How To Edit — Working With Context

This past week, I ran a panel at the Sundance Film Festival which touched on some of the thoughts that I explore in my book THE LEAN FORWARD MOMENT. The panel, which included  Sterlin Harjo (BARKING WATER), Ondi Timoner (WE LIVE IN PUBLIC) and editor Jason Steward (WORLD’S GREATEST DAD) touched on how each of them shaped their stories, despite budget and scheduling difficulties.

One of the things that we touched on was context.  That is, the impact of a moment comes only from its contrast with its surrounding moments. This is something that I’ve long called “The Rule of Threes” (remember that, since I’m a professor, I can’t invent terms to my heart’s content). The rule is, very simply:

A shot, a scene or a sequence, is directly affected by the shot, scene or sequence that comes before it, and will directly affect the shot, scene or sequence that comes after it.

Makes sense, eh?  You’re going to feel differently about a person firing a gun if you’ve seen the gun ahead of time and thought that he might fire it.  Alfred Hitchcock called it the difference between surprise and suspense.

A pretty cool demonstration of this comes in this video, which basically follows one guy as he does ninja-style tricks in a variety of settings (it’s basically a demo reel for his stuntman acting career).  I’ll wait until you go off and see it.

Click here for the Metacafe video of
URBAN FLYING NINJA

So, what did you notice, other than the fact that the guy is probably pretty good (or, at the very least, daring)?  Well, for me, the interesting thing is how the same ninja moves look totally different:

1. when they’re done in a gym than in a shopping mall
2. when they’re repeated and repeated.

The first few scenes of the film show him jumping off a roof, doing his moves on various buildings and then doing them again in a shopping mall.  It’s pretty impressive.  Most of the rest of the movie shows him doing similar moves in gyms, with floor padding, or on stage. Oddly, even though some of the moves are cooler, they look less interesting in a gym, where we’ve seen plenty of gymnastics before. When he finally gets to showing himself acting in a film, it’s a big ho-hum because we’ve seen that a million times already.

The moments when we lean forward and pay attention, are the moments when something changes in the film — he jumps into a prop well, or he does a long series of back flips without a camera cut.

Context is everything.  The impact of this man’s work is most felt when it shows something has changed from the surrounding material. The editor in me keeps thinking that the piece might have been better if the areas in the gym were  trimmed down and moved earlier in the film.  That way, we could see the more unusual setting last.

My point here is that that is how an editor thinks — what is the story you’re trying to affect and audience with, and how can we shape the material to get them to understand that feeling.

Next week, I’m going to try and talk some about what I learned up at Sundance.  Until then, I’ve written about my observations with stereoscopic films (which I saw up there) over at my blog Hollyn-wood.  See you around!!