Film editing

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Film editing, also called montage, is the connecting of one or more shots together in a sequence.

Contents 1 The development of film editing processes 2 Film Editor 3 Methods of montage 3.1 Soviet montage 3.2 Classical montage sequence 4 Continuity editing 5 Alternatives to Continuity editing 6 Editing techniques 7 Learning Film Editing 7.1 Getting Started Learning Dialog Editing 7.2 Edit The Audio 7.3 Edit The Picture 7.4 Add The Music 7.5 Add Sound Effects 7.6 Not My Job... or is it? 8 Getting a Job as a Film Editor 9 Reference 10 See also

The development of film editing processes

Film editing evolved from the process of physically cutting and taping together pieces of film, using a viewer such as a Moviola or Steenbeck to look at the results.

All initial editing is done with a positive copy of the negative called a workprint. This allows the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wishes, without the risk of damaging the original.

When the workprint has been cut to a satisfactory state, it is then used to make a negative cutting list. The negative cutter refers to this list while processing the negative, splitting the shots into A and B rolls, which are then optically printed to produce the final film print.

Since the film was physically cut and pasted, a 'nonlinear' style of editing evolved. At the workprint stage, strips of film could be placed in any order. This approach is generally considered superior to the strictly linear approach that was necessary in video editing through the 1970s. A video 'cut' is really the copying of scenes from various camera tapes onto a master. Before the development of powerful computer systems that could store large amounts of visual data for transfer, it was necessary to make the transfer in strictly linear order. Trying to insert a shot between two shots already on the master tape would create noise, etc. A system such as Avid allows the creation of a workprint.

In recent years, 'film editing' has come to mean what a 'film editor' does, even though the work involved is now generally performed on a computer-based non-linear editing system, such as Avid, Lightworks or Apple's Final Cut Pro and, at the semi-professional level, by programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Pinnacle Edition or Sony Vegas.

If the end product is to be a traditional movie, the final negative cutting list is produced from the software, and the negative cutting process occurs as before.

In other cases, an edit decision list may be generated for a video editing system.

With the emergence of digital cinema, there is now a movement towards all-digital assembly of the final product, such as in CFC's Digital Lab process.

Film Editor

A film editor is a person who practices film editing by assembling separate takes into a coherent film. This is not a simple matter of tacking the scene of the man walking up to the front door to the scene of the man inside the house. In making a film the editors play a dynamic and creative role.

Typically, the editor follows the screenplay as the guide for establishing the structure of the story and then uses his/her talents to assemble the various shots and takes for greater, clearer artistic effect. There are several editing stages. The film editor often starts work while shooting is still in progress, and, in the first stage of editing he or she will work alone to create an "editor's cut" of the film. It's often many times longer than the final film will be. When time permits, the editor colloborates with the person whom the industry regards as the real artist of the movie, the director, who gives "notes" on the editors cut. The editor and director will also have seen and discussed "dailies" (raw footage shot each day) together as shooting progresses. The editor continues to refine the cut while shooting continues.

When shooting is finished, the director can then turn his or her full attention to collaborating with the editor on cutting the film. Scenes are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked. Often the need arises for new scenes to be shot. After usually several weeks of long days a "director's cut" is created, though this is not to be confused with re-edits some directors have made long after a film is finished - often decades later - to their films that were, in their view, improperly edited in the final stages by the studio and its producers.

After the director's cut, the subsequent cuts are supervised by one or more producers, who represent the production company (studio) and its investors. Hence, the final cut is the one that most closely represents what the studio wants from the film and not necessarily what the director wants. Because of this, there have been several conflicts in the past between the director and the studio, sometimes leading to the use of the "Alan Smithee" credit signifying disownership or the aforementioned "director's cut" re-issues in subsequent years after the original theatrical releases.

Some directors are also the producers of their films, and, with the approval of the funding studio, have a much tighter grip on what makes the final cut than other directors. The most well-known example of a director who lorded over all aspects of his films, with little studio intervention, and worked completely outside of the Hollywood system is Stanley Kubrick. On the other hand, Orson Welles is an example of a director constantly dogged by studio supervison and many times had films taken from him.

Often a film editor is blamed for improper continuity. That is, cutting from a shot where the beer glass is empty to one where it is full. Continuity is, in fact, very nearly last on a film editor's list of important things to maintain. Most important are the emotional and storytelling aspects of film-making - things which are much more abstract and harder to judge - which is why films often take much longer to edit than to shoot.

Methods of montage

In motion picture terminology, a montage (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.

There are at least three senses of the term:

1. In French film practice, "montage" simply identifies a movie's editor. That is, if you see "montage" in a film's end credits, then that is the film's editor.
2. In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was theorized to be the essence of the cinema. Different filmmakers had various ideas about what that essence was.
3. In classical Hollywood cinema, a "montage sequence" was a short segment in a film in which narrative information was presented in a condensed fashion.

Soviet montage

Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema — that which could be duplicated in no other medium — is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.

Although, strictly speaking, U.S. film director D.W. Griffith was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing — mastering cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.

Sergei Eisenstein was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.

Like Kuleshov, Eisenstein was a theorist in addition to being a filmmaker. He established five "methods of montage":

1. Metric — based solely on the length of a shot
2. Rhythmic — based on the length of a shot, plus the visual composition of the image
3. Tonal — based on the dominant visual style of an image
4. Overtonal — based on the interaction of dominant visual styles
5. Intellectual — based on the symbolic content generated by two (or more) juxtaposed images; a film metaphor

Classical montage sequence

The second kind of montage consists of a series of short shots that are edited into a coherent sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed.

Many films are well known for their montage scenes. Examples include the training montages in Sylvester Stallone's Rocky series of movies, Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, several of director Sam Raimi's films and the satirical self-referential montages in South Park and Team America: World Police. In nearly all of these examples, the montages are used to compress narrative time and show the main character learning or improving skills that will help achieve the ultimate goal. The song "Montage" used in Team America's montage parody described this perfectly:

Show a lot of things happening at once
Remind everyone of what’s going on
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take too long
That’s called a montage
Oh we want montage

Continuity editing

Template:Main What became known as the popular 'classical Hollywood' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the 180 degree rule, Establishing shot, and Shot reverse shot.

Alternatives to Continuity editing

Early Russian filmmakers such as Lev Kuleshov further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature. Sergei Eisenstein developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.

Editing techniques

• 180 degree rule
• A Roll
• B Roll
• Cross cutting
• Cutaway
• Cut in
• Cut out
• Dissolve
• Establishing shot
• Hairy arm
• Insert
• Key
• L cut
• Master shot
• Point of view shot
• Sequence shot
• Shot reverse shot
• Talking head
• Wipe
  • Clock wipe
  • Heart wipe
  • Matrix wipe
  • Star wipe
• Axial cut

Stanley Kubrick noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of filmmaking originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. In Alexender Walker's Stanley Kubrick Directs, Kubrick was quoted as saying, "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of filmmaking. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."

Learning Film Editing

The best way to learn film editing is to practice, practice, practice. If you want to learn motion-picture-style editing, you need to obtain film dailies for a scene from either a motion picture or television drama and get an editing program for your computer which is capable of editing a dramatic scene (such as Final Cut Pro). After you edit the scene, you add a film score (which you can also create on your computer using programs like GarageBand) and sound effects that you record in the field or obtain from sound effects libraries.

There are many kinds of film editing. Each is different. Editing a documentary, editing corporate video, editing multimedia and editing news are completely different from editing a dramatic scene. (The instructions here are only for editing a dramatic production such as a motion picture or a television drama.)

There are basically two kinds of scenes in a dramatic production -- (1) action scenes which have no dialog and (2) scenes with dialog (conversations). Action scenes are very exciting to watch but are not the best choice for learning film editing. Instead, you should start by editing a conversation. Conversations are more challenging to edit and are often more fun... once you know how to do it.

With an action scene, there are no rules. You can do most anything you want (such as shorten time, create montages, etc. -- see above). However a scene which has scripted dialog must follow the script. The script is the framework for editing the scene which both makes the editing easier and harder. Even though you must follow the script exactly, you will discover that you have a tremendous amount of creative freedom that is not apparent when you start learning film editing.

Getting Started Learning Dialog Editing

You will learn more if you get an unedited scene which has been filmed by professional filmmakers in the film studios of Hollywood. While some people will tell you to simply run out an film your own scenes, you will find it is much more informative to watch how this is done in Hollywood before you try filming your own movies.

If possible, you want a scene where all the raw film footage has already been digitized and has frame numbers or time code burned on every frame. The time code and scene number on each frame makes editing the scene much easier and also allows you to compare your edits with your friends' edits. (One source of practice scenes for the Macintosh is the Star Movie Shop.)

Next, learn the basic rules of editing a scripted conversation. When you become a famous editor in Hollywood, you can break all the rules. But for now, learn to the rules which are:

1. Edit the audio first, then adjust the picture later.
2. Once the audio is edited and locked, decide which actor you want to emphasize by rolling the picture edits forward or backward and by adding cutaway shots.
3. You can add music to (a) give the scene feeling or (b) to narrate the scene.
4. You add sound effects to make the scene seem realistic.

Here are the steps of film editing for narrative dialog:

Edit The Audio

The secret to film editing (for narrative scenes, not documentaries or corporate video) is to edit the audio first and not worry about the picture. This means when you first start out, you simple accept whatever film footage is on the clips which have the best sounding audio. (In Hollywood, film dailies rarely have a bad shot with good audio so editing based entirely on the sound quality of the dialog is not a dangerous as it might seem.)

Therefore, the first step is to find the best dialog for the scene. The easiest way to do this is to cut apart the dailies and assemble all the pieces of dialog in chronological order. This way, you can listen to the same sentence (or one piece of dialog) at a time from each of the takes and decide which is best. By listening just one sentence from every take, the best dialog jumps out at you. (Note: The scenes sold by Star Movie Shop already have an "overview movie" which has all the dialog chopped up and edited into chronological order. This can same you a tremendous amount of time when you are just getting started.)

Once you select the best pieces of dialog, assemble the film clips (both picture and sound) in your editing program. With professional actors, the actor's timing is already very natural. Therefore, you rarely have to do any adjustment when you assemble all the pieces of dialog. That is, when you cut apart the pieces of dialog, you cut half way between the end of one actor's dialog and the next actor's dialog. It is just that simple... if the actors are professionals.

Listen to the entire scene once you have assembled all the clips. When you listen to the dialog, it should sound natural and the dialog should flow naturally. If not, adjust it now.

Edit The Picture

Once the audio (the dialog) sounds perfect, lock the audio. Never change the audio while you adjust the picture edits. The edit of the dialog (the spoken word) is finished. It never changes from now on... no matter what you do to the picture. The audio will not get better when you edit the picture so make sure the dialog is perfect before you begin to adjust the picture edits.

Up until now, the audio and the picture edits are at the same point in time. But cutting the picture and the audio at the same place in time makes the scene seem exceedingly dull and boring. If you cut the picture exactly where you cut the audio, you will never see the reaction of the people who are listening. If you cut the picture exactly where you cut the audio, you will never see the anticipation of the next speaker. Often, it is more interesting to see the listener's reactions and anticipations rather than watching the person who is talking. Therefore, you must do a L-cut which is where the audio and the picture are edited at different points in time.

Therefore, while the audio track remains locked, roll the picture edits forward or backward (without changing the audio) to find the best visual transition. Roll a picture edit forward to see the reaction of the previous speaker. Roll a picture edit backward to see the anticipation of the next speaker.

Rolling the picture edits is extremely important. The meaning of the scene will change depending on who you emphasize by rolling the picture edits. Roll the picture edits and then watch the resulting scene. The results are amazing. Then you roll the same edit to a different point and watch the results.

Rolling the picture edits is trial and error to get the best visual impact for a scene. This is the part of film editing which takes the most time. This is the part of film editing where you make creative decisions. This is where film editing becomes fun.

For long speeches, you can also add cutaway shots. Adding a cutaway shot can add information to the scene or it can emphasize one actor over the other. Again, this is trial and error until you find just the right impact you want from the visual image.

Add The Music

Planning for the music begins before you assemble the best audio clips. Music gives the scene feeling. Without music the scene will seem emotionless. Therefore, you must plan for it... if it is needed.

What most people do not realize is the actor's voices are part of the music of a scene. A normal speaker will have a one octave range in his speaking voice. A skilled actor can have a three octave range during a conversation. This tonal range gives emotion to the scene. To test this, simply read the script in a monotone voice (or have your computer read the script out loud using a monotone voice.) The scene will seem totally without emotion if there is no tonal range to the actor's voice. It is the actor's voices which creates the basic music for a scene.

With film scoring, your first choice is to emphasize the actor's voice with music. This music will help explain the emotion for the scene. Many times, the actor's emotions are not the same emotions that the director wants the audience to feel. In this case, there must be a symphony orchestra to explain the scene to the audience.

If the actors are already expressing the emotions that the director wants the audience to feel (angst, happiness, fear, etc.), all the music does is amplify that feeling. A single musical note is all that is necessary if it is played expressively. That is the music created by a symphony orchestra (such as the music created with GarageBand using Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra) can be used simply to thicken the music already created by the actors with their dialog.

When you add music to emphasize the emotions of a scene, the music must not use the same frequencies as the musical tones of the actor's voices. Also background music must not come from the same direction as the speakers. The music from your symphony orchestra must not distract from the music of the spoken lines. (Note: Normally, the dialog of the actor's is panned to the front center speaker. That is why the musical instruments are panned to any direction except the front center. Otherwise, the dialog will be extremely difficult for the audience to hear.

Music can also be used in a different way. Music can be used like one of the actors in the scene. But to do this, the film's editor (that is you!) must leave a gap in the dialog for the music which will narrate the scene. So before you assemble all the clips together (based on the rhythm of the dialog), you must decide how much musical narration you want to add. Then, when you listen to the dialog after you have assembled the clips based on the audio, you will no longer have a natural rhythm to the dialog unless you imagine what the music will sound like. Therefore, it greatly helps if you are both the film's editor and the film's composer.

Add Sound Effects

Finally, after everything else is done, you must add sound effects. Sound effects make the movie seem real. Probably, you will need to add background sound effects (ambience), individual sound effects and Foley sound effects before you are finished editing the scene.

Not My Job... or is it?

In Hollywood, the film editor only edits the film, the sound editor only edits the sound and the film composer creates the music. But with personal computers, you can now do all three and therefore, you can have complete control how the scene will sound and feel. Now film editing gets really fun!

Getting a Job as a Film Editor

There is no state certificate for becoming a film editor. No college degree is required. Anyone can do it.

But to get hired as a film editor, you have to show talent editing scenes. That is why you need a demo reel. Your demo reel shows examples of the scenes you have edited.

Reference

• Paul Read. A Short History of Cinema Film Post-Production (1896 - 2006), in English, in: Joachim Polzer (editor). Zur Geschichte des Filmkopierwerks. (On Film Lab History). Weltwunder der Kinematographie. - Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Filmtechnik. Volume 8.2006. April 2006. 336 pages. (available through amazon.de) -- ISBN 3-934535-26-7

• Eberhard Nuffer: Filmschnitt und Schneidetisch. (Film Editing and Editing Equipment, in German), in: Joachim Polzer (editor): Weltwunder der Kinematographie – Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Filmtechnik (Volume 7.2003) Polzer Media Group, Potsdam 2003. (available through amazon.de), ISBN 3-934535-24-0

See also

• Kuleshov Effect
• List of film-related topics
• Non linear editing
• Edited moviesde:Schnitt (Film)

es:Montaje fr:Montage it:Montaggio he:מונטאז' nl:Montage (film) ja:映像編集 pl:Montaż filmowy sv:Filmklippning