Chapter 6: Editing

Essay: Evolution of Editing Technology

Mia Goldman: What irrevocable changes do you think the digital revolution has made in our lives as editors?

Dede Allen: It's changed from working in a coal mine where you handle the film and its more physical—to feeling a bit atrophied because you sit all the time and your mind and eyes carry all the weight. When you're on a roll, you don't want to stop, you don't want to get up and walk around. And you don't, unless you're caught in the old dilemma of "how am I going to make this scene work" and you have to get up to pace and think. But mostly you don't get up because it's so fast and easy.

Film editor Dede Allen, in an interview with Mia Goldman for The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine, 2000.

Scissors and Glue

Editor Phillip Martin and poet-screenwriter Carl Sandburg review footage for the nonfiction film Bomber (1941) on an upright editing machine

Consisting of single shots, the earliest films required no editing. When filmmakers began using multiple shots to develop longer and more complicated stories, film editors became essential collaborators in the creative process. In the early silent era, editors were frequently women, such as Dorothy Arzner and Margaret Booth, who "cut" film with scissors or razors and took the edited scenes to a projection room for a director to view and critique. (In the late 1920s, by the way, Arzner moved from editing to directing movies; she was one of the few female directors in the Hollywood studio system of the 1920s and '30s.) In 1924, the first Moviola editing machine was sold to Fairbanks Studios for $125. A small device similar to a projector, the Moviola included a small viewing lens instead of a projection lens and was handcranked. The device allowed editors to move film backward and forward at projection speed or any other speed they could control with their hands. From the late 1920s to the mid 1960s, Moviola dominated the market for film-editing equipment, developing newer motor-driven models that handled sound and picture and accommodated multiple picture takes. They even created miniature devices for World War II journalists and combat cinematographers to use.

From Upright to Flatbed

A Steenbeck flatbed

Film-editing machines such as those first produced by Moviola and other manufacturers were called uprights because the mechanism was organized vertically. The flatbed system, as its name implies, gave the editor a table-like work surface on which film and sound rolls were laid flat on rotating platters. A high-speed electrical motor enabled editors to rewind and fast-forward through long sections of film at higher speeds than was possible with uprights. A prism reflected the film image onto a relatively large screen. Dual screen systems allowed editors to compare raw footage and cut scenes side by side, as well as run multiple audio tracks simultaneously. In addition, the flatbeds' larger viewing screens made it possible for more than one person to review cut sequences. Filmmakers could now review and discuss scenes without going into a projection room. With both the Moviola upright and flatbed systems (manufactured primarily by Moviola and its German competitor, Steenbeck), the editor arranged shots by cutting and taping (a process known as splicing) segments of a "workprint" copy of the original negative. Sound was transferred onto magnetic tape stock of the same gauge as the film stock being edited (either 35mm or 16mm) and cut and taped in much the same way.

A Movie-within-a-Movie Primer on Editing the Old-Fashioned Way

Brian DePalma's Blow Out (1981) - loosely adapted from Michelangelo Antonioni's movie Blowup (1966),  which focused on a still photographer - provides one of the best Hollywood treatments of sound- and picture-editing practices. John Travolta plays Jack, a sound-effects recordist and editor who works on low-budget horror films and television. While recording wind sounds for a sorority-house slasher picture, Jack hears (and records) a car crash into the river below him. He dives in, rescues a prostitute, but is too late to save presidential candidate Governor McRyan. Later, while listening to the recording of the crash, Jack hears an odd explosion, not quite right for a tire blowout. He carefully assembles frames of film shot at the scene by an amateur and published in a magazine, then synchronizes that film with his own sound recording. The result enables him to spot a flash of light (a gunshot?) that coincides with the sound of the supposed blowout. The stills below illustrate key functions in this process, which involves traditional (manual) film editing.

Standing up at the Moviola, viewing the screen	Using the foot pedal to control and stop the film
A good shot of the heavy metal-nearly indestructable Moviola	Using the hand brake to control the film
At the editing table, using a four-gang synchronizer to listen to a magnetic sound track	Using a wax pencil to mark the point where he hears the explosion
Playing picture with sync sound	Spotting a small flash of light between the fence posts just in front of the car-could that be a gun going off?

Enter Digital Editing

The rise of digital, or nonlinear, editing systems began with video systems in the 1970s and accelerated as personal computers became more widely available in the 1980s and '90s. Editors using digital systems never actually touch the film itself. Instead, the processed film is either digitized directly onto computer hard drives or transferred to digital tape stock to be captured onto a computer later. This system allows for manipulation of sound, image, and footage organization and access that was not possible with the older editing systems. For example, editing film on a flatbed allowed for viewing only one version of a cut scene at a time. In order to consider an alternate shot arrangement, an editor had to physically disassemble the original "workprint" version before attempting a new edit. Side-by-side comparisons of multiple edits of the same scenes were impossible. Some editors worry that digital-editing systems allow for so many possible versions of a scene that filmmakers can be overwhelmed by the options. Many editors who have been around long enough to have used several of the various editing technologies maintain that digital-editing systems hasten the movement away from the solitary editor and toward collaborative editing processes that the flatbed systems began. Indeed, Internet bandwidth and digital-editing software for online collaboration allows the editing room of the future to span states, countries, and continents.

With products like Avid Film Composer (a software/hardware system currently selling for $100,000+), Avid Technology has dominated professional digital editing since it first emerged in 1989. But as faster personal computers with larger storage capacity have emerged, innovative companies like Apple have developed software like Final Cut Pro that allow anyone able to afford a Macintosh computer and a $1,299 software package to edit multiple video and audio tracks at home. As a result, countless independent and student films have been edited on Final Cut Pro and similar systems. With Cold Mountain (2003), Academy Award-winning editor Walter Murch became the first editor to cut a major-release feature on Final Cut Pro. Since then, many Hollywood filmmakers have made the switch, most recently David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club) with his 2006 release Zodiac.

Direct cinema, the French New Wave, and other movements that profoundly shaped the future of cinema were spurred by greater access to cinematic tools. With the same sophisticated post-production technology increasingly in the hands of both industry professionals and independent artists, audiences can look forward to another new wave of creative voices and cinematic styles.

 

FOR FURTHER READING

Avid Technology Inc.

Dancyger, Ken. The Technique of Film and Video Editing: Theory and Practice. Boston: Focal Press, 1997.

Goldman, Mia. "Dede on Digital." The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine 21:3 (2000).

Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing. New York: Silman-James Press, 1995.

Rosenblum, Ralph. When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins. DeCapo Press, 1986.

David Fincher, Walter Murch, and others discuss Final Cut Pro
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/profiles/