How To Edit Good
July 18, 2008
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.]
There’s a scene in The Departed (about an hour in) where Jack Nicholson meets the Chinese gang in the warehouse. Jack’s performance is draped in close ups, but the head-honcho Chinese gang member is only shown in wide when he talks. This whole scene is dominated by Jack. It’s almost as if the Chinese guy is unimportant, just circumstantial amongst the guns, cell phones and hench men…. Which he is of course.
Exactly. The way in which a scene is weighted gives us tons of information about what emotional story we need to be paying attention to.
If I remember the scene (and I’m not sure I do) doesn’t Matt Damon also have a close shot in there? If so, it wouldn’t surprise me, because the scene is also about how his character reacts to the deal.
I love reading about this … editing theory … I guess you might call it.
I just finished editing project #1 from OpenCut.org. This might be of interest to any folks learning editing who don’t have footage to practice with. You sign up, send them a hard drive. They send it back with the raw footage shot using the Red One camera. You have about thirty days to edit it and upload it to Vuze.com. I think they had over three hundred entries but only about fifty finished projects were submitted on time. (Anyone can see them. Just go to http://vuze.com and search for “opencut” or “Susannah”. Here’s my version on a page by itself that doesn’t require you to install the vuze player: http://tomparish.com/blog/2008-07/susannah-movie-short-shot-with-a-red-camera )
As a filmmaker-wana-be, I think learning about editing will help me be a better director and the best way to learn it is to do it, don’t you think? One of the challenges I faced with the OpenCut project was that they didn’t give me all the shots I might wish to have had. When they did multiple takes the actors often did each take almost identical each time, providing no opportunity to pick one with a different feel, or even a different meaning to it.
So my question is, how does the director make sure (s)he’s getting enough coverage (and what is enough)? (In your experience, does the editor have any influence in this?) What should the director be asking of the actors that will help in editing? Is consistency better on all takes or is some variety better? How do you edit when the actors are improving? Does the director have to get them to deliver a similar performance in the coverage? With the lower cost of shooting on video, does multiple cameras help on dialog scenes and, if so, what’s the best way to shoot them?
Wow! I’ve got a million questions. I just deleted two other other paragraphs because I don’t want to ask two many at once and get answers to none. I’m going to be looking for your book. I’ve read “In the Blink of an Eye” by Walter Murch. Other than yours, do you recommend any other books on editing theory?
Peace,
Rob:-]
Thanks for the pingback; that someone from the International Film School Sydney was me
This broad concept of “Thinking Like An Editor” is at the heart of the new curriculum we have built at IFSS. And not just for Editor’s. Ive become convinced over the years that the Only place you can truly understand cinema as an artistic concept and an engaging experience is from the Edit Bay.
As a result the course we teach engages new students with editing first. Well before they pick up a camera they’re immersed in montage, formalism, sequence, continuity, rhythm and timing. Its these concepts that are the heart of cinema and from these the Camera, the mise-en-scene, light and sound all have context. Picking up a camera before you’ve assembled a scene is shooting the dark with no concept of what cinematic action is.
As Francis Ford Coppola said “The essence of cinema is editing. It’s the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.”
One the major issues Ive seen tragically afflict the creative production industries over the past decade is the supplanting of real artistic and technical craft with brand-specific software proficiency. ‘Software Users’ rather than ‘Editors’. Now, noone loves the toys more than I, and no one revels in a new NLE update more than me; but far too often films are crippled by ’software users’ who lack fundamental understandings of cinema as a narrative engagement. This is something ive written about many times on my blog http://www.digitalbasin.net and included in a Manefsto on Film Education ideas I wrote some time back. The simple idea that we have teach Editing as a form of Writing - a process by which dramatic and cinematic engagement is inscribed; assembled form the bare bones of sound and image.
So in this vein I’m fascinated to read your thoughts here and see where the discussion goes. And certainly I’ll be deferring my students to your site to follow the thoughts.
Best regards
Mike Jones
head of Tech Arts - International Film School Sydney
http://www.ifss.edu.au
Mike,
Great to hear from you and to learn about the great thought that IFSS has been given to how to teach people filmmaking.
It’s ironic that you used that Coppola quote, since that is the exact quote that I used to introduce the editing chapter in the book that I’m writing now about storytelling in film - THE LEAN FORWARD MOMENT. It really does encapsulate what makes film different than other art forms.
I completely agree with you about an unfortunate trend to replace editing skills with software skills today. I’d be really interested to read the manifesto. Maybe I can talk about it on my other blog — Hollyn-wood at http://normanhollyn.wordpress.com — which is more about media and less about editing. I can’t see it on your web site. Where can I get a copy?
Norman
Hi Norman. You can grab a PDF of the manifesto from:
http://ifsstech.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/holistic-thinking-e28093-integrated-making.pdf
It called Holistic Thinking - Integrated Making. Its hardly meant to be a definitive document, or even a fully fleshed out one - but more a work in progress trying to identify the conceptual areas missing from much contemporary cinema education.
As both a teacher and working filmmaker it steamed from the things I felt were missing in both the people I was teaching and those practitioners I was employing.
There’s a lot of what ive read on your blogs that would suggest we’re on much the same page - looking for a change in thinking. As such Im dying to read you forthcoming book.
You wrote on your other site about the VIDEOSTUDENTGUY; I too have really enjoyed Paul’s frank and fearless self assessment. he read the manifesto some time back and decided to test his own school against the 13 points. he dedicated half a dozen podcasts to it. its fascinating and really valuable for me to hear his use of the manifesto as a kind of yard stick.
As I said, the manifetso is a work in progress, roughly written and an ongoing assembly of the things i think are missing from the education and knowledge of many filmmakers (in all capacities). Love to hear what you thoughts and indeed if you had any points to add.
Cheers
Mike
mike(at)ifss.edu.au
[…] skills and develop new ones. This is no small thing. You’ve probably already figured out that I value storytelling abilities over Photoshop skills, but there’s no doubt that knowing how to do compression, being […]
[…] skills and develop new ones. This is no small thing. You’ve probably already figured out that I value storytelling abilities over Photoshop skills, but there’s no doubt that knowing how to do compression, being […]