13
Psychiatry of Character Disorders—Part II
► Performance
Having discovered how best to arrange a dialogue scene, one is still left with the overriding concern of performance. There are many decent actors, but a few are truly spectacular. Some are basically self-directed, while others benefit from the determined and dedicated attention of the film’s director. A film consists of many characters, and some are better realized or better performed than others. Once the scene is shot, it is up to the editor to make sure that the best performance is obtained. Some actors deliver their lines with amazing consistency. They’ve studied their part and know exactly what they’re going for, beat by beat. In that regard, they’ve mapped out the entire scene so they know what they’re feeling at each moment, from the beginning through the middle and into a new realization by the scene’s conclusion. This, coupled with the director’s choice of angles and camera movement, knit together to form the dialogue scene. In I Am Sam (2001) Richard Chew utilized erratic, disjointed cuts combined with handheld camerawork and the intense performances of Sean Penn as Sam Dawson, a developmentally disabled father of a smart daughter, and Michelle Pfeiffer, his pro bono lawyer, to project an impression of their tumultuous but sympathetic relationship.
Tracking the Beats
Actors often aim for actions that they want to accomplish in order to fuel the emotional life of a character. For instance, in one scene the actor may attempt to kill with words. In another she may want to seduce, or frighten, or hurt. The performance is like a road sign, signaling the editor to turn left here, slow down there, and stop here. Likewise, when film composers construct a musical score, they not only think in terms of the rhythmic pulse of a composition but in terms of the story’s plot beats. These alter the composer’s tempo or melody at various junctures in the scene, just as actors take their cues from the story’s twists and turns.
But what about less experienced or talented actors? What about performances that go awry for various reasons, such as poor directing or clumsy writing? For whatever reason—and the reason is of little concern to the editor—editors must sometimes deal with performances that fall well below optimum. How does the editor craft a lackluster performance into something worthwhile, even moving, and if neither of those, something that isn’t laughable or obtrusive? There are many approaches to saving a performance. These include substituting dialogue readings, rerecording new readings, minimizing impact by shot size and selection, trimming or removing pauses, trimming or removing exposition, and so on.
Case Study
There are also the Hollywood factors that ignore true abilities in service of other considerations, such as hiring the producer’s brother or the director’s girlfriend. In One-Eyed Jacks (1961) the lead actor, Marlon Brando, who happened to be the biggest star in the world at the time, had a girlfriend. He expected to recruit her as his ingénue in the romantic role. When, among other initial suggestions for the role, the star tossed in her name, the original director, a young Stanley Kubrick, retorted, “Her? She can’t act!”—which, in short, is why Stanley Kubrick didn’t direct One-Eyed Jacks and Marlon Brando did.
Substitution
The tendency among actors is to give their finest performances in their close-ups though many professionals strive for the best possible readings no matter what the camera angle. Along with effective camera angles, the actor’s body language and movements also play an important part. But the line reading in the wide angle may fall far below the performances in the closer shots. In this case, it is wise to determine the very best reading of the line, no matter what angle it was shot at, and then use that reading to replace the lesser quality performance in the wide shot.
This serves two purposes. First, it enhances the overall condition of the acting by preserving only the best performance. Second, it creates consistency in audio quality. Since wide shots are sometimes recorded using shotgun microphones mounted outside camera range, the sound quality has a different resonance than those where the microphone is close to the speaker’s mouth. In some cases this isn’t disconcerting because the audience anticipates a certain shift in ambience when the view widens. On the other hand, a threshold exists where the sound’s deterioration becomes distracting.
Doctor’s Note
Lavaliers, those tiny microphones hidden beneath an actor’s clothing, are popular because they can supply superior sound when sent through radio transmitters. But they risk distortion from clothing movement or radio interference, and the editor must attend to that.
In the case of close-up dialogue that is cheated into the same actor’s lips in a wide shot, the editor is almost guaranteed better sound quality and performance. Any slight perspective shift can be supplied in the final mix through the use of reverb and equalization. To accomplish the substitution, the editor relies on the consonants in the speech. Since letters like P, G, and K contain an innate percussion, they become like oral clapper sticks for a sound edit. What does this mean? Traditionally, in syncing sound to the picture, the editor locates the sharp snap of the sticks closing on the slate with the visual action on the film. At the moment the two sticks meet, she places the corresponding sound. Once these two are locked together, everything after the slate will be in sync until the end of the take. With sound effects, a door slam or gunshot is also placed right at the moment of impact or ignition seen in the action.
Dialogue works the same way. In dialogue, a consonant forms a specific shape on the lips. P tends to pucker, G tends to unfurl the lips and expose the teeth, and K separates the teeth. When the corresponding sound is placed next to this image, it acts as a reference point. Everything after that will fall into sync. Using the trim tool in overwrite mode, the editor then backfills from the sync point to the beginning of the word or sentence.
When cutting on celluloid it is necessary to mark the consonant on the sound film and then mark the corresponding frame on the workprint, then line up the two, backspace to the beginning of the line, and then cut straight across, substituting the new sound film for the old soundtrack. Once this is accomplished, the two can be locked into step using sprocketed wheels, as in a synchronizer or the KEM. On a nonlinear system it’s even easier. As with the previous method, you locate the strongest consonant sound in the Source monitor, locate the same word on the Record monitor, lock them together using the gang function, and cut straight across.
The Cutaway
One of the greatest saviors of dialogue editing is the cutaway. Normally conceived of as an overlapping line of dialogue combined with a reaction shot, a distinction arises based on intent. Where a simple overlap of dialogue is standard procedure with well-shot, well-performed footage, in the case of film doctoring the cutaway to a reaction becomes the tool for salvaging inferior material.
An example of this occurs in poorly trained or poorly rehearsed actors who forget their lines, thereby stumbling through them. Or it can arise in the case of well-trained actors who incline toward weighty, meaningful but deadly pauses and excessive emphasis. One time I had the privilege of producing and editing a film involving an Academy Award–winning actor who was along in his years. He still brought the same charm and color to his performance, but he experienced difficulty remembering his lines and had to pause frequently, often requiring a cue from the script supervisor. In editing his performance my opportunity to cut away to other actors or even to the environment made all the difference. While the actor was on point, I would stay with him, but the moment his performance began to waver, I would cut away to the listener. Then, while the speaker was off camera, I was able to cut out any pause and tighten up the reading or replace a misreading with a proper one. Since this surgery occurred invisibly, one might even say arthroscopically, by virtue of the fact that the words didn’t have to sync with the speaker’s lips but were hidden behind another’s reaction in the cutaway, the sense was one of total fluidity. Once the actor was back on track, I returned to his coverage.
Proceeding in this manner created a surprisingly fine performance, and no one ever knew the difference. Of course, the only drawback came from the fact that the editor was compelled to cut away based on the need to dodge problems rather than motivated by an emotional need to see a reaction. It was rather like the difference between driving on a sunny day and driving in bad weather. If you’re alert, you have a good chance of making it to your destination, but you’ve had to do a lot more work along the way. Fortunately in this case it was possible, by combing through multiple takes and readings, to bring the emotional need and the technical requirement into alignment.
Checking the Pulse
The process of hiding dialogue cuts behind cutaways to another character’s reaction remains an excellent way to enhance a scene’s pace by truncating excessive dialogue or pauses. When possible, it is advisable to let the actor’s performance influence the scene’s rhythm, especially when working with well-trained or experienced actors. On the other hand, some well-regarded actors come off well because of the editor’s involvement.
Words Like Skin Tags
Another odd trait that crops up now and again is the tendency for actors to add a word or two to the beginning of a dialogue line. Ancillary words and phrases such as “You know,” “Well … ,” and so on don’t usually appear in screenplays because they’re considered superfluous and time wasters. But some actors insist on adding them. They are as useless as skin tags and should be excised. As with their biological counterparts, their removal makes for a smoother feel. For some actors the added words give them a running start, so by the time they hit the actual line they’re up to speed or in character. For the most part it is important to cut these out. I have known some directors who, aware of how these false starts can aid a performance, actually give an actor a word or even a sentence to say before the important scripted line. Again, in this case, the editor should refer to the script and cut out what shouldn’t be there, unless specifically instructed to leave it in.
Improvisation
Improvised readings are a different case. Here, in an attempt to develop or enrich an emotion, to free up the actor’s delivery, or to experiment with something new and unexpected, the director will encourage the actor to improvise the lines based on an understanding of the scene’s overall meaning and intention. Some directors, especially those who are also writers and know the effort involved in finding just the right word to convey information, reject any attempt at improvisation and will even remind actors, “Just read what’s on the page.”
In the case of improvisation, it becomes the editor’s task, sometimes in consult with the director, to determine the best approach and build a coherent scene from the various takes. The beautifully cut driving scene in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day (2001) where a veteran narcotics cop, Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), initiates his partner Jake (Ethan Hawke) into an acceptance of the law’s gray area consisted, according to its editor Conrad Buff, of frequently improvised footage that had to be tailored to fit the scene.1
An issue that comes up when cutting improvised dialogue is the drastic variability of performance from take to take. Here it becomes important to determine beforehand where you want to end up and fashion the scene so it contains a natural arc, rather than flatlining with one emotion or erratically jumping from peak to valley throughout. With this in mind, it sometimes helps to cut the end of the scene first so you’ll have a target to aim toward. Knowing how the scene will end informs where it will begin. If a scene needs to end on a high emotional note, then it might be best to start with more restraint. If a scene will end in a quiet, romantic kiss, maybe it should capitalize on a more fiery or impassioned improv in the beginning.
Bingeing
Another dialogue challenge originates with the script. Screenwriters occasionally introduce extra character description and even dialogue because they want to supply the reader with a vivid sense of the characters and their intentions by taking advantage of this literary component, aware that much of the information will later be clear through visual representation. Convinced that this material will enrich the script’s marketability, writers sometimes binge when it comes to supplying conversation. Some writers expect that portions of dialogue will be removed later as the text is transformed into the visual medium of film, although they are often at a loss to tell you exactly which ones they would cut out. Others, who must adhere to deadlines that restrict revision time or who are not good enough editors, will pile on extra dollops of dialogue. In some cases it may reflect the writer’s state at the time. In the process of conceiving a scene, the writer allows the dialogue to unfold until it discovers the essential point of the scene, which is probably where it needed to begin in the first place. In such instances, the film editor slogs through scenes that, while they make sense, are tedious. They hover around an idea or central conflict without diving into it. Here, perhaps in consultation with the director, the editor begins the task of trimming out or rearranging excessive dialogue.
Case Study
An example of dialogue restructuring that I presented at a forum at the Sundance Film Festival involved one of my earliest editing experiences on the film Horseplayer (1990), a noir-like thriller directed by Kurt Voss. The dialogue, an otherwise outstanding feature of the movie, paled in one particular scene when compared with the others. In the scene preceding the one in question, the artist/antagonist (Michael Harris), hunching over his drawing table with cigarette in mouth, orders his girlfriend, Randi (Sammi Davis), to fleece Bud the horseplayer (Brad Dourif) of $2000. At first she resists, but eventually she submits to the artist’s exhortations. Upon her agreement the artist leans over and plants a kiss on her lips, a payment for her loyalty. The next scene opens with Randi seated beside Bud in his old car at the L.A. River. They’re engaged in small talk. She asks him if he comes here to think, and he says he does. She asks him what he thinks about and he says that he doesn’t know, he just zones out, and so on. Not terribly dramatic. The true substance of the scene occurs a page later when Randi says, “I want to ask you something,” and requests the two thousand dollars. At that point Bud reacts, surprised and chagrined. Initially he states that he doesn’t have the money. Eventually he succumbs and says, “But I can get it.” Like the previous scene, this one ends with the reward of a kiss.
The challenge in editing such a scene was that even though the director and producers agreed that the opening dialogue didn’t fulfill a crucial purpose and therefore could be eliminated, cutting directly into the middle of the scene would’ve appeared too abrupt. Upon considering this, I realized that the kisses could act as a transitional device. Why not steal the kiss from the ending of the L.A. River scene and place it at the beginning of that scene? This way it would create an associative cut, a smooth transition from one scene to the other. Since we’d seen the couple in bed together in a previous scene, there was no need to save the kiss until the end, as one might in a story arc where two people fall for each other and finally give in to corporeal desires. Placing the kiss at the beginning meant that the girlfriend kissing her boyfriend segued to the girl kissing the horseplayer. Visually, it said much more than any dialogue could. It created symmetry with the other scene by associating the ending of the last with the beginning of the next scene. It reinforced the conflict between the world of the horseplayer and the world of the artist. And it placed the girlfriend in the middle of the conflict. After deciding on this course of action—all before making even one cut—the only remaining challenge was to pull the couple apart following the kiss. After all, that’s where the dialogue would now begin. Since the kiss was originally designed to end the scene, there existed no coverage of Bud and Randi completing the kiss, then pulling apart in order to begin their dialogue.
This was remedied by reversing the action. Playing one of the kissing shots backward supplied the necessary pull apart. In this way the scene began with a 2-shot through the car windshield of the couple kissing, mirroring a similar pose to the couple in the previous scene, then a tighter cut to an over-the-shoulder shot of Bud kissing Randi. This was followed by a cut to an over-the-shoulder on Randi. Since her shot had been reversed, the static part of the kiss played as normal, but after a moment she eased away and looked into Bud’s eyes. (In the original shot, it began with a look then, leaning forward, Randi planted a kiss on his lips.) At that point, before it would continue to reverse and give away the trick, I cut to Bud’s look and then to Randi’s line, “I need to ask you something.” With this revised opening, the audience sensed that Bud and Randi had come down to this questionably romantic spot on the seedy shore of the L.A. River to make out. After the initial foreplay—a much more interesting prospect than idle chatter—she popped the money question. After that, the scene evolved exactly as written, ending with another kiss and finally a wide shot of the car framed by the urban river’s graffitied concrete abutments, accompanied by the haunting saxophone score by Garry Schyman (Lost in Africa and video games Dante’s Inferno and BioShock). In the end, the two kissing scenes played well together, and no one could imagine that they hadn’t been originally conceived this way.
Tech Note
Today, on nonlinear systems, reversing action is easy to do. One merely accesses the motion effect or motion tab, places a minus sign in front of the 100% speed allocation, hits “enter,” and watches as the clip runs backward. On film it’s harder. If one were to turn the film around, splicing the foot of a shot where the head normally goes, the film would run backward, but the image would appear upside down. Only by handing the material over to a laboratory where the film frames can be re-photographed—but in reverse order on an optical printer—can this be accomplished. Either way, reversing the action through editing can solve some problems.
In Good Shape
The ability to shape performance remains one of the main attractions of feature film editing. Commercials, music videos, and documentaries generally do not offer this aspect of craft to the editor. Their requirements vary, offering intriguing challenges but usually not the depth of feeling. For those who feel drawn by character and a character’s relationship to story as it emanates from the internal and external struggles of human beings, the narrative film holds precedence. When considering character it is important to realize that the drama springs from three main conflicts.
First is the conflict of person against person, as in many martial arts films at the most basic level, where the characters actually go mano a mano with each other. Most action films present this sort of conflict. In Taken (2008), for instance, a distraught but well-trained father fights human traffickers to gain the safe return of his daughter. In the sci-fi and fantasy realm, the Spiderman, Harry Potter, and Star Wars films often capitalize on this kind of conflict. More subtle and complex issues also arise from this kind of conflict, such as in No Country for Old Men (2007). By extension this can include human against machine as in Transformers or human against monster as in Alien (1979).
A second hotbed for conflict is human against nature, as seen in such films as 2012 (2009), Into the Wild (2007), and The Perfect Storm (2000). In these films the natural world challenges the adventurer or the one who has not heeded nature’s demands.
The third main category is person against himself. Many dramas deal with this sort of conflict, such as The Aviator (2004), American Beauty (1999), or There Will Be Blood (2007). While most popular films deal with the first two types, no good film is immune to the third type. Even if it is not the main plot focus, this inner struggle should manifest within the film. In this regard, Star Wars, with Luke’s struggle to overcome the dark side and use the force to guide him, or Clarice’s struggle with the uncertainties that have caused her to fall prey to Hannibal Lecter’s influence in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), brings deeper meaning to these engaging stories. Recently, the inner struggle has found its way into films that in the past neglected, for better or worse, to deal with this aspect, such as the James Bond series. Part of the joy of film editing derives from finding those superb inner moments, subtle yet revealing, when a character shows us a glimpse into his or her inner life.
RX
When cutting improvised dialogue, the editor must attend to shifts in tone, emphasis, rhythm, and structure. Unlike scripted dialogue, which often has the advantage of careful rewriting and attention to detail that connects with the overall story, improvised dialogue tends to go off on riffs and tangents, like well-played jazz. Its advantage resides in its spontaneity and originality.