Norman Hollyn has been described as a “media expert,” a reference to his experience in both the old and new media worlds.
He is a long-time film, television and music editor (HEATHERS, THE COTTON CLUB, and Oliver Stone’s WILD PALMS) who is an Associate Professor and Head of the Editing Track in the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
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July 3, 2009
There was an interesting article this week in Daily Variety which was ostensibly about the American Cinema Editors pre-announcement of an award that they’ll be giving to Avid at their awards dinner in February (actually, I suppose I should say that we’ll be giving at our dinner, since as of June 2nd, I am now a member of ACE — you can leave your congratulations at the door). Variety takes the slant that:
The nod amounts to an unprecedented endorsement of a commercial product by ACE, which is coming down squarely on the side of one entry in the editing systems competish.
I’m going to nod my head as well in one way — I think that the Avid Media Composer is a pretty great editing platform, one that feels relatively robust. I also like how the company has been working feverishly to repair its image as a expensive, for feature film editors only, NLE. In fact, the student edition of MC is less than $300 (though it doesn’t come with some of the really great additional programs that my students really want and need — like Boris FX and Smart Sound — a good music creation program). I complain mightily to them about how they aren’t changing fast enough, in a world where it seems clear that the future of editing is more about us using our talents to do more in the editing and usually at lower budgets.
[I just finished a web spot for the American Institute of Architects for which I couldn’t justify charging my usual fee. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do it otherwise. No one pays standard editor fees for internet work!]
The article then goes on to say that the announcment of this award (the first time ACE has ever given a Technical Award) is also meant as a snub at Final Cut for Apple’s unwillingness to work with ACE. And then it goes on to say that it:
is also a message to producers: ACE’s members are frustrated about not having a choice of which tools they use, and they don’t like being forced to use alternatives to Avid.
Fewer than half of all editors are even consulted about what editing system they will use, according to an ACE survey, even though editors have a particularly intimate relationship with their system. As [editor Harry B.] Miller said, “The editing system really is an extension of us.”
Well, if you ask me (and I know you didn’t but that’s why they don’t pay me to write this blog), those two items are tied together. One of the reasons why Applemay not be working hand-in-glove with ACE is that most of their outreach goes to another group entirely — the up-and-coming editors. And those editors are more than happy to work with Final Cut for those producers. In fact, many of them have their own copies of Final Cut on their own systems at home, just like I do. Actually, I have both Avid and Final Cut at home. And I use both of them for various jobs. Avid is my usual choice, but there’s no doubt that any editor who isn’t flexible about this isn’t really looking at the industry around them. To quote the article again:
The overall production slowdown and shifts in TV scheduling have also made ACE editors nervous about their job prospects. “It’s hard enough to find consistent work as it is,” said Miller, “and when a major network takes out five hours of primetime programming, we’re all looking at each other wondering who’s not going to be working the next six months.”
[ACE President Randy] Roberts also pointed to the upheaval in production schedules and the demise of the fall TV season.
“The show with the 22-episode pickup has become a rarity. People shoot six shows and that’s it. Cable will shoot 16 shows and then ask editors to take a year off. So there’s constantly editors looking for work, instead of a big rush in July.”
Sorry folks, but that’s just the beginning of it. and complaining about not being consulted about our editing platform of choice reminds me of the days when some editors refused to move off of film because it “just wasn’t right.” I’m trying to think of how many editors who refuse to edit digitally are working today. The answer to that would be — none.
Well, the idea that we can force the studios to edit on one system or another is about as ridiculous as us telling the studio to push a release date back a month because we need the editing time. But in the world where I work — medium and low-budget projects of all sorts — I can usually choose what I edit on because my employers don’t give a damn. There isn’t enough money in it for them to care what platform I use, just so long as I can deliver what they want when they want it at the cost that they’re paying for it. Of course, many producers want to know why I’d use Avid on a job when they’re used to editors with Final Cut, or vice versa, but they aren’t usually sitting next to me at 11:00pm when I’m making the five layer effect.
So, what am I saying here?
The future of editing, aside from a very high-end elite group of editors, does not revolve around multiple orders of multi-million dollar episodes of television. It doesn’t revolve around consistent, almost staff-like work. Nope, we’re moving to a future of shorter, lower-paying gigs, with tighter schedules, smaller distribution and (hence) smaller paycheck. We’re evolving towards working from home or small offices, editing multiple projects at the same time in order to bring in a decent salary. And, sad to say, we’re evolving towards less and less work at full union wages and benefits.
Apple somehow smells that and doesn’t give a fig about ACE, so long as they have Walter Murch to trot out.
My hope is that Avid evolves into a company that cares as much about those garage-band editors as they do about we ACE folks, and can devote itself to both markets with agility and speed. Because that is where the bulk of the readers of this blog are going to be in a year or two, if they’re not already there. Many of you are already working in a world where you’re shooting as often as you’re editing. You live in a world where you may do a narrative editing gig one week, and do color correction the next.
So, some of us Old Timey Editors, are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this new world. We’re not going to like it, but we’ll swallow it and learn several editing systems as well as After Effects, Colorista, Smart Sound and a host of other applications. We’ll learn to ingest media off of Long GOP file-based formats, as well as copying material over from drives supplied by high-end telecine and tape houses. We’ll work with smaller crews and long-distance.
And we’re really going to be happy, eventually. Because we’ll still be doing what we like — editing.
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For another view on this article, go over to Scott Simmons’ really excellent and observant piece at Studio Daily.
June 19, 2009
Late Wednesday night I got back from the June meeting of the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro Users Group which was, as usual, a blast. Let me tell you what was on the official agenda (and please stick around for my point which follows two paragraphs down).
Among the usual “Ask The Experts” and “Raffle” segments, were a number of presentations. Andy Neil gave a demonstration of the design capabilities of Motion, two people from Adobe discussed some of the new things in Premiere CS4.1 including the ability to do a simpler RED workflow and read VOB files directly without ripping (that last point is pretty cool, though I’m not sure how I’d really get much use out of ripping fully mixed tracks off of a DVD), Bruce Nazarian discussed some of the new developments in Blu-Ray that might make it even usable for most of us, and SmartSound’s Stephanie Joyce gave a demonstration of the new Sonicfire Pro Plug in for Final Cut Pro which actually is a major step on the way to simplifying and improving needledrop music.
But let me tell you about the things that were not on the agenda that were even more valuable.
I got to talk to Philip Hodgetts about how his program First Cuts can be integrated into the workflow of an editing room, despite its brute force method of determining editing points. Along the way, we had a great discussion about the various types of editing situations, editors and clients, and how to teach a new generation of editors who often have more to teach us then we have to teach them.
I chatted with a representative from, and got to see a demo of Veescope Live, a program which does live keying.
I got to talk with a woman who was an early proponent of digital editing in Los Angeles, who is now a farmer who has recently completed a film about a restaurant owner who has developed a clientele for locally-based produce.
In short, I got involved in a lot of discussions that were more about ideas and breaking boundaries, than about uses for Final Cut. I find that almost without exception, the real advantage to attending user group events, film festivals and other events has to do with what we call “the hallway.” That is, the interaction that takes place around the actual program, not during the actual program itself.
Those people who have attended the TED events tell me that the way in which the conference is set up encourages this very sort of “hallway.” There are a few short presentations and then a long time for milling about and chatting before the next talks begin. Then the cycle starts all over.
This is the great advantage of any user group — whether it is one devoted to Avid, Final Cut, Premiere, the RED, or a group of local basket weavers. It is the contacts and conversations that will provoke your mind and help you grow, and it is those very things which will make you more and more attractive as a filmmaking collaborator. It is more important that people learn to know you, than the fact that you can slam together an interview faster than the next guy. Of course, comfort with the tools doesn’t hurt — it’s an important skill. But even more important is comfort with people.
Years ago, editors were a curmudgeonly lot. Many of us retreated into the loneliness of the editing room because many of us didn’t like the hyper activity and number of people in production. But those days are long gone. Not only are many of us having to do production and post-production, but even those of us who do only the lonely editing room work are still having to sell ourselves all the time. And that requires mad people skills. If you don’t have them, you should probably go into another line of work. Or you can choose to develop them. And user groups are a great way to do that.
I’m sure that you’ve got a user group near you. Most of the companies that make the products that you like to use have lists of them on their web sites Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Premiere (among others) all have active, thriving user groups. You owe yourself the opportunity to socially interact with the people who attend these events, and not just on The Social Web (I think Twitter and Facebook are really important, by the way. But they’re one part of the job you’ve got in finding a job.)
Some of the biggest events each year are the Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeets which have been at NAB and at Macworld and which attract hundreds and hundreds of rabid fans, who listen to people present, exchange tips and tricks themselves, and vie to win raffle prizes that can reach thousands of dollars. The next Supermeet is venturing a bit further afield and will be held in London. For those of you who haven’t been to one, I’m going to insist that you go. To be held on Thursday, June 25th, at the KensingtonConference and Event Centre in London, the FCPUG SuperMeet will feature speakers from major equipment and software manufacturers, filmmakers and a speech by Walter Murch on his work on “Tetro.”
This will be an event that you will kicking yourself in the butt for years to come if you miss it. And because it only costs £15.00 to get in, there’s virtually no excuse not to go (I will accept the fact that you won’t be in Europe as a valid excuse — that will be mine).
But if you’re anywhere near London around that time, I guarantee that you’ll have a great time meeting tons of great people.
And that is the real value of User Groups. It’s how we move forward in this Freelance Editor world of ours.
April 17, 2009
This Wednesday morning I’ll be giving at talk at the Final Cut Pro Users Group Superbooth at the NAB Convention in Las Vegas (booth #SL10129 in the South Hall) in which I’m going to very quickly give a number of quick tips that I’ve picked up teaching at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
There’s no way that I can really go over all of them here. And, besides, then you wouldn’t come to Las Vegas to see me, would you? In fact, some of them aren’t even editing tips, but filmmaking tips in general. But I thought I could drop a few of them on you so you could get a flavor of some of the basic editing tips that you may or may not already know.
L-Cuts, L-Cuts, L-Cuts
This first one is so obvious to me that it floors me that almost no beginning editors ever do it. Simply put:
Never make a picture cut at the same frame as your audio cut unless you want to emphasize that moment.
The corollary to that is:
When you make a picture cut at a different frame than your sound cut it smoothes out the edit.
Let’s take a look at what that means on a timeline:
Notice how the picture edit from 3G-3 happens a bit before the audio edit does. What I always try and do is extend the outgoing piece of audio (3G-3 in this case) as long as possible, starting the incoming audio (3D-5) at its first modulation — the place where the first noise/dialogue/sound effect/etc. on that clip begins. This smooths out the edit so that any difference in the background ambinence will be much less noticeable. This isn’t going to cover plane-bys or car sounds that cut suddenly in or out, but it will help disguise general background — such as differences in wind or air or distant traffic or crowds. Because the person’s line of dialogue (in 3D-5 here) will begin at the exact same frame as the change in the background tone the audience is not going to notice that change very much. If you had edited the audio at the picture edit point all that would have changed would have been the background tone. So they would have noticed that.
And that, my friends, will make the cut more noticeable. So, if you don’t want your picture edits to jump out at the audience, stagger the picture and sound edits.
To repeat what I said at the start — this is so helpful that it amazes me when I see editor’s timelines that every nearly every picture and audio edit at the same place. Believe me, I know where this comes from — it’s slightly harder to refine edits when the picture and sound are staggered. But this L-cutting helps the audinece relax so much more that it is worth every additional second in the editing process. You’ll get away with a lot this way.
Cut On Action
This second tip comes from the same place — how we can help the audience not to notice the fact that we are making a picture edit. And it goes like this:
Cut on movement. Cut at the beginning of a character’s movement.
Simple statement but it covers a multitude of evils. It is axiomatic that as soon as you give an actor a cigarette or glass of some liquid that it will be nearly impossible for him/her to match their exact hand positions from take to take and set-up to set-up. The whiskey glass may be in the left hand in the wide shot and then appears in the right in the closeup.
But, if you cut to the closeup right as he flicks his hair back, or as he points to the window, or as another character moves his/her hand — our eye is going to be distracted from the glass and (lo and behold) the cut will roll by unnoticed.
There are other reasons to cut on action. In the example above, from Terminator 2, the T-1000’s truck smashes through the bridge into the L.A. River. What you notice if you slowly frame advance the edit, is that the editors (Conrad Buff, Mark Goldblatt and Richard Harris )actually overlapped the action at the cut. The truck smashes through the bridge in a close shot, moves a bit into the air and then, in the cut to the low angle wide shot above, actually moves back a few frames. This overlapping of the action produces a much more dynamic and energetic cut than if the editors had strictly match cut.
Which leads to a third and, for today, final tip.
Matching Action Is Vastly Overrated
I once re-edited a film that the director asked me improve because she was unhappy with the first edit. As I reviewed the dailies I discovered that the original editor, while being very thorough about making perfect match cuts (if an actor had a glass of whiskey raised half way up in the closeup, he’d make sure that it was also half way up in the wider matching shot) completely missed character defining moments which were often 10 or 20 frames after or before the pieces that he had used.
The technical editing was great, but he had missed all of the humanity.
Once I restored the actorly edits, no one noticed the mismatches because they were following the story and the characters.
And let that be your last lesson of the day!
================ NAB =======================
So, as I mentioned above, I am going to speaking at NAB. I’m going to be in several places and I’d love to see you there. For a list of my talks, you can go to my blog Hollyn-wood, I’ll also be twittering from there. You can follow me on twitter. My handle is schnittman and you get to me through my Twitter page. There’s going to be a party that Avid is throwing, as well as the infamous FCPUG Supermeet.
It looks like it’s going to be tons of fun, so I hope to see each and every one of you there.
Well, all of you except the person who I’ve got walking my dog while I’m out of town. Okay?
April 10, 2009
There are two types of crowd editing that I’ve experienced in my life — one of which causes me to look for the nearest open window, and one of which enriches my entire experience. Right now I’m teaching a class in Advanced Editing that pushes the boundaries of that second one even further.
So, let’s explain.
For those of you who are wondering what I mean by “Crowdediting”. I’m doing a riff off of the oh-so-popular modern term “crowdsourcing.” Jeff Howe, over at Wired, describes it this way:
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
In other words, you take a job (such as editing a scene, or a commercial, or a film) and let a whole bunch of people edit it on their own, letting the crowd develop of the result.
In its most horrible incarnation, this tends to look like an editing room with an editor, producer, director, studio representative, network executive, two or three “creative assistants” and a bunch of friends all hovering over the Avid, telling us (as editors) how to put the piece together. You know the joke about a camel being a horse built by a committee — that’s how it works. No matter how much civility is involved, the fact that there’s no leadership, makes the fact that there has to be one product at the end, very very difficult.
But this really is a business of collaboration. In my position as head of the editing track at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, the student films that are the biggest disasters are usually the ones that are run by directors who give only lip service to collaboration, and demand that everyone come to their vision, as they’ve originally conceived of it. The end result may not be a camel, but it certainly isn’t a horse. It can best be described as a saw horse — a horse that bears only slight resemblance to a live animal. It has the form, but none of the life.
But collaboration isn’t the same as crowdediting, though I’m intrigued by the concepts of crowdediting.
Right now, the Advanced Editing class at USC is made up of 11 students who have each taken the dailies of the feature film THE NINES (the really interesting and compelling, Ryan Reynolds/Hope Davis/Melissa McCarthy film directed by John August of whom I’ve spoken about a number of times) and are cutting it into an alternate version of that feature film. I assigned a different section to each of the 11 back in January. All of them read the script and we talked about the plot, the characters, the subtext, the arc of the story — in short, all of the things that go into editing the film. We were visited by John and his editor, Doug Crise. Then the students started cutting together the film, one scene at a time. We watched scenes in class and I gave notes, along with the class. At one point, about six weeks ago, we finally had the entire film assembled and watched it in class as a full-length first cut of a feature film and stepped back to critique it
Since then, we’ve re-edited a new version of the film every single week and are just about to lock picture this weekend (meaning that we’ll stop cutting and move onto sound, music and DVD creation). One of the students exclaimed this week that she really liked what had happened to the film in the last week. In fact, what she was really reacting to was the process that had led to the very successful version of the film that we saw this week. It wasn’t just one week of re-editing, but an entire series of decisions, made by the entire class.
While I’ve been funelling most of the comments, working as a benevolent overseer, the largest group of decisions have been coming from the group as a whole, as they learn week-after-week, more and more about the film. The point is that you can talk all you want before you start shooting a film about what it’s about, but you always learn from the footage that you edit every day.
The discussions in the class have been great — even though limited in time (we’ve carried them forward on a class blog). Frankly, there is no way that we could have arrived at the shaping of the cut as well (and as quickly) without the large amount of input from the class. It was necessary, of course, for there to be one person to make some of the thumbs up/down decisions, and to give the film some coherence over eleven different editors. But this was truly a film collaboratively edited by a crowd — a crowd of 11, perhaps, but a crowd nonetheless.
It’s a great lesson in collaboration — how to elevate the editing process and the final film. And it’s something that I wish every single director going through USC and every other film school could learn first hand.
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NAB
The largest get-together of television, film and media makers and distributors is the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas every April. This year NAB (as it is called) happens April 18-23 and I’ll be speaking at a number of venues, as well as going to the first NAB Tweetup. If you’re going to be there please drop me a note (norman@normanhollyn.com) and let’s try and get together. For now, here’s what I think I’ll be doing while I’m there:
Monday, April 20, 2:00 PM — I’ll be signing copies of my new book, THE LEAN FORWARD MOMENT, at the NAB 2009 Official Bookstore
Monday, April 20, 8:15 PM — I’ll be at the ProMax Digital Lounge, talking about Shaping Stories Through Editing.
Tuesday, April 21 9:35am — I’ll be at the Avid Technology booth (Booth # SU 902, South Hall), talking about “Where are the new editors coming from? And how will they learn how to get there?”
Wednesday, April 22, 9:30am — I’ll be at the Official NAB Podcast Digital Production Buzz booth, being interviewed by Larry Jordan
Wednesday, April 22, 11:00am — I’ll be at the Final Cut Pro Users Group Booth, talking about “15 Film School Tips in 20 Minutes”
Stop by. At many of them I’ll be giving away a few copies of my new book!!
See you there.
March 27, 2009
A recent article in The Vancouver Sun, about international film festivals like Toronto and Cannes, has a bunch of directors contemplating the end of the world as they know it (I might add, for those R.E. M. fans in the crowd “and I feel fine…..”). The piece, entitled “Bending The Movie Genre In An Uncertain Time” quotes filmmakers like Paul Schrader and Jonathan Demme on the transition away from studio-oriented productions and into the scary world of indie values.
Perhaps director-writer Paul Schrader said it best when he described the motivation behind his latest film, Adam Resurrected, at the Toronto festival: “The well-made film is dead,” said the writer of Taxi Driver. “I knew it the minute I saw The Interpreter. It was a gorgeous, beautifully made from from Sydney Pollack - but there was something dead about it. It had no life at all.” Schrader was articulating a view shared by many other filmmakers who’ve watched their métier shift from an expensive and highly exclusive means of expression into a more populist and far more immediate experience thanks to the rise of digital tools.
I’m not sure that I understand writer Katherie Monk’s conclusion in the second sentence. Schrader seems to be talking about content, not technique. I don’t know how you feel, but I don’t see the relationship between soulless films and technology. I’ve been watching films since the 1960’s and the percentage of crap hasn’t seemed to have shifted But then she shifts over to Demme:
When the film had its North American premiere at the Toronto fest earlier this month, Demme said he wanted to give his tragic-comic wedding story a “home movie” feel, and for him, that meant ditching the awkward 35mm film cameras that can only record ten minutes of action before a magazine change, and exchanging them for the lightweight and highly mobile digital brand of camera that can record high-definition tape for an entire hour.
“I never thought I’d say this,” said Demme. “But I’ve lost my desire to work with film. I still worship film. and I hated making the original shift away from the flatbed to [an online digital editing machine called] Avid, but now the technology has reached a point where [digital] looks good. It’s not flat. You can light it. And now, I’m madly in love with it.”
She talks about Demme’s shooting style as it impacted actress Debra Winger’s sense of comfort –because Demme chose to shoot the film with a roving camera, the actress never was quite sure what was being captured and what not. Frankly, I understand her pain. It’s not easy trying to act real in the unreal world of filmmaking. Demme was trying to “listen in” on the real things that people do when there isn’t a camera around. That’s almost an impossibility — the presence of the camera changes everything. It’s the Brownian Movement writ large.
So what does this mean for editors?
I’m thinking about this because next Saturday, April 4th, I am giving a talk at the San Francisco Apple Store (it’s at 1pm at 1 Stockton St.) about Creative Storytelling and my book, The Lean Forward Moment. Now remember, this is San Francisco Apple Store. San Francisco. That means that the quotient of tech-heads is liable to be much larger than at your typical Apple Store, and that’s already a higher percentage than at your typical Blockbuster, let’s say.
The decision, therefore, to talk about story as opposed to techy gizmos should be fun. I’ve written on my other blog, Hollyn-wood, about what happens when you pick up a camera which theoretically enables you to shoot unlimited amounts and footage. As an editor, I like more choices as opposed to fewer, of course. But it may surprise you to hear that I’m not at all convinced that unlimited choices makes for better films. In fact, I believe that shooting unlimited numbers of takes and set-ups, often comes from (and leads to) fuzzy thinking.
The Jonathan Demme quote above, worries me. It’s really hard work being an actor, especially when you’re working on the level of a Debra Winger. Not every actor works in the same way, but nearly all of them do not fully inhabit their characters 24 hours a day — on camera and off. It’s simply too bloody exhausting to stay in character the entire time. Most actors who I’ve worked with visibly change as soon as the director yells “Cut!”
As an aside, that transition from character back into person often provides some really interesting moments that are ripe for use in the final film. I often look for reaction shots in that footage, because their performances are often less guarded and sometimes less artificial than when they know the cameras are rolling. This doesn’t work in general, but it sometimes can provide some hidden gems.
That means that, in a world where the actors never know what is going to be used and what isn’t, they must continually be “on.” And that means that, shooting with a cool file-based camera like the Red, or in formats like P2 or XDCamEX — which record right to cards or hard drives (enabling very very long takes), they can’t get a rest. It’s the difference between a 14-day marathon and a sprint. Wha? You’ve never heard of a 14 day marathon? Well, that’s not atypical for a low budget film.
The other aspect of storytelling that often gets thrown under the bus in the rush to explore the advances of technology, is that filmmaking involves collaboration with larger groups of people than just yourself. This means that, if you’re exploring five different places in an actor’s monologue for a push-in, that the d.p. doesn’t get a big sense as to what is really important in the speech. It also means that I, as an editor, don’t have a good sense of what the director thought was the key Lean Forward Moment in the scene. This is often exacerbated when the actor, feeling the camera get closer and closer to his/her face, modulates the performance in time with the camera move. That means that he/she has now had to think through five different meanings for the speech. This will often mean changing the actor’s approach to what came before and what comes after that moment.
It’s a rat’s nest, and it’s easy to miscommunicate intentions.
As an editor, I love a lot of options that are delivered with some clear intentions. That’s different than experimenting without a goal. The first option usually leads to a cohesive film, which can take advantage of improvisations and great discoveries. The latter usually leads to a fragmented, scene-by-scene approach to the film’s story, and many missed opportunities.
So, while I fundamentally disagree with Schrader’s feeling that the “well-made film is dead” I do understand what he means that the drive to create populist films has pushed us further and further into technology. That, in my mind, doesn’t make for bad films (technology certainly made SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE easier to shoot and edit) but it can lead to unfocused filmmaking and that is bad.
What that means for editors is that we need to be ever more vigilant about what our stories are and how we focus and shape them. We should never stop asking:
- Whose story is this?
- How does that person change in this scene?
- Where does that person change in this scene?
- How can help the audience to feel that change at that moment?
You’ll notice that not once during those questions did I ask what camera move or special effect was used or necessary. It was all focused on story and character?
And that’s how we’ll continue to get well-made films in this tech-hungry world.
