The Editing Blues

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The Editing Blues

Written by Jeff Lanctot

Labels: Editing, Post-Production

Hello happy people, let's cover some more ground about editing. Editing is such an important part of the process that you have to spend the time ruminating over what cuts and transitions you want to make and why. If you don't your film will regress to a jazzed up Powerpoint presentation and no one wants that. The thing about editing is that when it's the best, you usually don't notice it at all. Perfect editing makes the film glide past the audience so that they just absorb the story, and don't get distracted by the way it's told. Music videos and commercials sex up their editing to grab the viewers attention, but after five minutes of that, the audience will get tired of the fast-paced editing as it takes too much energy to watch. For longer films, you need to be aware of the rhythm of your film so that you can vary it. Varying the editing is vital for any film to work.

You can think of it like a symphony. For a three minute pop song, you don't have to vary the pace too much, because you only have to hook the audience's attention for a brief period of time. With a longer piece like a symphony, you need to vary the tone, rhythm and pace to sustain the audience's interest. You need to provide a diverse emotional journey otherwise your film will be boring. That's why the quick cutting of MTV doesn't translate as well on to feature films. You can't watch a film with each clip being less than a couple seconds. It just doesn't work.

What's My Motivation?

Actors like to ask about their motivation in a scene. It makes it seem liking acting requires effort, and warrants their pay check. But editors should also ask this question when they sit down to work. I'm not talking about delving into existential despair, but rather asking more specific questions about their editing decisions. Each edit should have a reason behind it. As I've said before, the MTV 'let's cut because it will look cool' technique will not last long. Your audience will get bored and may even pick up on the fact that you've just thrown the film together in half an hour.

Every edit should be motivated by the storyline. You should be providing more information to forward the plot and transitioning into the next change of pace in the flow. Every cut you do is actually a big risk. You are risking breaking the audience's involvement in the story. Maybe you've experienced this. You're watching a really bad movie and you can't take the story seriously because the editing is so cruddy, or the music sounds like elevator music. You can't help noticing all the bad production aspects of the film, and so you can't get involved in the story. When you edit something and it's justified by the storyline, your audience won't notice the edit because their attention will be on the plot. Bad editing is the result of bad timing and often a bad story to begin with.

You should also try to cut on any action. Cutting when a actor starts moving is more effective than cutting when the actor is still. The action, like when an actor gets out of his chair and starts moving out of the frame, is a great opportunity to cut. Cutting on the action will make your film look more professional. In fact a lot of indie people get frustrated because their film looks too amateur. This is usually down to technical issues like the editing that are easy to fix if you know what you're looking for. Any action diverts the audience's attention as our brains naturally focus on movement. Then the movement caused by the edit will seem more natural because there is movement in the scene anyway.

Consistent, Again And Again

Editors are sensitive people too. At least they should be. When editing, you may have different takes of the same scene to edit together. One thing that is crucial to the film flowing smoothly is that the energy level seems natural. Sensing the energy of each scene is why an editor needs to be in touch with the emotions that the story is addressing. You have to be aware of any change in tension and conflict in a scene so you can shift the beat at just the right time. Maintaining a kind of emotional consistency is what I'm talking about. In amateur films, you'll see this a lot where the tone of the scene keeps changing as the editor uses different takes. Maybe in one take it was really high energy and exciting, and in the second it is more subdued. Mixing these two together without being aware of the difference in mood will make the scene look really awkward and will actually make the actor look really bad. So unless you want pissed off actors hunting you down, pay attention to the mood of the scenes.

Then there are more simple and obvious things. The feet and hands shouldn't keep jumping all over the place within a scene. This is something that needs to be addressed when you're shooting, but if you don't get it perfect, rest assured- even the professionals mess up consistency. The key is to reduce inconsistent things from your film so that they don't distract the audience. If your actor has his hands behind his back in one shot, and then they magically appear in front of him, some people will notice. If his beard is suddenly a lot shorter, then more people will notice. Paying attention to consistency means that you won't have any glaring mistakes that can turn any film into a parody of itself.

Then there are more subtle things like matching the lighting and background noise. A plane flying through one take, and suddenly disappearing will be noticed by a few people. When mixing close-ups in the film, pay special attention to the lighting as inconsistent lighting has a big impact on making your film look crappy. Paying attention doesn't cost anything, and if you take the time, you will have a really sharp-looking film without paying more money, which is always a good thing. So grab yourself some Doritos and a beer and get down to some serious editing. It's probably the most important time you'll spend on the film, so get it right. You'll be hitting festivals with your baby in no time.

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