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Interview with Eddie
Hamilton from the
Post Production section of
Second Edition - Continuum Publishing Group - ISBN:
0826447139
Buy
it from Amazon.co.uk |
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| What is a Film Editor? The
editor is the person who takes the footage shot by the crew and cuts the
shots together to tell the story in the best way possible, shot by shot, a
scene at a time, making sure the cuts flow smoothly and the audience
understands the story and emotions being communicated by what they’re
watching. They have the responsibility to ensure that everyone’s best
work gets up on screen – a combination of the best performances,
lighting, makeup, costumes, and sets. The editing process is also the last
chance to correct any mistakes made during the shoot. If the script has
problems, you have to fix them with re-structuring or ADR (lines recorded
by the actor in a studio after the shoot). Similarly, if an actor’s
performance is disappointing, you have to cut around it. You cannot make a
silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but if there is life in the rushes and
you have a good story to tell, taking the time to find the moments that
work and then piecing them together to create a movie is very rewarding.
So it’s very creative, but it also
requires an immense amount of organisation. Every single frame of film has
to be carefully logged when it arrives in the cutting room so that it can
be found at a moment’s notice. Any inaccuracy can cause problems and if
not spotted can cost a lot to put right. The editor is also an ambassador
of diplomacy. Sitting in the same room as the director working on their
masterpiece for months takes its toll – emotions get charged, especially
if there is a producer who disagrees with the director. The editor should
serve the director’s vision, but must speak up if he thinks the director
is mistaken. It’s important to try and stay objective and see the film
fresh each time. Sometimes you have to be ruthless with the cut to improve
the film. It’s not personal. Everyone wants the best film at the end of
the day.
How do you edit film?
Traditionally, cutting film meant having a room filled with rolls of
film and magnetic tape (the rushes), looking through these on a machine
called a Moviola or Steenbeck, then literally splicing the film together
shot by shot with clear tape. The system worked well, but it had
disadvantages. It took time to locate a trim (an offcut from an edit) and
if you wanted to change the cut it wasn’t easy to return to a previous
version. Plus, the more you handled the cut reels, the dirtier, dustier
and more scratched they became. The advent of fast, cheap computer
technology changed all that.
The leading computer-based film editing system is the Avid Film Composer. It is the simplest, fastest and most feature-rich system on the market today. All the rushes reside in digital form on the Avid’s hard disk drives, giving instantaneous access to any one of the hundreds of shots that make up a movie. The Avid allows you to keep several versions of a sequence to compare them, and the image quality never deteriorates or gets scratched, it physically can't! Because you work from video, the resolution is not as good as working on film, but this will change in the coming years and the positives massively outweigh the negatives in my opinion. There are other benefits of using a computer to cut a film – you can produce dissolves and other optical effects to see how they look in the cut. For test screenings you can produce an incredibly
rich soundtrack with ADR, sound effects and temporary music. Every frame
of film has a timecode associated with it and the Avid takes care of that all the way through the editing process (as long as the information you give it in the first place is correct).
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| Q - What is a good edit?
Well,
there is no simple answer to this – whole books have been written on
this very topic by people who’ve had a lifetime of experience editing
films!
Q - OK, so what makes a cut between two
shots work?
The cut should be fluid (unless
deliberately being obtuse). The flow and rhythm of the cut should not
interrupt the audience’s passage of concentration. It should feel
natural. For me, it’s a gut reaction, some kind of instinct. As you
play through a take you feel the cut should be HERE, or you sense an
edit needs a couple more frames on the outgoing shot. When you watch it
back you just intuitively sense if a cut is working or not.
There are some grammatical rules to
follow (though these should have been taken into account when shooting
the film). When cutting between shots try not to cross the line (the
imaginary eyeline between the actors on screen – see elsewhere in the
book). If you do, it will feel wrong. Just try it. You can sometimes get
away with it if there’s no option and you’re careful but generally
it’s a bad idea. If someone or something exits frame right, they
should enter the next shot frame left and vice versa. Picture a car
chase along a road. If the lead car zips off to the right of the camera,
it always enters to the left of the camera (unless you pick up the chase
at an entirely different location). Try imagining it the other way. Of
course, in some totally frenetic action sequences almost anything goes,
but especially on a low budget movie it can look incompetent if you do
this the wrong way.
When cutting dialogue I often find a
natural place to cut to another character is on punctuation, where there’s
a natural pause in the delivery. I have read a theory that says it takes
at least two frames for the audience ’s eyes to travel from one part
of the screen to another between cuts. I would tentatively agree with
this – if I’m editing a conversation I tend to trim the incoming
shot back a couple of frames and find the cut feels smoother. Another
tip, all subconcious emotion is shown through the actor's eyes. Even the
subtlest movements give away a character's thoughts.
Q - What makes an edited scene work?
As you have no doubt discovered
when writing or reading a script, most scenes have a beginning, middle
and end and are designed to carry the plot forward, developing the
characters along the way. This may seem obvious, but you should take it into account when cutting a sequence together. How does the scene start?
Where are we? Who’s here? Has time passed? Subconsciously the audience
will be asking these questions when the scene starts. Unless you’re
setting out to confuse them, you should try and set the scene as soon as
possible so that they can get on with digesting the plot and
characterisation. Sometimes, you can start with an exterior of where we
are (e.g. a crowd outside the cinema for a premiere before cutting
inside to show who’s attending). Or maybe start on a detail and reveal
the situation, (e.g. a digital counter counting down from 30 seconds,
track out to reveal a small bomb under a table, track out to reveal two
characters having dinner unaware of their predicament). These are
obvious examples but the audience immediately knows what’s what. |
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 Pace
– Ever seen a film that was too
fast? We’ve all seen films that are too slow. Cut your movie as tight
as you can, then cut it some more.
 Mechanics –
Do the audience actually understand
the plot as you intend? It’s easy to think you are making something
clear but the audience doesn’t get it.
 Screenings –
Hold test screenings to see if your
film is working. Ask questions about plot, characters, your title, and
invite people to rip your movie to shreds.
 Technology –
Shoot at 25fps! Make sure you fully
understand all the stages of post production so you do not make costly
mistakes.
 Reshoots –
Plan small sequences or cutaways to
bridge drama gaps or plug story holes and shoot them over a long weekend
with minimal crew.
 Take
a break – You can get too close.
After you complete your first fine cut, try and take some time off to
reflect on it and the comments. When you come back to it you will see it
with new eyes.
 Titles
– Put all your titles at the end.
No-one is interested in who all your crew are, get straight into the
action and drama. But, as the producer / director, do give yourself the
first credit at the end.
 Effects –
Don’t go crazy with effects just
because the Avid can do slow motions, freeze frames and fancy titles. It
will all need to be replicated at the optical house at great expense.
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Now, consider what the function of the
scene is. Which character do you want the audience to identify with? Whose
story is this? What plot details must the audience understand so that we
don’t lose them? For example, consider a scene where a woman is asking
a man to marry her. She might beat around the bush a bit, nervous. At
the start of the scene we might stay on a medium two shot showing both
the actors. Then she plucks up courage – do we go in for a close up?
Maybe. Do we want to show her extreme anxiousness? Or do we want to see
the man getting intrigued about her emotional turmoil? The answers are
never clear cut, but if you know what the audience needs from the scene,
it can certainly point you in the right direction. All the time you’re
listening to your gut feeling about whether the flow of the cuts feel
right. At the last minute, the woman can’t do it. She’s trying to
win a bet with a friend by getting engaged before the week is out but
decides it’s not worth it. The scene builds to this moment and without
an explanation she leaves. The man is left standing wondering whether it
was the garlic he ate for lunch. Do we stay on a close up of his
confusion, do we see his POV (point of view) of the woman walking away,
or do we cut out to a wide shot of him standing alone and bemused? Any
of these will work, depending on what you want to say. But for sure the
scene has drawn to a close. We’ve had a beginning, middle, and end.
Very few or even no words have been exchanged, but we’ve understood
and the edited scene has done its job.
Q - What makes a movie work as a whole?
When you’ve finished the
first cut of a film, the fun really starts. Just cutting the scenes and
putting them in script order is only half the battle. If I’m cutting
during a shoot I normally have a first assembly ready a couple of days
after the wrap party. The editor and director will watch this and as a
general rule it’s very average and probably poor – it’s too long,
the pace is all over the place and there will probably be bits missing
such as special effects or second unit shots. But this is to be expected
– every editor I’ve spoken to says the first assembly always looks
terrible. However, it’s also exciting because it’s the first glimpse
that all the work so far has been worth it. First you work through the
film with the director getting the scenes how he or she wants them. You’ve
been cutting alone so far, according to what you think works. Of course
it’s their film and they may have other ideas about how to approach a
scene. It’s a long process of going through the rushes re-working each
scene according the director’s taste – with your input where
necessary. Then you take a look at the film as a whole. Are the
characters introduced correctly? Is the plot working? Does the pace lag
anywhere? Is it too fast? As a rule, the film is probably too slow. How
many people have seen a film that’s too slow? Then ask yourself if you
have ever complained about a film because it was too fast or too packed.
Sometimes what worked well in the script seems redundant on screen.
Sometimes the performances are lacking something. Maybe the relationship
between the two lead characters is misfiring somewhere. Maybe a
character is unnecessary now. Maybe some of the jokes just aren’t
funny.
What do you do? Well, work through the
problems. Can I move some scenes around to get the pace more even? Can I
intercut some scenes? Can I cut out this joke altogether? Can I shoot
some pickups to act as clever cutaways or help with the plot? Slowly but
surely you’ll work out the answers over several weeks of cutting. Then
screen your cut to a select audience of people whose opinions you value
and who aren’t afraid of being brutally honest about the film. You
want to fix problems, not hear how wonderful it is when you know it isn’t.
Watching your film with an audience is like watching it afresh. You
suddenly sense when they begin to fidget. You sense when they’re
gripped. You know if a joke has hit the mark. Ask them questions
afterwards. You’ll soon find out what the problems are. There’ll be
comments like – But isn’t he her brother? – and the characters
aren't related at all! The audience will come back with all kinds of
comments that you hadn’t even thought of because you're too close to
the film.
Back to the cutting room for more
changes, more careful honing. You will probably have to cut some scenes
you love because they just don’t "play" to the audience or
aren’t needed in the film any more. Screen the film again for a larger
number of people. Get them to fill in a questionnaire. Read the forms
and listen to what they’re saying. Don’t take them as gospel, but
don’t ignore them. And gradually you will get closer to the day when
you lock picture.
There is a saying that films are never
completed, just abandoned. This is partially true because you will never
be 100% happy with the end result. The director will have had this
vision for the film that can never be matched. You will always have to
compromise. But with patience and creativity you will find the movie
hiding in those rushes and it will take on a life of it’s own. The
audience will watch it and forget that they’re seeing dozens of cuts
flickering across the screen – they will be engrossed in the story
being told and then you’ll know you’ve done a good job.
Q - What common mistakes do you see?
The way to avoid mistakes is to
ensure you understand the entire post production process from the moment
the neg leaves the camera right up to the premiere. Make sure you know
about processing, telecine, timecode, digitising, neg cutting, opticals,
sound tracklaying, mixing, grading and delivery requirements. These are
all places where you can trip up and it will cost you time and money to
fix, neither of which you will have a lot of, probably. Ask an editor to
explain these things to you and if he or she doesn’t know, don’t
give them the job.
Q - What advice would you give to a low
budget movie maker?
Don’t rush into production
without really working on the script and developing it until you know it’s
the best it can be. If in doubt about any technical aspects of film
making, ask - people will be happy to explain. Know who the audience is
for your film and don’t bore them. Have test screenings (even small
ones), because they will help you understand where your film needs more
work. Finally, if you’re shooting anywhere that uses PAL, SHOOT AT 25
FPS. It will save you ENDLESS headaches later in post production. Good
luck! |
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