The editor: Making, breaking and SAVING you

[Guest fstop]

OK,

 

ALL post please on those saints or sinners who've made the unusable look effortly photographed and coherent or convinced the director to use the take where talent misses the mark!

 

We've ALL had our experiences with these wonderful men and women- I want priase, frustrations, regret- the whole sheebang in this thread! :)

[drew_town]

I had this shoot once where I was trying my hardest to follow an actor up a set of concrete stairs. It was a 48 hour competition and I hadn't slept in a while. It was outside in the blazing sun and I had a cheap glidecam with my XL1s. I was squniting to look the viewfinder, yes viewfinder, and I couldn't see a thing. The editor was able to piece together about four takes into something that I thought was quite impressive. Don't worry, I got to save face with some other glidecam shots I did in a basement. I could actually see what I was doing that time. I have great respect for editors that can think outside the box and realize that THIS is all they have to work with and make it work in maybe the only way that's possible.

[DavidSloan]

ALL post please on those saints or sinners who've made the unusable look effortly photographed and coherent

 

Hmmm...if you're proving a production with unusable stuff you probably shouldn't be shooting.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I think everyone should edit; no matter what job you do in filmmaking, it'll teach you something about it. I know cutting has made me a vastly better EFP camera operator.

 

Phil

[Guest fstop]

Agreed.

 

Hmmm...if you're proving a production with unusable stuff you probably shouldn't be shooting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Maybe if you can't understand the question you shouldn't be posting! :P

 

So EVERYTHING you and your directors have ever shot has turned out spankin'? Storyboards always translate, talent never misses a mark, eyelines are always consistent, the weather has never changed on you during an exterior shot with the sky in frame- every sequence filmed has always turned out dandy?? There's never been one duff shot that didn't turn out? You've never needed an insert/pickup? Are you human?

 

Geoffrey Unsworth shot numerous sequences for Superman that either ended up in the deleted scenes section or dropped and had to be reshot completely because of bad focus/inconsistent lighting/underexposure - are you saying he shouldn't have been shooting either?

 

What about the thousands of examples of bloopers over the years in which footage has had to have been flipped, frames removed, played backwards, broken into two shots or simply used twice in order to fake a shot that wasn't achieved in principal photography? That's every film as diverse as Battleship Potempkin to The Dambusters, Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, James Bond movies, Days of Heaven, Jaws, Dr. Strangelove- to name a tiny few.

 

Everyone makes the odd mistake and if you are trying to aim for something ambitious to further your images you are making a gamble right then and there- check out any great cinematographer autobiographies and there's always a mention or even a chapter on how the film editor has saved the day on one project. One renowned cinematographer (and not Unsworth) once said how much he admired editor Stuart Baird because he has a knack for cutting flaws so they look motivated (e.g an unusable shot reverse shot is cut frenetically to disguise one side of it being out of focus in a way that works with the rhythms of the scene).

 

On the other hand there have been the nightmare situations that DPs like David Mullen and Adam Frisch have mentioned where beautiful, cream of showreel shots have been dropped in favour of close ups- basically anything where the good stuff got dropped. While it's the job of the DP to provide the director with the raw footage it's gutting to see the good shots go to waste. There are many cases where the editor has opted for that less visually impressive close up, however it actually tells the story more effectively in quick close ups.

 

For such a collaborative medium, and the fact that after principal photography you are leaving your days/weeks/months of work in the hands of someone who is going to jigsaw it together, I believe this is an important topic for this forum.

[Phil Rhodes]

Music promos are irritating from the showreel point of view, as your lovingly crafted steadicam shot inevitably gets turned into a cam/ead/i/st shot...

[drew_town]

I agree with Phil. I'm currently working as an editor/videographer and editing certainly has aided in how and what I shoot.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I think that editing gives a cinematographer a very important lesson. Editing my own stuff taught me a lot. I've saved bad situations in the cuts, from bad performances to bad focus to bad lighting to bad continuity, etc...

 

If there is one thing I ever learned from cutting, it's the time honored mantra, "Coverage, coverage, coverage!". You really can't do a lot when you don't have the coverage and cutaways, unfortunately.

 

- G.

[Guest fstop]

Agreed George.

 

Documentary directing is something every DP should have a go at at some point- it's a crash course in appreciating all of the intense extremes in everyone elses filmmaking role.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

It's interesting when you switch hats sometimes.

 

I was at a park today wearing the soundman's hat to get an ambient track. I needed the sound of birdies, including some sea gulls, and some waves from the Long Island sound. What could be simpler?

 

The day was very nice for winter: clear sky, 50's, and absolutely no one at the location at all. If I had to film (which I did before) this would have been the perfect time. My cinematographer's instinct tricked me into thinking this would be the best day for taping the audio, too.

 

I show up with my sound recorder and mic, then put on my headphones. I see and hear that the surf is absolutely dead, you can barely hear the water lapping. That meant I had to move closer, which I didn't want to do since the shot I'm matching to needs less proximity and more general reverb.

 

I saw some sea gulls milling around and was hoping they'd start making noises for me. But being that I was the only guy there, they immediately moved on to another place. I saw a whole flock in another place, started gently walking after them. No luck, they're too scared of me - I stick out too much. Then I say screw it and decide to start taping. I immediately start hearing an airplane roaring over my head. I wait.

 

I start recording after the plane passes over and hear a noise - it's the wet rocky sand under my feet. I stand on a rock and wait for the sandy rocks under my feet to stop crackling. The gulls finally start making noise. I start recording, but then a gust of wind starts and blows off my mic's wind screen, it nearly lands into the water.

 

As soon as everything settles again, a plane begins roaring overhead, and just as this one fades out you can hear another one fading in. It seems this park is right over a major flight path, something I never suspected when I was filming there. Then I went into the woods to see if I could get any sounds of birds. Nothing! While I see robins and woodpeckers in my window every day, here in the middle of the forest they're nowhere to be heard! At the same time, the planes kept overlapping each other, there was ALWAYS one plane slowly fading in as the other plane was fading out.

 

After 40 minutes of this torture I simply gave up, and hoped that what little useable audio I recorded, I could salvage. I went to another park just to check, that one was way too close to a major traffic artery. Now I have to find a park that is far from both a flight path and traffic artery, that is not heavily populated and has no other sources of noise. Sounds like a fun job :lol:

 

- G.

Edited March 8, 2005 by GeorgeSelinsky

[Michael Nash]

I used to direct, shoot, and edit corporate video, and that taught me SOOOO much about what's really needed to tell a story. Now when I shoot I get this annoying itch if there's a bit of needed coverage I know we haven't gotten. This doesn't mean just cover the crap out of every scene, as there still should be some design to the coverage. Especially when shooting ENG/documentary material, you often don't get the chance to shoot the same action repeated from every angle, so you learn how to shoot the angles you need to tell the story first time out.

 

My frustration is with incompetent editors. It usually happens when an editor doesn't seem to have a sense of when to cut OUT of a shot. When shooting, you logically allow a little "handle" on either end of the shot so there's some room for adjustment, but there's still a point when the choice action or framing has clearly elapsed, and some editors just blithely keep the shot rolling...

 

I did a short film once where we covered the scene from one angle and actor A stands up out of frame to talk to actor B who is already standing, then shot the reverse at a higher lens height starting with actor A standing up into frame in an OTS. I provided the editor with an action to cut on (the stand up). I see the cut later and the editor lets the first shot roll for a line or two after the guy stands up, and we're left looking at a shot of his crotch for three seconds...

 

I hate giving editors bad material, and try to shoot as "clean" a reel as possible. In general if it's a bad shot I don't shoot it, and make sure to cut when the shot has "died." But you still have to give editors enough to work with. My "favorite" pet peeve is the slow pan needed for a montage of dissolves, where you naturally start the pan before the subject is in frame and continue rolling until the subject is clear. I always cringe hoping the editor willk "get it" and dissolve out at the right moment.

 

But this is the bad side. Good editors are definitely the unsung heros of filmmaking.

[Laurent Andrieux]

One thing I don't like is to see a tracking shot that is cut before it stops or starts after it started and this wasn't decided on the shoot. The thing is it's sometime not only the editor who is the only responsible. I shot a short once where the director wanted plenty of long slow circular tracking shots around a table. So did we. As we chot I was very carefull that there would be no "dead" moments so that the tracking shot wouldn't be boring. When I came to the editing room I was really angry that one or two tracking shots were cut like that. The editor said he found it'd give more "strength" to his editing and he just conviced this young director. The mood he wanted when we shot was totally lost... And one could have think "they cut the tracking shot at this point because it wasn't good anymore afterwards"... angry

Edited March 9, 2005 by laurent.a