fashion nova romper
move. what makes a movie a movieis the editing. i've been in the business for,i don't know, 37 years, i think. something like that. i did not really realize what editing wasuntil i was in the editing room myself. there's magic to editing.magic is a discovery... of something new that wasn't intendedthat works for the movie. once you start to realizethat film is the sum of editing... then editing is the thingyou're always looking at.
showtime, folks. i think great editing skill... will protect a director from suicide. the first filmmakers simply photographedwhat interested or amused them. they held a shot until they got boredor the film ran out. the fathers of cinema,edison in the united states... and the lumiã¨re brothers in france... were very pessimisticabout the future of cinema. there was probably a worldwide interest...
in seeing these images move... but once you'd seen somebodyplaying a joke with a hose... why pay money to see somethingthat you can see for real out in the street? in fact, auguste lumiã¨rewent as far as to say... that cinema was an inventionwithout a future. but edwin porter,one of thomas edison's employees... proved him wrong. porter discoveredthat cutting separate shots together... could create a story.
edwin s. porter really was the onewith the life of an american fireman... i think, that started intercutting... and creating an emotional impacton the audience... by intercutting two shotsthat are not related to each other. one scene is going on at one place... basically, the firemen rushing to a firewith their horse-drawn wagons... and the other scene is the fire,miles away. you intercut the two and you understand,psychologically and emotionally... that these people's lives are in danger...
and these people are comingto rescue them... and you're rooting, all of a sudden,for that to happen... and you're hoping they save the people. i often think aboutwhat it must have been like to be there... to create the art formas it was happening... and say, "why don't we try this?""that doesn't make sense." we do it in the editing room now. we cut to something and say,"that doesn't work." imagine what they must have said in 1904.
the great train robberywas porter's next film. that's when you really beginto see the possibilities. i'm not saying this because i'm an editor,but the invention of editing... is the thing that allowed film to take off. it's the equivalentof the invention of flight. both human-powered flightand motion-picture editing... were invented in the same year,and they have similar kinds of effects. the invention of editing gave birthto a new art and a new language... a language that can transport usin the blink of an eye...
from the vastness of the desertto the mysteries of the human face. a cut can bridge millions of years,connecting the prehistoric past... to an imaginary future. editing can slow down time... or speed it up. the timing of a cut can startle audiences... or amuse them. ...with a long knife trailing after me.i am in great danger. i'll never let go. i promise.
the choice and length of shots... shape our responseto everything we see on the screen. and editing is why people like movies. because in the end,wouldn't we like to edit our own lives? i think we would. i think everybody would liketo take out the bad parts... take out the slow parts,and look deeper into the good parts. i started workingon what used to be called... the upright moviola,which is an editing machine...
that looks somethinglike a green sewing machine on legs. i switched to computer editingin the mid '90s. the editor is sort of the ombudsmanfor the audience. as an editor, you only seewhat is on the screen... not what was going onat the time of shooting... and that's how it's gonna lookto the audience. i make it a principle not to go on the set... not to see the actors out of costume... not to see anything other than...
the images that come to me from location. a major hollywood productionshoots almost 200 hours of film. unspooled, the film would stretchfrom l.a. to vegas. an editor may work for months,even years... crafting this footageinto a two-hour movie. the finished filmwill contain thousands of shots... each measured in framesof one-twenty-fourth of a second. for a writer, it's a word. for a composer or a musician, it's a note.
for an editor and a filmmaker,it's the frames. the one frame off or two frames added... or two frames less... is the difference betweena sour note and a sweet note... is the difference between... clunky, clumsy crap... and orgasmic rhythm. verna fields made manygood contributions to jaws. we all refer to verna fieldsas mother cutter...
because she was very earthyand very maternal. she cut her films at her house,in her pool house... in the san fernando valley... and it was a very haimishkind of a workplace. the shark didn't work as well... or as often as it was supposed to workaccording to the screenplay. that's the spot. we had a contest where vernawould stop the moviola on a frame... where she wanted to make the cut,and i'd stop it where i wanted it.
if ever we stopped it on the same frame... that had already been markedwith a grease-pencil "x"... we knew that was the right frameon certain things where we didn't agree. all of our disagreements always happenedwith that darn shark. verna was always in favorof making less to be more. and i was tryingto squeeze that one more... 'cause it took me days to getthe one shot. so i'm going back to... i'm on a barge for two daystrying to get the shark to look real... and the sad fact was...
the shark would only look realin 36 frames, not 38 frames. and that two-frame difference... was the difference betweensomething really scary... and something that lookedlike a great white floating turd. out of my way. well, i got so desperate on terminator 2... trying to shorten that filmto a manageable length... as we all understand that to be... that i said, "wait a minute,do we need all these frames?
"if we just took out one frameevery second for the entire film... "we'd shorten the filmby a couple of minutes. "let's just do it as a test. "we'll take a reeland we'll take out one frame in every 24." and the editors looked at melike i was nuts. "let's just try it. come on.nobody's ever done this." we took out one frame in every 24,and it was a mess. there were jerks, there were things,there were cuts in the wrong places. you totally saw it and it just didn't work.
every one of those individual frameswas important. once you know that as an editor,now you get scared for a while. it's like, "jeez, am i cutting hereor am i cutting here?" but then after a while, you start to realizethat there's great power in that, too. d.w. griffith wasthe first great filmmaker... to understandthe psychological importance of editing. working a decade after porter,he did more than anyone else... to advance the storytelling toolsporter had developed. griffith inventedand popularized techniques...
that establishedthe basic grammar of film. his melodramas were the firstto draw audiences... into the emotional world of his characters. he certainly was the first manto use the close-up in a big way. it was so revolutionary that the producers,when they saw this, were aghast. they thought,"you can't put this picture out like this. "you can't cutto this big, ugly shot of somebody. "we're paying for this actor, this actress.we wanna see their whole body. "we don't wanna just see their face.
"second of all, the audiences won't knowwhat to respond to. "they're gonna be all confused." well, the proof is in the puddingand the reality is... that the audienceswere not confused at all. griffith brought it together in onemagnificent film, the birth of a nation... and we saw the accumulationof 10 years of editing knowledge... put into a movie. and all of a sudden,you not only had close-ups... but you had flashbacks...
parallel action... and you had all sorts of thingsbeing used to make the audience... keep attention focusedon a certain part of the frame. d.w. griffith establishedthe tenets of classical film editing. and classical film editingrelied on the concept of the invisible cut... in which action would always becontinuous and fluid and moving. the goal was to mask the cutso the audience wouldn't notice... and could forgetthat they were watching a movie. let's take another look.
notice how the gesture matchesfrom one shot to the next? griffith's seamless editingis still practiced today... and was the dominant editing stylein hollywood movies for decades. at last. look again. the cut is so smooththat it's barely noticeable. it's all for telling the story. and all you wanna do is get the personemotionally invested in the story. so it becomes this invisible craft. we call it "the invisible art."and, indeed, it is.
i mean, the more invisible we are,the better we're doing our job. unfortunately,the invisible style of editing... kept editors invisibleand unappreciated as well. for years they have beenthe best-kept secret of the movies. the first cutterswere considered hands for hire... rather than creative partnersin the filmmaking process. they looked at the imagesby holding the film up to the light. then they would check their workby running it through a projector... and making the necessary adjustments.
griffith's main cutterwas jimmy edward smith... who virtually lived with himat the studio... where they worked far into the nightrunning the film shot during the day. later, smith's wife rosejoined the editing team. the smiths marriedduring the cutting of lntolerance. for their honeymoon,griffith allowed them the weekend off. - lights.- needs about 20 minutes out of it. the kazan film the last tycoonhad a wonderful scene. it was obviously the storyof irving thalberg.
and i always took thatas a wonderful metaphor... about the editing process. it's silent, it's anonymous. what's eddie, asleep? the goddamn movieeven puts the editor to sleep. he's not asleep, mr. brady. what do you mean he's not asleep? he's dead, mr. brady. dead?
what do you mean he's dead? he must have died... how can he be dead?we were just watching the rough cut. jesus, i didn't hear anything.did you hear anything? not a thing. eddie... he probably didn't want todisturb the screening, mr. brady. today, not only is the editor still alive... but he has becomethe director's key collaborator.
no other crew member... spends as much time working alonewith the director. finding the relationship with the editor... is like trying to decidewhether or not to get married. because if the marriage isn't a good one,it's gonna be a sticky divorce. when i was doing my first movie... the only thing i knewis i wanted a female editor. 'cause i just felt a female editorwould be more nurturing... to the movie and to me.
they wouldn't try to be winning their wayjust to win their way. they wouldn't be trying to shove theiragenda or win their battles with me. they would be nurturing methrough this process. - give me your hand!- she killed me, man. who would've fucking thought that? i think editors play a big rolewith directors in giving them support... making them feel... like they can look at somethingthat may have trouble or problems... and be comfortable enoughso that they can approach those problems.
hi, vincent. i'm getting dressed. in the beginning,he really doesn't guide me... and then i put togetherwhat i think he wants. and pretty much, we've worked togetherso long, i can judge what he would want. - what the fuck is this place?- this is jack rabbit slim's. an elvis man should love it. - come on, man, let's go get a steak.- you can get a steak here, daddy-o. don't be a... after you, kitty cat.
initially, i had it really long. it was like a date in real time. and it was sally's job to kind of,you know... little by little,convince me to bring it down... and it still could be funny. you'd still have what i'm talking about,but maybe it wouldn't be so painful. he did want itto feel very much like a date... and it was very long at first... and we just had tokind of live with it for a while.
just like, you know,letting me live with it long enough... so i could eventually,"i've had it enough. i've seen that enough. "maybe now i can lose this part. "okay, so it was like here,and now it's like here." finally, we bring it down,and then i brought it too far down... and then he said,"we gotta bring it back up." "that's it. no more. this is not a video." we do that for eight months, so intense. i see him more than my husband.
and sometimes i get annoyed with herfor not reading my mind 100%. it's not good enough that she reads it80% of the time, all right. we work very intensely together... and it's kind of amazingthat we still like each other. if i was with my husband that long,i don't think i'd like him that much. by the time i've thought of an idea,written it... found the financing, cast the film,directed it... i get to the cutting roomand it's like i've washed up on shore. i'm so happy to be there,'cause then i think:
"now we can start making the film." it's so hard to be a director,and it's hard on the set. by the time they comeinto the cutting room the first week... they're usually half the people they werewhen they started out. they're shells of the people they were. and at least in my cutting room,i try to make it very easygoing... and try to heal them back into shapeso that they can get to work on the movie. when matthew broderick is bustedfrom having thrown the election... in election...
he enters the principal's office... and sees all the people gathered therewho know he's guilty. mr. mcallister, i hope you can help usclear something up. he wanted to cut it like the end sequenceof the good, the bad and the ugly... with holding on the faces fora really long time with the swelling music. and i was like, "no, let's cut it really fastand build to a climax." and i didn't wanna do that. it was cheesy and would calltoo much attention to itself. and he just wouldn't wanna do it.
he wouldn't wannaput it in the movie like that. so finally, i said, "i'll pay you $25." and i said, "no, let's not do that." - i go, "okay, $50."- and i said, "no." he's like, "no." and i said, "$75." so he even gave me an invoice,and it says that i owe him $75. so i paid him $75 to cut it in.and that's how it is now. i think successful editors...
are really sly politicians. the russian revolution sparkeda revolution in film editing as well. the crazy russians startfucking around with images... and juxtaposing themand creating different emotional effects. lenin saw film as the perfect medium... to inspire his largely illiterate nationto join the revolution. they took these films outin the middle of the farmlands... and showed themto the farmers and peasants. they began to understand...
that they could geta certain emotional, psychological effect... by a certain type of cuttingfrom one image to the next. and that became a manipulationof what the audience was feeling. the russian filmmakers... rejected the bourgeois storiesand seamless editing practiced by griffith. instead of melodrama,they offered real life. to make the filmman with a movie camera... documentary filmmaker dziga vertovand his team... took his cameras into the streetsto record a typical day in moscow.
it's constantly reminding methat i'm watching a movie. there were scenes inside an editing room. you see how they edited moviesback in 1929. they were engagedin a pure explosion of creative activity... in manipulating these images. every modern editing conventionthat we know of... is demonstratedin man with a movie camera. the film celebratednot just the revolution... but the role of the cameramanand the editor in helping to create it.
vertov and his wife elizavetacut their documentaries and newsreels... in dark basementswith rats scuttling underfoot. but in this film... he made the editor as importantas any other worker in the revolution. the theoretician lev kuleshovalso experimented with film editing. in his most famous study... he took a shot of a russian actorand intercut it with three different objects. ; a bowl of hot soup... a distraught womandraped across her husband's coffin...
and a little girl playing with a teddy bear. when audiences saw the film,they raved about the actor's performance. ; how hungrily he looked at the soup... how sorrowfully he gazed at the woman... and how tenderlyhe watched the little girl. but, actually,it was the same expression each time. now this demonstratesthe power of juxtaposition... the power of montage... by taking one shot and another shotto give it a third meaning.
and the third meaning is, in effect,an emotion that's much greater... than the sum total of the two partsthat put it together in the first place. and this is the basis of all editing,by the way. one of kuleshov's contemporaries,sergei eisenstein... combined these experimentswith marxist ideology... to create films of revolutionary fervor. he saw editing, like history,as a clash of images and ideas. the meaning of the filmwas not in the shots themselves... but in their collision.
"when two elements are in conflict,"he argued... "their collision sparks a new meaningof higher order." where griffith tried to hide his cuts,eisenstein reveled in them. he wanted the audienceto feel the frame... to know that this is a movie, not life. eisenstein is the first real director. he killed himself in his staging... he killed himself with his cameraworkand everything... but it was allat the service of the scissors...
every little, single, solitary bit of it. i got a movie projector when i was 11... and one of the first moviesi got was the battleship potemkin. i just ran that odessa steps sequenceover and over again. i couldn't believe what i was seeing. one of the things that makes it incredibleis the editing... the incredible juxtaposition of images. what the russians did was a responseto what griffith had done. classical editing,and now, eisensteinian montage...
and you can take that further. the american cinema has absorbedall of that stuff from the russians... and now it's in our film. the fact is that many of these techniqueshave been appropriated... into what we do every day as editorsright here in hollywood, california... making action pictures... because we are also tryingto get a response from the audience. we're also trying to get them to riseout of their seats... out of their complacency...
but not necessarilyfor revolutionary purposes... but just to really have a great timein the movies. don't you fucking move! editing techniques the soviets used toconvert their population to communism... now drivehollywood's action blockbusters. - where's the shot?- what shot? - who took out the shot?- which shot is that? the money shot. bus driver's head. the brains-on-the-window shot.the bits-are-on-the-visor shot.
we thought we'd show it to you like thiswithout all that... put it back. don't "show" me anything. you don't need it.you're not even giving it a chance. how's the rearview-mirror gagsupposed to work without it? am i the only one herewho respects the writing? you've got suspenseand you've got action. i found a good combinationin the two terminator films... was to have a suspenseful build-upto an action release. in terminator 2...
you have a slow, tense build-upof these characters moving around... closing in on the young john connor. then he sees the terminator for the firsttime and it's all in slow motion. i usually like to usethe slow motion in the build-up... where it has this kind of protracted,dream-like or nightmarish quality... and then there's a cathartic break,and then it kicks into gear. get down. in a chase, something is going rightor something is going wrong. and you wanna accentuate that.
rhythm is one of the ways you do that. you also wanna create peaks and valleysin terms of rhythm. chases are a wonderful thingto work on as an editor. i wouldn't want to do themas a steady diet... but every now and then, it's great fun. my favorite chase that i've ever worked onwas the canal chase... as we called it, in terminator 2. our ancestors were survivors.therefore, we're here. and so there's somethingplugged into our reptilian hindbrain...
that makes us relate to the ideaof being pursued and getting away. so we get to go throughthese kind of cathartic simulator runs... while we watch a movie... and we get to experiencethat heart-pounding fear of being chased. it's a natural form of excitement. editing can hone that, sharpen that. the tempo of the cuts,the variety of shots that are used. the changing image sizesof the character's reactions, eyes. all these things are in the palette.
by manipulation and juxtaposition... you can increase the excitement. this is the first thing: i'm standing up... which allows me a considerable amountof freedom of movement. and it also means that i'm "sprung." i guess that's the only word for it. and frequently,when i'm looking at the cut... i will stand here... with my hand on the controlsalmost like a gunslinger...
and trying to hit the point of the cut... with my knees bent. and somehow, this is important for me... because it allows meto internalize the rhythms... the visual rhythms of what's happening. at this point,we've started with a blank slate. so, the question is,what are we gonna start with? that looks like a good possibility.it establishes things. so there's anthony saying, "action,"and they start to come forward.
we could begin it anywhere in here... but see, there now,somebody falls right here. and that's good. falling is good. we will edit this shot into the timeline. there it is. in the end, there will beprobably 5,000 shots in the film. and all of them... have to ultimately be the right shot... in the right place,for the right length of time.
when i was watching nosferatuwhen i was a kid... our main guy is up in the castle,and night has fallen... and we're very suspicioussomething's about to happen... and we see nosferatu down the hall. that section is what scared me the most. and in terms of editing,it caught my attention because of this: we saw this vampirewith pointy teeth and scary eyes... very far away down a hallway,and then we cut to our guy. he's very scared, and we cut back.he's six feet away from us.
he's just on the other side of the door. every time i saw it, i was very scared. and i remember waiting for that momentof being surprised. when people come into a theater... they're already keenly awareof their own fears. it's like, "let's gather round the campfireand listen to the shaman talk." the screen being the fire.we'll sit in a circle. we'll be in the darkness.we'll be in a dreamlike state. we'll be connected to strangers...
in a way that we're normally notin the rest of our culture. and we'll feel things in unison. the opening sequence of screamis almost a film in itself. it is kind of whacking the audienceupside the head in 15 minutes... where you introduce a character,develop her, endear her to the audience... and then kill her unexpectedly. that's a matter of yourself and your editorsitting there and thinking: "what is that audience,that phantom audience... "that you imagine in your mind, thinking?"
it's all judgment calls.it's all about rhythm. it's all about getting that part of it right... so that there's no momentwhere they feel quite easy... no moment where they feel they can knowexactly what's coming next. hitchcock was one of the first directorsi was aware of as a kid. when psycho came out, it caused a buzzin the neighborhood among the parents. and i remember my mother saying: "it's this horrible old man,he makes these horrible movies." i just said, "really?"
but it was a sense of the totally forbiddenand somebody who'd crossed the line. no! so later when i saw his films... it was kind of the delight of seeingthis kind of savage wit, if you will... that beneath,in hitchcock's case especially... the very urbane,sophisticated, civilized veneer... was this kind of feral, quick animal... that knew exactly where the jugular was... and kind of delightedin the taste of the blood.
hitchcock was the master of suspense. jonathan demmewas devoted to hitchcock... and his influence can clearly be seenin the silence of the lambs. suspense is really an expression of fear. we can build that in our storytellingby withholding information. frankly, it's a manipulation. but in using that manipulation,it also empowers the story. not knowingwhere we're going to go next... is the thingthat human beings hate the most.
we'd all like to know where we're going,if it's gonna be all right. my editing process is an intuitive process.it's what feels truthful. it's what feels strong and it's what works. and you hear this from a lot of editors. dede allen always used to say to me,"i cut with my gut." and she's right. cavalry! three riders! just over that hill!
there's a mismatch here... and i'm gonna have to determinewhether this is a problem or not... because brownis looking toward camera... but when we cut,he's looking up off to the left. we can have jeremy come in and cut... so that jeremy's headis masking brown's head... so that the mismatch is not seen. and now i'm going to mark this frame... and i'm gonna get rid of this area...
which is three frames. and now i'm going to look at it in contextand see how it looks. good. you have to have the personalitythat enjoys that... it's almost likemaking little pieces of jewelry. that patience of the individual shotsand how they're crafted together... but at the same time, you have to havean appreciation for the larger picture... and how these shots fitinto the larger picture of the scene... and then how the scene fitsinto the larger picture of the sequence...
and how the sequence fits together withthe larger picture of the whole work... and then how the workfits together with society. so it's boxes within boxes within boxes. in the 1930s,movies became an even bigger business. the movie studiosintroduced sound films... and radically reshaped moviemaking. hollywood retooled itselfon the model of the factory assembly line. the studios cranked out movieswith almost the same speed... that henry ford mass-produced cars.
stay where you are, all of you. "i don't want it good,"jack warner declared, "i want it tuesday." you now needed an industrial systemto make this all work. in the first 20, 25, 30 years of cinema... large numbers of editors were women. it was considered to be a woman's job... because it was something like knitting. it was something like tapestry, sewing... that you took these pieces of fabric,which is what films are...
and you put them together. it was when sound came in... that the men began to infiltratethe ranks of the editors... because sound was somehow electrical. it was technical. it was no longer knitting. there is the soundtrack,which might be several tracks... and the image. and without the happy marriageof those two... you're not using every bit of potentialthat you possibly can in editing a movie.
the scene in horse whisperer wheresam neill and kristin scott thomas... an argument resultsbecause she is gonna leave. the intent of the scene was to showthat the marriage was foundering... and it was dialogue basically overlappingas they were speaking. so they were both miked. to make it even more dramatic,i even took out more air... and made the overlaps more intense. i could do that because i hadseparate tracks to work with. are you a psychiatrist?he says it takes time.
well, i don't care what he says. i cannot sit here and pretendeverything's gonna be all right. i am not pretending, i am trusting... we are losing. we are losing her! in effect, by taking out all the airin that particular dialogue scene... it did have kind of a suffocating effectbecause there was no respite... there was no air there.you couldn't draw a breath. and it became that much more intensebecause of it. to me, sound is very important.
i create a sound templatethat is both with sound effects... and temporary musicthat evokes certain feelings. i've worked with per hallberg,who's a sound designer... and with ridley scott. for example, in black hawk down... the incursion of the black hawksentering into mogadishu. it was almost like a ballet,a science-fiction ballet... people landing on a different planet. i was not interested in hearingall the helicopters, only music.
showing itfrom a subjective point of view. so this idea of science fiction,when i was putting the scene together... just inspired me to use almost no sound. i remember that the real black hawk pilotswanted to see the footage. so, one day i just showed theman assembly. they were really moved. one guy, there was a tear in his eye,and he says... "i don't know. this looks great.i got goose bumps." these were the guys that were there...
and it felt real to them. there was this scene in dante's peak... where pierce brosnan has to walk backthrough a long tunnel to his truck... and the tunnel is about to collapse. and you hear the sound,the little sound of sand... falling down the walls. so at one point,the music editor asked me for the scene... and she proceeded to put music on it... and i looked at it and i said,"that doesn't work at all."
because suddenly i'm hearing music... and i'm not hearing all that stuff,that tiny little sand thing... that makes me scared. if you were in a really dangerous situation,your ears would be so open... and hearing every little tiny, tiny sound. if it just has music smooshed over it... you know, it takes away that senseof listening with all your might. i mean, if i were the character, i'd say,"turn that off! i can't hear." the advent of soundexpanded the editor's role in hollywood.
during the '30s and '40s... directors rarely cameinto the cutting room. the editing was controlled by the studiosand their supervising editors. one of the most powerfulwas margaret booth... supervising editor at mgm for 30 years. mastering the transition to sound... she caught the attentionof legendary producer irving thalberg... who was the first to call cutters"film editors"... starting with booth herself.
she oversaw all the productionbut had a say in almost every one. maggie was probably the toughestand most feared woman at mgm. people would shudder when they'd hearthat she was on the phone... or she'd bust into the editing room... or you'd get a call, "come downto room f," which is her room. you'd think, "god, what have i done now?" margaret would tell the editors. ; "it's your responsibilityfor the pace of the movie. "it's your responsibility to getthe best performances out of your actors.
"it's your responsibilityto make it as good as you can." margaret booth, she used to say: "if i feel there's a cut at a certain spot... "whether it matches or not, cut. "if you cut for the emotion... "you will get away with so muchby doing that." and i would hear herreally yell at different editors... who would say, "it doesn't match."she'd say, "i don't care. cut." booth, like other great studio editorsof the era...
helped create many of the starsof the golden age of hollywood. editors today are still doing the same. we totally control the performanceof an actor in the cutting room, actually. a lot of them won't admit that. most actors learn early on that the editoris the one to make friends with... 'cause their performance dependsa great deal on the editor... and the taste and the talent of the editor. we'll see dailies, and take 5is spectacular. it is great. but there's also something wonderfulin take 7, and take 4 and take 3.
sometimes, an actorwill see it onscreen and say: "that was terrific. you used take 5." they don't know, they don't realize... that you are borrowingfrom every single performance... and the editor is the personwho is responsible... for finding those momentsin each performance. you talk about basic instinct,i think, to a large degree... that the great performancethat sharon is giving there... is also constructed...
by frank. he spent an enormous amount of time... in selecting every part of every take... that he felt was important. in cutting the interrogation sequence... using the basic scenes that wereback and forth from the dialogue... the scene would be fairly dull. i had to create her looks and his looks. they were manufactured.they weren't really shot that way.
i would take a piece... of michael looking at herfrom a different part of the scene... and a piece of her looking at himfrom a different part of the scene. i don't make any rules, nick.i go with the flow. sharon asked if she could see it,and i said, "yeah, it's done." and sharon came upstairs and said,"you must remove that scene." and i said, "what scene?" and she says, "you know the scene.in the interrogation." but they were all afraid, i think, thatthese shots would hurt her performance.
and even sharon, i think,still thinks now... that she lost the oscar nominationbecause of these shots. and i said, "sharon,that scene is gonna make you a star." and paul said to her: "you shot it. you know what i was doing... "and basically, i like it. and it works." then, you know, the rest is history. most actors' idea of a well-edited movie... is a movie that has a lot of the actor in it,particularly in close-up.
and that could cause me a lot of grief,but what the heck. i knew an actor who used to read a scriptbasically this way: he would say, "blah-blah-blah. my line." and he'd read it, "blah-blah-blah." steven seagal was an action hero,who, on under siege 2... i felt would break me in half. he was allowed into the cutting roomto cut the action sequences. i thought that's all he was gonna do. but his first timehe came into the cutting room...
he said, "okay, put up reel one." he was gonna go throughthe whole movie. but there was a timewhen during one of the fight sequences... that i found myselfwith my arm behind my head... and seagal was demonstrating on mewhat he did. and he's a big guy, plus he carries a gun. i think, ultimately,he did like his performances. but the fact that an actorcame into the cutting room... created an antagonistic relationshipwith the director...
and as editor, i was caught in the middle. i have a friend who did a picture... where there was a comedian in the filmwho had final cut over only his scenes. and he had decided recently... that he didn't want to bea knock-about comedian anymore. he wanted to bea cary grant-style comedian. so he came into the editing roomand cut out all of the pratfalls... and all of the physical shtickthat he had done in the picture... which obviously didn't help the movie any.
i have never let an actorinto the editing room to have feedback. i think, in general,this is how i feel as an actor. even though i love the cutting roomand nothing would make me happier... than to sit there and watch themdo their stuff, i feel it's inappropriate. i feel like that's the time for the directorto have with the editor. home for the holidays was about a mess,it was about a holiday mess... it was about a family that was a mess,about chaos and anarchy in the family. the centerpieceis this thanksgiving dinner scene... and everybody's gatheredaround the table...
and everybody's craziesare all over the place. jodie foster, of course, attractedthe most wonderful bunch of actors... who, just working with her,they left their ego on the doorstep. nothing makes us happier... than to walk into a scenewhere there's six different actors... they all have different stylesof performance... maybe even different pacing... and somehow figure out a wayto weave them all together. lynzee and i will sit there and say,"what do you think she's thinking now?
"is she thinking,'how do i get the hell out of here? ' "or, 'i really like this guyand i'm kind of attracted to him. "' we'd get so into very obscure behavior. we'd see the deep meaningthe actor had brought to the character... in terms of whetherthey picked up their fork... before or after the spoon was picked up."now what did that mean?" and, of course, each little meaninglessgesture adds up to a full performance. when i got the dailies... i assumed that everything she shot...
were things she intendedto be on the screen. and i enjoy the challenge of that,of just trying to use everything. at one point, a turkey gets pushedand splashes on someone. every time we looked at it,we would try it a different way. now, you can have the guy who's doing iton his close-up... and then have the turkey splash... or the turkey splashes,you see the reaction shot. you can go a billion ways. cocksucker!
one of the thingsthat i love about lynzee... is that she's one of these people... who really sees that there isa beautiful and sunny place out there. if we could just get to it,it's there somewhere. there are periods within the editorialprocess that i will hand it over... not only to my editor... but, at times, to my lead actor. first of all, if you have jack nicholsonstarring in your movie... and you call somebody, an actor, up,and say:
"would you like to spend two daysworking with mr. nicholson... "or do you havesomething better to do?"... he usually gets a good response. when jay and i feel that we've really gotthe picture in a great place... and it's particularly easynow that we're editing electronically... where i'll have jack come into theediting room with jay and i'll check out. and he'll bring jack in and run the movie,even run outtakes... and talk about if there's a takethat we didn't use. he did something interesting that heremembered, why didn't we use it?
what nicholson did at the end... was a nicholsonian construct. the disjointed natureof the cutting is on purpose. you imagine this guywho's taken the only love... that had been possible in his life... and squandered itfor what was his own personal obsession. if you've written it smartly,you have a smart actor playing it. and that actor, when it's jack nicholson,can be very helpful in the cutting room. i find that with the actors,in most of the pictures i made...
we kind of nail it on the set, usually... and invariably, looking at rushes,i'll tell thelma, "that's the take." then she'll feel a certain thingfor some other takes... and we line it up that way. because we grew up in the cinã©ma vã©ritã©period of documentary filmmaking... it was a marked influenceon how we work. for example, i found it extremely helpful... when marty's doingheavy improvisational films... like raging bull or goodfellas...
that my years of trying to carve a story... out of a mass of documentary footage... helped me wadethrough miles of improvisation... and begin to find a way to shape it. of course, in a film like raging bull... de niro and joe pesci were remarkableto watch kicking off each other. i wanted to have a very open, honestapproach to the imagery and the story... in the scenes that were not in the ringin raging bull... and that came a lotfrom a kind of wiping away...
of all techniquethat i had thought about before... and going back to a sort of an impactthat i had when i was about 5 or 6... having seen italian neorealist films on tv: paisã , open city and the bicycle thief. you're supposed to be a manager,supposed to know what you're doing. i did what i wanted to do. - that's what i'm worried about, you...- you want a title shot? what are you talking...what am i, in a circus over here? i ask him, he's got more sense about this.what are you doing?
you been killing yourselffor three years now, right? there's nobody left for you to fight.everybody's afraid to fight you. okay. along comes this kid, janiro.he don't know any better. he's a young kid, up and coming.he'll fight anybody. good. you fight him. bust his hole.tear him apart. right? what's the biggest thingyou got to worry about, your weight? - i'm worried about the weight.- the weight? what're we arguing for?i just said the weight. that was one of the hardest thingsi've ever had to do...
because i only had one cameraon the actor at all times. so i didn't have the response,the immediate response of the actor... so it meant that i had to put it togetherlike a jigsaw puzzle. it was a lot of fun, but it took a long time. ultimately, what i think i need herto watch for me... is the emotional impact of the picture... keeping track, emotionally,of the characters. this is the key for me. i always find the editorhas more objectivity than the director.
'cause the editor wasn't on the set.the editor didn't cast the movie. the editor didn't do the storyboards.the editor didn't inundate him or herself... with a year and a half of pre-production. so the editor has the most objective eye... in that creative environment. i remember one night, i go overto steven's house in poland. i said, "steve, i want to runthis scene for you." and he says: "okay," and i run the scene.he looks at me. he says, "i'll see you in the morning."he walked out.
he was so emotionally involvedwith the scene... he couldn't believe that he shot it,it was so real. we were all terribly affected by the film. there's something inside that takes over... when it's very emotional, when there areproblems in people's lives. something emotional takes overthat's beyond your conscious mind. it seemed like an extreme example,but when you're editing that kind of film... you have to disassociate. you have to see each thing as a sceneand you build a scene and do the best...
you can with each scene. when it meldstogether that's when you get the full force. i think this scene in schindler's listreally illustrates the importance of... emotion through film editing. it's the scenewhere they have a drink together... the first drink they've sharedbecause stern has refused to drink with... schindler until this moment. there is just a pacing that is so... emotional for me.so profoundly, deeply felt. someday...
this is all going to end, you know. i was going to say, we'll have a drink then. i think i'd better have it now. mike kahn's choices of how long to letthe characters look at each other and... study each other, and think about howthey're feeling, that was all done in... the editing room. it wasn't in the scriptand it wasn't on the floor the day i shot it. that whole emotional,kind of, meeting of the minds... between those two great menhappened in the editing room. in dialogue scenes,i like people looking at each other.
i like eyes to meet. and so they're getting into each otherand you're connecting. for me, i'm always having problems... cutting long sceneswhere people talk to each other. 'cause you've got... an unlimited amount of choicesand opportunities... when you just have two talking heads. the scene can go many different ways.the drama could become comedy. pathos could become tragedy.
it could become, you know, kind of like... a grilling session or a deposition... if you cut it really fast, or it can bevery leisurely and introspective... if you used a lot of thought and a lotof the breaths and air and the pauses... not just the words. and that's wherea great film editor can help a director. another way of looking at film editingis that it's a dance of eyes. philip seymour hoffman's eye is looking. that's a good thing. now, let's cut to a close-upof hoffman looking...
and the close-up of hoffman is here. we've never seen this angle before, so... the brain has to figure out what it'slooking at and maybe why it's looking... at it. and to the degree that... you hold shots... a certain length, you allowa certain train of thoughts to happen. when you cut a shot off... you've also cut offthe thinking about that shot. now, we want to cut to what he seesbecause that's how we're going to...
understand what he's thinking about. now there you see him thinking and... then his eye goes down.so let's rerun that at speed. flinch. point of view. thinking. other co-conspirator. "let's do it, now." "what?" "let's go.oops, something's up. don't do it." and we go.
there's something about film,because of its sensory completeness... the fact that it is sound and image... in this powerful fusion... that gets at somethingvery deep within us. filmmakers realized that soundand image didn't just stimulate emotions. they could also influence beliefs. during wwll, the u.s. governmentenlisted hollywood's best. editors and directors brought with themthe same techniques they had used... in fiction films to stir audiencesacross america.
i pledge allegiance to the flag... of the united states of america. the hollywood recruits applied theirskill to american propaganda films... such as why we fight. both german and americanpolitical leaders... recognized how powerfully soundand picture can manipulate audiences. one of the most infamous examplesof film used for political propaganda... was triumph of the will. director leni riefenstahl...
used sound, music,and masterful editing... to make adolf hitler into a god. when the allies went to war againstgermany, british editor charles ridley... re-edited the same footageto turn hitler into a fool. whether used for propagandaor entertainment... these techniques showed how powerfullyediting could shape hearts and minds. i'd seen the german propagandain holland when we were occupied. the methodology of the whole thing is,of course, to show... only one side of reality.
young people from all over the globeare joining up to fight for the future. i'm doing my part. i'm doing my part, too. you know, starship troopers is,style-wise, as a movie... has been influenced consciously by... why we fight in wwii... triumph of the will.i used the leni riefenstahl touch... just to tell the audience this groupof people is not aware of the fact... that they are used by the government...
to give their lives for goals that are... only interesting to the government. fresh meat for the grinder? so, how'd you kids do? i'm going to be a pilot. well, good for you.we need all the pilots we can get. i think the theme of the movie is: "come on, it's great.let's go to war and die." what about you, son?
infantry, sir. good for you. mobile infantrymade me the man i am today. in editing, you can do the same trick.it's all trying to sell us something. manipulation that's done by editing... manipulation doneby the glamorous photography... and by a certain kind of musicthat makes you think... that you are going to heaven or whatever. the manipulation of the elementswithin a film is a very powerful thing. it's almost a sacred thing, in a way,because you're creating effects...
you're creating responses in the audience. editing is manipulation. we're manipulating reality... as the audience sees it, 'cause you wantthe audience to respond in a certain way. whether it's a laugh or a sigh... or a fright... everything's manipulated. some people say, "this director,he's manipulated the audience." well, that's so naivebecause that's all we do, is manipulate.
after wwll, hollywood continuedto make movies the same way it had... before the war. although editors were now unionized... they were viewed, for the most part,as highly skilled mechanics. there was a man named owen marks... he editedthe petrified forest, casablanca... the treasure of the sierra madre,east of eden. his films are immortaland the man is completely unknown. it's sort of symbolic of the way...
editors have been ignored... in the... literature about hollywood. editors worked on cutter's row... and were expected to conformto the established rules of editing. if we were to think about the filmsthat were being made... there was a certain film languagethat was very distinct. certain kinds of coverage. long shot. two-shot.
single, single. there was almost a formulaic wayof presenting films. this film language was very strict. and in editorial terms, there were rules... that one felt could not be broken. a master shot had to come first andthen if you had an over-shoulder... you went to the over-shoulder.you never went to the close-up... till you'd done the whole dance,coming from far to close. for instance, if you were going to havea transition from one place to the next...
it would be done with a dissolve. the next thing you've got to rememberis that a gentleman you meet among... the cold cuts is simply not as attractiveas one you meet... in the mink department at bergdorf's. in the '40s and '50s, the audiencewould expect a character to drive up... you'd show him getting out of the carand he would walk up to the building. then he would open the doorand then the editor would match cut... the door opening on the other side.and he would walk in... and come over and sit down.
- pull up a chair.- thanks. this seemed to me absolutely stupidthat you had to show somebody coming... down the stairs and all the way acrossthe road and up the other side. you knew that they were comingfrom here and they were going to there. why couldn't you just cut directly? in france, a group of film-critics-turned-directors also challenged... the doctrine of invisible editingand launched a revolution among editors. when i first saw the frenchnouvelle vague, i instantly loved it. i loved the idea.i loved the way they edited...
and thought i would like to cut like that. godard used jump cutsbecause it was like, "why not? "nothing interesting's happening inthe middle part so let's go to a jump cut." when i saw breathless, i was staggeredat godard's brutality. what they brought to editingwas a breaking of the rules. whatever books that said, "this is howit had to be done," they burned them. breathless is too hip for me.i come from the lower east side. i'm an italian-american guy.it was, it's too beat, beatnik. it's like, bohemian.
it's too cool. i liked it. i didn't knowwhat the hell was happening in it. you know, when i first sawbreathless in the '60s... it's like, wow. i mean, just in the first five-minutesequence in introducing... jean-paul belmondo's characteras this petty thief... every rule was violated in termsof how long to hold the shots... the discontinuity of what was going on.even screen directions were mixed. and i thought, "either this guydoesn't know what he's doing or he's... "so confident that he has the grammarof film down, that he's trying to show us...
"a new way to use the materialhe has to tell the story." there were some filmsthat really changed our perception... of what... filmmaking was and certainlyit affected what editing was. i think one of those seminal films iscertainly something like bonnie and clyde. some people say i broke those rules first.i certainly did not. i mean, the russians broke those rules... and the germans broke those rules.this was nothing new. but it was new for hollywood.
several editors have hadbig impacts on me, have... influenced my thinking. dede allen certainly is one who hastaught me that. ; "don't be afraid to... "take a chance on doing something thatdoesn't seem like it's going to work." when beatty and faye dunaway getto know each other, they're standing... on a street corner and she says,"i don't believe you rob banks." and he said, "yes, i do, look at my gun,"and pulls it out... and holds it to her on the street corner. and that could easily have been donewith the tilt down to the gun, the pan...
over to her hands fidgetingwith the coke bottle, up to her face... but it was done in,her eyes look from him... down, gun, back to him. it keeps you on edge.there is the excitement. there is the danger.there is the eroticism in not being... able to fully get every momentbecause you're cutting it off. and you are not allowingthe moment to come to fruition. bonnie and clyde was much more violentthan anything we'd done because... the americans like violencemuch more than we do.
well, it was shot in so many wonderfulways because this is the scene that... arthur intended to be... cut in this fashion. the fact that it wasso beautifully executed... right from the very first cut. jerry greenberg was my assistant. and on the last scene, i left jerry alonewith that scene and he did all... the primary editing on that.all i did was tighten it later. again, one is not saying that this was thebeginning of the american new wave...
because one is sure that there weresmaller films before that. but this was the one that,like birth of a nation... which suddenly an audiencesort of said, "wow." bonnie and clyde paved the wayfor films like easy rider. so i had only had one feature undermy belt. we started on easy rider. i was editing while they were traveling. footage was flowing in by the mile. it was great, exciting. it was differentthan anything i'd been involved in. you asshole.
these transitions that everybodyremembers, going from one scene... to the next, where it flashes forwardto the scene, flashes back... to the scene you're in.dennis didn't want a straight cut. i didn't want dissolves.so we kept throwing that around. and it was dennis who cooked partof the idea which was, "what if we... "went and then came back?"and i said, "yeah, but let's do it... "three times."then we finally arrived at the length. each one is six frames. i said, "nowwe can use these whenever we want to." well, as it turned out,it started to become a device.
so we stopped doing that.i said, "no, we aren't going to do that. "we'll only use it in special places."without giving anything away... everybody was stonedwhen they were shooting. i learned soon onthat i could not be stoned and edit. while it was going on,i thought it was grand. then i'd look at it when i was straightand i'd say, "this is awful. "i gotta throw it out and start all over." this film has become an icon. i'm grateful that i hadsomething to do with it.
because i had grown upin the '30s, '40s, and '50s... with movies as they were then. and finally, we were going to run itfor columbia... with leo jaffe, chairman of the board.it ended. there was this long pause.leo finally stands up. then he says: "i don't knowwhat the fuck this picture means. "but i know we're going to makea fuck of a lot of money." one of the things you have to developas an editor...
is a very strong intuition about... where is their attention. and... under most ordinary circumstances... you're carrying that attention around... without doing violence to it. it's like a cup full of liquidthat you're carrying. "i don't want to spill anything." and as a result, people feel the invisibilityof what you're doing.
i often forget that what he actually does... is assemble the film in a technical way... because most of our discussion'sabout: "why aren't we caring as much... "about this character nowas we were two scenes ago? "why have we lost the threadof that character's development? "why does it feellike the end decelerates... "when, in fact,the cutting rhythm is faster?" but a lot of what a director does... is what the immune systemof the organism does...
which is to say, "yes, that's good. "i will allow this to come into the body." or, "no, that's a different blood type. "i don't want that to come in." walter's theories? i'd say, every daywalter shares a theory with me. so they're going up, trying to get awayfrom him before he catches them. then the cavalry come around the corner. and veasey,the philip seymour hoffman character...
realizes that his only chancenow is to yell... and maybe the northernerswill shoot the home guard. and brown shoots him in the back. shoots one of the other guys.and they all roll down the hill. then brown gets shot. and the last image is of inman, our hero... in this pile of bodies. we don't knowwhether he's dead or what. sex scenes, in general, i think,are probably difficult for everyone. difficult for writers, difficult for actors,difficult for directors.
it's the most intimate sort of momentsthat humans can have together... and you're saying, "actually,let's put it on a 40-foot screen... "for a few thousand people." one of the things i wanted to do withbody heat was make a very sexy movie. there had been a whole liberationin american movies in the '60s and '70s... about what you could show. but as that freedom took over... it seemed to me that the movieshad become less erotic. they had become more explicit.
larry really wanted me to bringa woman's sensibility to the film... largely in having it be as implicitas possible as opposed to explicit. after all, eroticism is bornout of what you can imagine... as opposed to what you actually see. that's the difference betweeneroticism and pornography. you need,not just this incredible technician... this artist, but you need a psychologist.someone who can handle you. because a director,in the quiet confines of that room... is like a caged animal.
in that particular scene... we had more footagethat was more explicit... and there was simplyan editorial choice not to show it. the erotic landscape in films,the sexual landscape... is often the hardest to dobecause everybody has an opinion. and everybody has a point of viewabout what's sexy and what's erotic. and it's an odd place to go to,as a filmmaker... partly because it's been trespassed intoso many times by so many other movies. i think it's very eroticwhen you don't see that much.
it was an interesting problemwith out of sight. the way it was writtenwas just one scene in the bar. so i cut the scene where they meet... and he sits down and talks to herand they start flirting. and then the scene in the bedroomwas only shot silently... because it was going to have the dialoguefrom the first scene laid over it anyway. so it didn't work as a scene. then we got the idea, steven soderberghand i, sort of between us... to start intercutting.
we just tried one or two thingsand it started to gel. flashing back,sometimes we flash forward. i would say, "let's do this and cutfrom here and the hands." and he'd say: "let's try overlaying the dialoguehere." we just did it together. it was really exciting. we did this little thingof stopping the frames. it's never really a long freeze.it's just a few frames that we freeze. just heighten the sexual tensionbetween the two of them. it tells a story. it's very emotional.
it's very sexual, i think,without really showing much. some other films i've donehave shown more. . -you went to see her?- to warn her about chino. - so she did help you?- we shouldn't get into that. you know,when they're undressing separately... and we've got odd dialogueover the undressing. nothing to do with whatthey're actually doing. yet, i think... that it's really goodand very good storytelling. this kind of cutting in out of sightand in movies like jfk...
represents a further break fromgriffith's classic style of seamless editing. you gotta start thinkingon a different level, like the cia does. where editors once labored to preservethe illusion of continuous time and space... they now fracture it at will,creating new possibilities for storytelling. ...exactly what he said he was. a patsy. oliver stone is a very wonderful directorfor an editor because... he gives the editor free rein.he says to the editor, "play jazz. "just go free form." there is a scene in jfk where...
oswald walks from a house to a theater... and he said, "when you cut this scenejust make it very chaotic." so i cut the scene in what i thoughtwas a chaotic way... and i showed him the next dayand he said "no, no, no. "it's gotta be way more chaotic than that." since we cut jfk on a three-quarter inchlinear editing system... one thing it had was the abilityto hit these buttons... and change where the edit went. so i sat there and just bangedon the keys like this...
and i showed it to him the next dayand he went, "that's it!" it's in the movie. in xxx, i did havea new editing philosophy. i had been interested in cubism all my life. and one day i was watchingextreme sports videos. somebody will do some amazing stunt. they'll do it in reverse and do it forwardand then they'll do it in reverse. i suddenly thought, "what if i did itin so many angles... "that i didn't care whether you sawthe beginning of a stunt... "from four different angles?"
and the way we would cut ityou would feel... that you were going aroundthe event in pieces... so that by the timethat motorcycle lands... you've actually experienced the jump... almost as if you're on the motorcycle... as opposed to standing backat a safe distance... observing the eventlike you would in real life. this is not real life. this is really relishing...
this action moment... by making a cubist editing approach. another change in editingis the accelerated pace of movies... a subject of controversyamong filmmakers. an encounter with two swords30 years ago... would have been probably done ina master shot and a couple of exchanges. today that encounter could evolveinto 200 shots. split-second eye blink. a blade going into a chest.slight movement of a wrist.
so the audience is taken right down... into this roller-coaster ride of minutiae.and that's what they want. because kids today are raisedon television and then mtv... and commercials... they not only canprocess information faster... and understand what images mean,but that they demand it. i think the mtv generation in the '80skind of... created this style of editing. and billy weber and i on top gun,we were pushed in that direction.
jerry bruckheimer and don simpson werevery much in tune with their audiences. they felt thatthat was what the audiences liked. and i think they were proven right... given the box-officeon some of those early movies. and i mean fast cuttingwas not invented now or with mtv. just look at lou lombardo's workon the wild bunch. sometimes a cutting style is effectiveinside of a movie... to shake you up and rattle your soul. but consistently to have that style...
pounding away at you like a metronomeon high speed for two and a half hours... is a little bit, at least for me,maybe i'm just getting old... but it's a little bit debilitating. now, it doesn't bother my kids. because my kids were raised on30-second commercials and on mtv... and vh1 and they were raisedon video games. i feel like i was born 80and i'm growing backwards. so now i'm somewhere around 27.you know, i get a tattoo... and i'm feeling closerto a generation that has...
learned to absorb informationat a speed that was... heretofore unthinkable... and where their rhythms are well... more hungrythan a traditional narrative pace. what i'm afraid of is the tendencyfor everything to go by quickly. and i'm afraid of what it doesto the culture. a sense of consuming somethingand throwing it away... as opposed to being envelopedwith something. of taking the time to see and experiencetime in a different way.
first, one understands... that he causesmuch of his own suffering needlessly. second, he looks for the reasonsfor this in his own life. to look is to have confidencein one's own ability to end the suffering. finally, a wish arisesto find the path to peace. for all beings desire happiness.all wish to find their purer selves. many times editingis about when not to cut. when to have the silence. when to let the moment be itself.
the musicality of places in the heart,is one of the things that is the strongest. and i don't mean the score. i mean the musicality in the waythat the scenes flow together... the ambienceof that rural texas summer... hot, with the cicadas... and there'sa foursquare protestant feeling. after her husband has been shot by thisdrunk black kid on the railroad tracks... there were no funeral parlors,you couldn't afford one anyway... in the depression...
the body was brought back to the homeand laid out on the dining room table... where they just had sunday dinner. an incredibly moving moment. and we just held on her. we would have been married15 years this october. we had two children... and i never knew till just nowroyce had a scar right there. and it was just exquisite,moving, beautiful. if we had cut it,it would have destroyed everything.
editing is like poetry. it has to dowith rhythms, with visual... it's visual poetry. the digital revolution has furtherenhanced the poetic powers of the editor. george lucas,who began his career as an editor... is one of the pioneersof this new technology. all art is technology.that's the very nature of it. the artist is always bumpingagainst that technology. and the adventof whether it's a new color of blue... whether it's a proscenium arch,whatever it is...
it changes the way we workin that art form. with computer technology, editors nowcan make changes within the frame... adding or removing elementsfrom the original image. this increases the editor's control... but also multipliesthe number of decisions to be made. now you can edit in what i call 3d. which is, you have a scene... and you have people in the sceneand you can cut those people out... you can move them around in the scene.
you can go in for a close-up, go out. you can sort of direct the filmin the editing room... which is, growing up as an editor,what i've always wanted to do. the new technologyalso makes it possible... to cut the movie before shooting begins. pre-visualization gives an editormuch more input in planning the movie. i have a system now, because ofthe digital world, i have a group of kids... who do little videomatics of things.we have a little blue screen. we can send these editors inand shoot scenes...
on just an amateur video camera. so i can actually shoot the filmand make the film and write the film... right there in the editing room. every main character in our moviehas a digital counterpart. we have totally virtual actors nowand we use them quite a bit. mostly we use them for stunts and things. we have a lot of situationswhere it's better to use a digital actor... than it is to use a real actor. christopher lee is 80 years old.
he can't really fight the way he didin attack of the clones. you're not gonna getan artificial-intelligence computer... that's neurotic enough to be able... to understandhow you create a performance. performance is an art. at the end of the day,all this stuff has to work... to tell a story. and if you're not telling a story... it doesn't matter how muchrazzle-dazzle there is.
it's not about the tools,it's about the story. in many ways, we're the last storyteller. the movie's been written by the writerand then it's directed... and then it comes to the last storytellingwhich is in the editing process. the last draft of the screenplayis the first cut of the movie. and the final cut of the movie... is the last draft of the script. an editor can take a sequencethat a director has shot... and reconfigure it so that it becomesa whole different sequence...
which is much more beneficialto the movie. bob fosse referred to meas a collaborator... on his movies and i don't think there canbe a greater compliment for an editor... to be called a collaborator, to really... have that function. and now a word about dykes. pow. i like dykes. how could you say that? lenny was a biographical filmof the comedian lenny bruce...
who was often arrestedfor taking language... to the legal limitsof where it could go in the late '50s. the most wonderful thingthat happened in it... was near the end of the production.we had to show the film to the producer. and the script for the filmwas the best script i ever read. but we were having a problem.we hated the ending. you're trying to stop the information. bailiff, will you please removethis man from the courtroom? it was just not coming together.
when lenny is dragged outof the courtroom... his life is effectively over. between that periodand the time of his death... there were 20 minutes of material.and i turned to bob and i said: "why don't we just kill the son of a bitch?" i took out two reels of film... and i went straight from"you can't stop the information"... to lenny's body on the floor. and that was the most exciting thingi've ever done in a cutting room.
i mean, we just loved that. the opening scene of apocalypseis a good example... of what you can achieve editorially... that is not based on the original script. there were some collisionsof images that occurred to francis... as he was shooting the film... that were at variance with how he hadplanned to begin the film originally. the trees being napalmed wasoriginally shot for the surfing scene... which comes much later in the film.
there was a shot of jungle... bursting into slow-motion flameswith helicopters flying... at odd angles in slow motionthrough the frame. and when francis saw that shot in dailies,which was, i think, simply done... to record this explosion. it wasn't intended to use itin the finished film. but he looked at it and said,"that's the film right there. "jungle, flames, helicopters." the martin sheen characterwas one that was shaped...
very significantly in the editing room. the film itself was shot... with the idea that there would bea narrative glue to hold the film together. what exactly that glue was... and who the characterof the narrator really was... was really not shaped until well intothe post-production process. willard punches the mirror.blood comes out of his hand. all of this is really happening.that's real blood. that's marty sheen. none of that was intended to happen.that was just francis saying. ;
"marty, let's shoot an improvisationwith you trapped in your room... "and what is gonna happen." i think as we worked on the film,we realized... that the film itself was, in its ownstrange way, a kind of modern opera. and the reality of dealing... just in the beginning,with the martin sheen character... was not sufficient to give the audience... not only the emotional statewith which to enter the film... but the visual iconographyof the film itself.
going through the dailies of the film,i collected a number of images... of the cambodian heads,burning images from the end... and worked them inthrough a series of multilevel dissolves... with the burning napalmand the helicopters flying through... and then images of willard's roomand willard asleep... and he's trapped in this nightmare.you have been hearing helicopter sounds... and now you see this ceiling fan... and what you're hearingis the sound of a helicopter. is that coming from his dream?is it a reality?
is somehow that soundcoming from the fan? i remember when i was assemblingthose images... almost jumping away from the editingmachine when i put that sound... with that image... because it seemed to me thatthat fan was making that sound... even though i knew it was impossibleand if it convinced me, who was doing it... it surely would convince others. now they begin to coalesceand they turn into a real helicopter. coming from a fan?
no. and then you hear a real helicopterfly over the room. willard gets up out of bed,goes over to the window and says. ; saigon. shit. all of that, the narration,and the helicopter flying over... and the napalm jungle... is concocted into something... that is a powerful beginning to a film...
not only powerful in and of itself... but powerful in the waythat it sets the stage... for the journeythat this particular film is going to take. obviously, great directors give yougreat material to work with. but the ultimate film that you seeis the edited version... and the editoris greatly responsible for that. i find my work absolutelyfascinating and absorbing. i sat down to work and 30 years went by... without my noticing it.
it's true. when i go into an editing roomin the morning... i edit. my assistant has to remind meit's lunchtime. or steven has to come in and say, "hey,mike, why don't you stop for a while?" because time goes by like that. you're building a whole other world.you're building a whole construct. there's a joy on one levelin that it's like putting a puzzle together. "i have thousands of piecesand how do i tell the story? "and this goes before that.no, that doesn't. "actually, i only need half of that."
the job is not unlikethe talmudic scholar... who goes and sits and arguesabout the book... over and over again,always coming up with new answers... that are just more subtly refinedthan the last answer. to sit in a theater at a previewand to hear an audience laugh... at that moment when you expectthe laugh and it comes back at you... or to hear an audience shufflingand crying because... it's so sad and you expectthat moment to really happen that way... that's so marvelous.
it tells you what power we have. i believe in people being able to learnbecause otherwise, what's the point? we're all gonna, you know,be passed one of these days... and how are we gonna takethis fantastic thing called film... and motion pictures and storytelling... unless we pass it onand teach people how to do it? in the century since edwin porterintroduced editing... editors have emergedfrom their dimly lit back rooms. once anonymous men and women...
they have gradually become principalcollaborators in the filmmaking process. the best-kept secret in the movies,the editor, is finally out. the oscar goes to... thank you. thank you so much. you know, steven gave me... my first editorial advice. i don't knowif you remember this or not, steven... but steven producedi wanna hold your hand, my first movie. i talked to him about a lot of thingsbut when it came to editing he said: "hey, bob, real easy.when in doubt, cut it out."
i've been saying that in the editing room,as you guys know... for all these years. steven also was able to...when i was making that movie... steven had just boughthis first mansion in beverly hills. he said, "hey, i've gotthis great pool house. "you guys don't have to edit on the lotwhere there's no windows... "in the editing rooms.you guys can edit in this pool house." and we said, "hey, that's great." we went in the back of steven's houseand edited i wanna hold your hand...
in the pool house.but this strange thing kept happening. we'd get there in the morningand the editors would pull the reels... off the racks and all the sprocketswould be torn up... and there'd be, like, ripped film. and of course you don't have to,you know... think very far to figure outwhat was really happening. so i asked... steven about it one day and he said,"sometimes i can't sleep... "and so i thought i'd go upto the pool house and run a few reels." but what happens in that editing room?you sit around, you talk about girls.
and you talk dirty.and you lie on the couch. and you enjoy yourself.and you eat chocolate bars. and like i said before,when somebody hears a director coming... you throw everything away andyou stand up straight like you're working... and... that's what editors do. subtitles by aravind b[by_agentsmith@yahoo.com]
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