Film editing

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


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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.

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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.

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Process of Film Editing

The term video editing can has two meanings, the non-linear editing system, which uses computers and the linear video editing system, which uses videotape.

Video editing refers to taking various clips or segments of video and "cutting" them together to form a cohesive and concise program. Cutting comes from the movie industry because traditional movie film is actually cut with a razor and spliced together.

Prior to the 90's video editing was done in linear style which consisted of using multiple decks to piece together a program. One or more play decks would run the original footage and an editor would use a video controller or mixing console to play specific parts out to a master deck that recorded the final program including titles and music (which were added in during the process).

Non-linear editing is done using computers. Footage is played back from a camera into a PC via IEEE 1394 connection (also called Firewire, iLink) where it is captured on the hard drive. Editing software, such as Adobe Premiere or Avid Xpress DV, then allows the editor to easily manipulate the captured footage. Clips are arranged on a timeline, music tracks and titles are added, effects can be created, and the finished program is "rendered" into a finished video that can be distributed in a variety of ways via DVD, webstreaming, CDROM, or tape.

Though the tools change over time the process of editing remains the same. Original footage is trimmed (desired parts are isolated, bad parts are removed) and cut together (arranged in time) to create a video or programme. Editing involves the use of various transitions between clips such as the cut, dissolve, and wipe. Editing is an art that is very time consuming and deceptively easy at first glance. It is a difficult thing to do well and requires a tremendous amount of focus, patience, creativity, and attention to detail.

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

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Methods of montage

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.
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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
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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

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Continuity editing

Main article: continuity editing

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.

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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.

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Editing techniques

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."

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See also