaurant where the Godfather’s son is about to shoot his enemy, carries a much different impact than a two-shot. And the close-ups carry yet another weight. How do you know when to use the wide?  The over-the-shoulder shot of Sollozzo or the close-up of Michael? It depends on what story you want to tell.

A look at the scene (it’s Chapter 10 from the DVD if you want to check it out — go ahead, I’ll wait for you) reveals something interesting. The scene begins with a wide shot of the group waiting for a waiter to come over and pour them wine. They are not talking. There are very few people in the restaurant. And for us, the audience, we are wondering if Michael is going to have the guts to go into the bathroom, find the gun that his “family” has hidden there, and kill Sollozzo dead. We’re tense, thanks to the sequence that comes before it — where Michael is driven to the restaurant.

So, the first wide shot gives us information — nobody is talking, there aren’t many people to witness this event. And then director Francis Ford Coppola and his editors (William Reynolds  and Peter Zinner) do something that seems odd at first — they cut to a shot of Sollozzo. In many films, you’d try and cut to your most important character first, and that logline has told us that the character whose emotions we are tracking is Michael. But they don’t do that. They cut to an over-the-shoulder shot onto Sollozzo.

There are a few cuts back and forth between the two until the waiter moves away and they start talking in earnest. And at that moment the scene gets its first close-up and it’s of Michael. Look at the scene again. You notice that close-up because it has a very different impact than the over-the-shoulder shots. That is a typical editing technique — choose the right moment to cut into your tightest shot, and you’ll emphasize the hell out of it.

Then they do something even more odd. If you look at most films, you’ll notice that once the filmmakers cut into a close-up, they go back and forth in close-ups, until they break out of the pattern. If they’re editing in medium shots, then both sides of the axis (in other words, all of the characters who are shown in that part of the scene) are in medium shots. The shots match in apparent size. They are called complementary angles as a result.

But Coppola and his editors do something very very different. For the next several pairs of cuts (Michael/Sollozzo, Michael/Sollozzo, Michael/Sollozzo) they mismatch the sizes — Michael is only in close-up and Sollozzo doesn’t get a single close-up.

Take a look at that part of the scene again. It’s amazing. The inner turmoil that Michael is feeling is incredibly obvious and very strong. The fact that this area of the scene is so unbalanced in terms of the weight of each of the shots, makes this scene very strongly about Michael’s thought process as he decides whether he is going to get what he wants from Sollozzo and whether he is going to have to carry out hisplan to shoot him.

Make sense? Since we know whose scene this is, and since we know what his emotional arc is within the film (and, hence, within this specific scene), you can figure out where he takes each one of the steps to get through that arc. In this case, we are shaping the audience’s involvement with Michael’s decision to change his life. And, when he takes each step towards that decision we can use different tools to do that. In this case, Coppola and his editors used both the changes in shot size, and the balance of shot sizes (I call that the “weight”) in order to make their point. They could have done it by introducing music, dropping out all sound, picking up the pace of the cuts, changing the reaction times before each character speaks, etc. etc. etc. Each of those are tools to get to the end.

And, once you know that end is supposed to be (and where) it gets much easier to edit the scene to get to it.

[By the way, someone over at the International Film School of Sydney, posted the “rules of editing” from Edward Dmytrk’s book ON FILM EDITING.  There is much interesting here, and we’ll talk about them some more if you’re interested. For now, let’s just say, that focusing on story is the best first step to learning how to Edit Good.]

Tags: Director, , Filmmaker, Actor, Movie Bloggers