Thoughts on the process of editing

I was a film editor for many years.  Even when working as a Director, I was still concerned about the editing of each film.  What I am about to write is not meant to be a lesson in Film Editing, (I would not dare) it is more like an impression of the process as experienced by myself.

There are many styles of film editing and I will write what I know about them.

The editing of a feature film is quite different from that of a documentary or a news service or a commercial advertising film.

I have to admit that I have never edited a feature film, however that does not mean that I cannot deduce what happens in the process. I have been part of a production team on a “movie” but not as an editor.

In a feature film, every shot is described and listed to be faithfully filmed according to the director’s requirements.  Few directors would follow the same regime as another, so that each has a particular formula with which to work for them.

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Some directors, perhaps former editors, like David Lean, will have a precise idea of each shot and insist, not only that the camera recorded the shot as described, including the work of the actors, but that it is used in a particular way during the editing process.

One wonders to what extent a film editor on such a film is able to contribute their own artistic interpretation.  To what extent will such a director listen to their editor ?

Likewise, I am sure there will have been other directors who, having shot the entire film, handed it over to the film editor and then went off on a long vacation.

There have been a number of famous cases where the “Director’s Cut” has not been favourably received by the studio and a re-edit has been ordered.  One calls to mind Cleopatra and The Magnificent Ambersons.

There will be directors whose methods lie somewhere between those wanting total control of the editing and those who are willing to leave it to the editor.

There is plenty of evidence that some directors keep faith with a film editor for many years and many productions.  There is a lot to be said for keeping a good team together especially when it means that the director’s team of, say, Assistant Director, Lighting Cameraman and Film Editor, all know what the director requires.

There will be an infinite variety of anecdotes on the subject.

The news cutter, or editor, has a totally different problem.  They will always be short of time.  However, an editor would normally receive two or three hundred feet of 16mm film and be required to reduce the length to forty or fifty feet.  The newsreels “Cutter” would seldom receive more than 1,000 feet of 35mm and would cut it down to 150 feet.

The video editor would more likely receive more material simply because the cameraman would have had a thirty-minute cassette loaded and the editor would be tempted to use all of it.

(The exceptions, of course, would be the major sporting events and royal occasions)

The editor of news material will have agreed the sequence of shots and the length of them with the writer of the commentary.  The editor, having edited the subject, will do a shot list which will record each scene, briefly describe it and give its length.  This enables the writer to synchronise their words with the picture as it progresses.

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Working at GTV 9 in Melbourne, as Senior Film Editor, within little over a year I had edited the equivalent of 730 editions of British Movietonews or, put another way, fourteen years of Movietone. This was because I was working seven days a week and editing the news service, mainly by myself, between sixteen and twenty minutes of edited film every night.   By the end of the year, I could say that I was extremely experienced at editing newsfilm for television.

The editor will only have one chance to screen the original film, after that they must remember what the film contains and where everything is within the roll.  There is little time to be artistic, or delay a decision to use a scene or to decide its length.  The editor must make up their mind immediately.

I recall an incident while working with ABV2 in Melbourne.  There was a routine job for the film department which required the removal of scenes from a feature film to reduce the running time.  A producer would indicate the sequences to be removed, but it was the film department that decided exactly how and when each cut would be made.  In this particular case, I had handed the job to a competent assistant who had got to the stage where he had to make the last cut.  He called me into the cutting room to see his problem.  It was that there was no way of cutting out the sequence required without leaving a jump cut.  He ran the film backwards and forwards to show me that there was no ideal place to cut.  I asked him to hand me his scissors.  With them, I cut the film roughly where the sequence was to be removed.  I said to him, “Now join the two ends up as best you can”.  The point of the exercise was that he did not wish to accept that any cut would have been poor and that the audience would have to put up with it.  He made the cut and then once again he ran the film backwards and forwards several times.  I pointed out to him that the audience would not have that facility and that it was likely that few of them would notice the adjudged bad cut.  The lesson for the assistant was that an editor must recognise when there is only one solution to the joining of one scene to another, it is pointless to go on looking for something that cannot be found.

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The old newsreel cutters would measure their scenes by the length of their arm which would be around about three feet in length which is about four and a half seconds.  They would only use a Moviola or Editola if they were involved in a much longer story or, perhaps, a documentary.  The sound editor, on the other hand, would always use a machine to synchronise sound or music.

Today’s video editors can run the video cassette back and forth as long as they like, provided they have the time.

Very often I see news clips which are merely to support a journalist’s words. When the words run out, the picture is immediately removed from the screen.  Sometimes this means that the viewer is offered a scene that is on the screen for a fraction of a second. I have even seen the summary of a football match in which the ball is heading for the net, the journalist finishes her dialogue and the scene is cut short, we do not see the ball pass over the line.   Only two seconds more would have completed the shot.  I think this is where I came in at GTV in Melbourne over fifty years ago.  One cannot blame the film editor or, in this case, the video editor for this practice.

I have recently seen a television programmes which was part a cooking programme and part a programme about sewing of material offcuts.  It was all about preparing for Christmas.  I thought that the directing was appalling during the cooking sequences, the camera was not allowed to remain still for a moment.  At one time, the presenter was speaking, the camera was on her while she spoke a few words.  Almost immediately, the camera panned left on to the face of a lady listening.  This was not to capture some reaction to the dialogue, she was motionless.

The presenter, while “demonstrating” how to prepare a gammon ham for cooking removed the rind and scored the meat.  We were only shown two cuts in the ham before the camera was off on to something else.  Sometimes, the camera was placed in such a way that it was difficult to see what we were supposed to be looking at.  We had out of focus shots, quick meaningless pans and ultra fast cutting, we had the lot.  The general message was not coming over in an acceptable way.  I said that I found the directing appalling.  I could not believe that an editor would have been responsible for this self indulgence.

It is the film editors job to decide what scene is on the screen at any one time and the duration of it.  They will attempt, in whatever medium they are working, to make the transition from one scene to another as smooth as possible.  Unless, of course, they wish to shock their audience.

Today, a good deal of television news and documentaries seem to be thrown together, without thought of continuity, producing sequences that bemuse the viewer.

When a bad cut is made in editing, when there is a non sequitur, the surprised audience start to discuss it among themselves.  During this conversation, whatever is happening on the screen is ignored.

As soon as the viewer starts to discuss the technique of film making, while the film is still running, the film maker has lost the plot.

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With the coming of video editing and, more importantly, video equipment, we were able to see, over the years, editing being influenced by the introduction of the latest device of visual effects.  We also saw a new phenomenon where people who were not editors were let loose on editing a programme because they were experts in the video editing equipment itself.  A bit like asking a Steenbeck or Moviola engineer to edit a film.

In editing a documentary, I always thought it desirable to set a pace at the beginning, a rhythmic introduction of each new scene,  so that the viewer would get to know the rate at which visual information was being offered.

I have always believed that it was better to edit films quickly.  This, of course, would often be necessary when working in television.  For other purposes, editors, with their directors, could take months to edit a half-hour film.  In these cases, I thought that it was quite easy for the editor, while working on the later scenes to have forgotten what had been done in the beginning.

One has to admire the directors and editors of television commercials.  A story in one minute.  Using a well prepared scenario, commercials can carry a complete story or an impression within the sixty seconds.  Some commercials are a joy to watch.  Of course, there are many that are a few scenes thrown together and, on occasion, because of the confusion one does not know what is being advertised.

There are some commercials that are so awful, one remembers them for years.  Whether people buy the object, or service, advertised is another thing.  However, some of the famously bad commercials have, apparently, been successful precisely because they were so awful.

Film Editing is not governed by equipment, it is a mental process.  I started off on 35mm, in television I worked for many years in 16mm.  Later still I worked with video material.  When I first worked in 16mm, it was frowned on by those who still worked on 35mm. Some of those who worked on 16mm referred to 8mm as “boot laces”.  Audiences look at screens.  How the picture got to that screen is not their concern, provided the picture quality is good.  A good editor, in whatever form is in use, makes it easier for the audience to watch.

© Terence Gallacher and terencegallacher.com, 2011.  Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Terence Gallacher and terencegallacher.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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