21

Post-Mortem

► From Final Cut to Exhibition

Since this is the last chapter, it is appropriate to say a few words about endings. The question arises, “What is more important, the beginning or the ending of a film?” Some believe that the beginning holds the most significance, since at that moment the filmmaker has an opportunity to engage the audience, to get them involved with the characters and conflict that will follow. Others, however, believe that the ending is the more important aspect of a film because what happens there will remain with the audience after they leave the theater.

At the beginning of a film an audience is primed and attentive—that is, assuming they haven’t been worn out by the avalanche of television-style advertising that has infiltrated motion picture theaters in recent years. At the start of the film a viewer watches and listens, attentive to the rules and values of this new world he has entered. In this regard, audiences will usually tolerate slow or even confusing openings. They assume that if they hang in there, all will eventually be revealed. By the time they reach the end, however, they expect to understand what the story is about, to feel empathy for the characters and to experience a satisfying resolution. Maybe even a revelation, an epiphany. Not all movies have happy endings, but good movies have satisfying resolutions. The ending will have a direct relationship to issues raised at the beginning of the film, as they relate to genre.

In the case study of the Christmas movie Prancer in Chapter 3, we examined the first half of the ending which was altered in the final editing process. Following the farewell between Jessie (Rebecca Harrell) and Prancer, the reindeer disappears into the woods. But that is not the final ending. One more beat has to occur before the film ends. Originally, this was left equivocal. Jessie and her father (Sam Elliott) wander out to the edge of the forest and discover the reindeer’s hoof prints in the snow, leading to the edge of a cliff. “He couldn’t have jumped and lived,” says Jessie. “Maybe he flew,” replies her father. In that moment we realize that the once skeptical and detached father has gravitated to his daughter’s viewpoint while the innocent believer, Jessie, has gained some skepticism.

But the answer as to what really happened to Prancer was left inconclusive. In the original version, as the father and daughter stare upward into the empty night sky, they—and the audience—were left to wonder if Prancer really belonged to Santa’s team. The question was never answered. In other genres this may be appropriate, but not in a Christmas movie where the audience has come to anticipate something magical, an epiphany, a reaffirmation of the season. In spite of the fact that we had to finalize the cut, I continued to contend that the audience—which would consist primarily of children—needed to have an answer. Imagine if the filmmakers never revealed who was behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

To promote this concept I agreed to return to the editing room and review the scene with the director and producer in the middle of the night—they had earlier engagements that evening—before the film was locked. The concept was that Jessie should gaze up into the sky as a glow passes over her face; she should see a tiny spark of light arching through the firmament toward a team of reindeer crossing the full moon; the light should join a gap among the other reindeer and then transform into the eighth reindeer, returning Prancer to his rightful place.

After much discussion, we finally agreed to go with this more definitive and, I felt, satisfying ending.

Through editing and the use of simple visual effects it was possible to alter the film’s outcome. This enchanting ending, elegantly tempered by the darker, more serious tone that the director brought to the film, added a crucial extra beat, fulfilling the audience’s expectations and the story’s promise. With the use of shot selection, juxtaposition, sound, and visual effects, the movie’s equivocal conclusion became a magical ending consistent with the film’s genre. The film became a hit.

Audiences expect that the couple hours they devote to watching a movie will be worthwhile. They hope not to be disappointed. Motion pictures, like all stories, are a way of bringing order to our lives. In our daily struggles and triumphs, few of us experience the tidy, concise, and well-structured progression of events that a movie presents. A successful ending supplies the audience with answers and a sense of coherency that our lives often lack. In the following examples, we see how knowing when to end, as well as finding the proper ending, can make all the difference in a film’s success.

Made in Heaven

Made in Heaven (1987), directed by Alan Rudolph and starring Tim Hutton, Kelly McGillis, and Debra Winger (along with a slew of cameos ranging from Neil Young and Tom Petty to the cartoonist Gary Larson), took well over a year and a half to complete. Part of the reason it took so long resided in the difficulty of discovering the correct ending for the picture. It was really quite a simple story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again and marries her. The twist was that they met in heaven, and, since the girl was a new soul—she was made in heaven—it was her turn to travel to earth for the first time. Mike Shea (Tim Hutton) convinces Emmett (Debra Winger)—the writers were careful not to call her God—to send him back to earth, as Elmo Barnett, to find Ally Chandler (Kelly McGillis), his true love. The deal is if he finds her within 30 years, they will be together forever. If not, they will never see each other again and Elmo will be returned to heaven.

As the film develops Elmo and Ally cross paths, live separate lives, fall in and out of love with the wrong people, and eventually both end up in New York City. Elmo, on his 30th birthday, has just celebrated a record deal. On his way down Fifth Avenue, he encounters Ally. As his and Ally’s eyes meet, a car sideswipes Elmo. What?! This shocked a lot of test audiences, and not in a good way.

In the first version, as Elmo’s body sprawls on the pavement, his soul is sucked back up to heaven, where Emmett informs him that he’ll be okay because she found him in time. But some studio executives did not feel this was enough, so they paid to shoot additional scenes where Elmo is placed in an ambulance and transported to the hospital in critical condition. At the hospital doctors fight to save his life. Finally he regains consciousness and is moved to a private room. Ally, having seen the accident, arrives to check on him. As Elmo and Ally speak, they recognize their love for each other and the music rises. This also fell flat with audiences.

In the final version, the additional scenes were cut out. So was the original ending with the car hitting Elmo. So was an expensive, well-choreographed crane shot weaving in all the main characters. What became clear was that a deal was a deal. Once the two lovers found each other, the movie was over; extending the movie past that point with the false jeopardy of an accident was a waste of time and a frustration to the audience.

Affairs of the Heart

Affairs of the Heart (1987), a film about a middle-aged family man, Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), who has an extramarital affair that comes back to haunt him in the guise of Glenn Close, originally suffered from a lackluster ending. In its original incarnation, which was never released in theaters, homicide detectives appear at Dan Gallagher’s home to arrest him for the murder of Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). After the police escort Dan away, his wife runs into the house to call the family lawyer. As she waits on the line, her eyes wander to a cassette tape tucked inside the address book. On the tape she sees the words “Play me.” She pops the tape in the cassette player and is treated to the suicidal confession of the woman whom her husband was said to have murdered. She jumps up and calls to her daughter, “Come on, honey, we’re going to go get Daddy.” A nice, neat ending.

Originally, this ending must have seemed like the perfect conclusion to the story: Even though Dan Gallagher is initially arrested for murder, it turns out that everything is going to be okay because the woman who has been stalking him and threatening his family has eliminated herself from the picture. To top it off, she has generously left a tape announcing her intentions. On the surface this conclusion appears to have tied up all the story’s loose ends. On paper it worked well enough to sell the script. But, according to John Wiseman, former VP of Post Production for Paramount Pictures, it did not play well with test audiences.¹ Every time the studio previewed it, the film failed. The ending proved a perfect example of telling, not showing. Audiences needed to see the solution, not just hear about it.

Ultimately, the filmmakers ended up rewriting, reshooting, and reediting a new ending, one that embodied the visual power of cinema rather than relying on the written and spoken word. They created an ending that fulfilled the expectations set up by the story and by the genre. And they gave the film a new title—Fatal Attraction.

The new ending brought the characters into direct conflict with each other. They went mano a mano. There was no easy way out. The forces of good and evil battled to the death. And the film became a huge hit.

► Reediting

Stories aren’t just written; they’re rewritten. Films aren’t just edited; they’re reedited. That is one of the aspects that makes storytelling different from life. Unlike life, where revision amounts to not making the same mistake a second time, storytelling offers the opportunity to rework decisions, actions, conversations, and their consequences until you get it right. On the other hand, as Joseph Campbell pointed out, when people look back over the course of their lives, there seems to be a kind of order, coherency, and, hopefully, refinement. In this way stories mirror life. They are life with all the dull and tangential parts cut out. That is the job of the editor: to take these life stories—tales of loss and victory, isolation and love, injustice and righteousness, despair and hope—and craft them into lean, coherent, effective movies.

When you begin the rough cut, you sketch in the story and dialogue through the careful selection of shots. At first you keep your critical faculties at bay. You don’t want to hamper the creative process by trying to make the perfect cut from the start. You keep it loose. Ernest Hemingway used to say, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Your first cut may be that way too. But before you show it to anyone, you’ll fix it.

With experience you learn to follow your initial impulses, not to rein in your ideas too tightly. You know when it is bad, when a cut isn’t working, but you keep moving. When you finish, you put it aside for a couple hours, or maybe a couple days. Then you go back to it. Upon review you see clearly what works and what doesn’t. What seemed well honed at the end of a long day of editing will expose a deluge of flaws in the light of the next morning, or days later. You make changes. You apply that critical eye and ear that you’d held at bay during the first assembly. You consider the steps that make for a healthy edit and apply them. The cut improves. Before you finally show it to the director, you have refined the cut many times.

Based on the director’s response, he or she will give notes, sometimes minimal, sometimes extensive, regarding what the cut needs to make it better. At that point the editor and director work together to polish the film. In recutting the film, editor and director come up with fresh ideas, substitute new shots for previous ones, move scenes around, and imagine new approaches to telling the story. In some cases the ending might replace the beginning. Or a favorite character might disappear because his involvement didn’t connect with the overall story. At this stage all the adjustments that had been postponed, such as trimming out an entrance or an exit, will occur. This will help improve the film’s pace and rhythm. After the editor has made every possible refinement that he and the director can conceive of, the film is ready to head into the final stage of the process.

The Free-for-All

This movie that the editor has nourished, cared for, and coddled since it was only a few takes old is now ready to go out into the world. With the completion of the director’s cut, the editing room doors open, and all the other major players (the producers, the studio executives, the distributors, etc.) march in with their opinions. Not only that, but people whom the editor and director have never met and will never see again have opinions as well. They have opinions about your film. And, in a sense, that is as it should be, because movies are made for audiences.

So, editor and director endure the recruited screenings where friends and family or the general public are invited to watch their film and to say what they think. If the screening goes well, the test audiences will laugh at the funny parts, cry at the poignant moments, and cheer at the end. But not always. There’s always someone who says, “It stinks,” even if it’s Gone With the Wind (1939).

The audience surveys involving the general public are sometimes referred to as the cards. “We’re doing the cards this weekend,” producers will say. The cards are the questionnaires that the test audience fills out at the end of the film. They ask questions like “Would you recommend this film to a friend?” or “Were you satisfied with the ending?” After those results are tallied and evaluated by a research group, they are reported to the producer and director. There are score boxes ranging from excellent to poor. The goal is to have 90% or more favorable rating in the first two boxes.

Some filmmakers dislike this part of the process. It can be painful. It can be humiliating. And, most disturbingly, it can be wrong. But often it’s not, and the job of the filmmakers is to cull out the pertinent opinions from the irrelevant ones. Asking recruited audiences to tell you how to fix the film would be wrong. That’s not their job. Their job is to respond by filling out the survey at the end of the screening and to respond during a focus group discussion.

Audience responses span the gamut from elated to devastated. After the first screening of Affairs of the Heart, some audience members actually hissed at the screen. When it later returned to the screen, cloaked in a new name and with a new ending, Fatal Attraction made motion picture history as one of the biggest hits of that decade.

One of the most valuable aspects of screening rough cuts for an uninitiated audience comes from the clarity achieved. After having seen various versions over and over again, it becomes difficult for the editor and director to maintain objectivity. As Richard Pearson explains, “You’re filling in blanks that the audience doesn’t… . You may think things are tracking when they’re not.”² An audience may think that a particular look means something that it doesn’t. In Red Dawn (2012), for example, a character gets shot in the leg. Because of the physical reaction and the gun used, the test audience believed he’d been mortally wounded when, storywise, he was just supposed to be hit in the leg and survive. Sorting through the intended message and the audience’s perception of it remains an important aspect of editing and film doctoring. Along with this, there are other places where an audience’s response can be revealing, such as in understanding the stakes, correctly perceiving the physical blocking, or engaging with the rhythm.

Film surveys are a measuring process. In that regard it is important to keep in mind that they reflect statistical models, and they can be wrong. Just as a 50/50 chance cannot be determined consistently with ten tosses of a coin—it could end up 90% heads and only 10% tails—a large enough sample can make the percentages clear. With 10,000 coin tosses the chances are good that half the coins land heads up.

Filmmaking is a numbers game. If you only submit a script to three agents, each of whom rejects it, you may feel that your well-written script isn’t worth the effort, and give up. But if you send your script to 30 agents you have a much better likelihood of acceptance.

Another aspect that influences test screenings is known as regression-to-the-mean. If the first preview screening goes stunningly well and everyone is congratulating themselves, there is a good chance that the second screening will be less rewarding. After the lesser screening, a sense of panic ensues, people are yelled at or fired or a film doctor is called. At minimum, stark new resolutions are made. Some notes will help, some will not. Regardless, the next screening will often go better than the second.

The filmmakers conclude that whatever they did had a positive effect, even in something as ineffective as yelling at a PA or firing the director. In many cases it had less effect than one believes. In reality the surveys have regressed toward the mean, which is the most likely estimation of the film’s actual quality. This does not imply that editors and directors should avoid test screenings. Or that they can’t make positive changes in a film. On the contrary, test screenings are very helpful. But it is important to keep things in perspective.

► The End Is Near

After many test screenings to friends, family, and associates, or to unrelated audiences in distant cities, no more major objections arise. Almost overnight the intense scrutiny, prescriptions, and predictions come to an end. The picture is given a clean bill of health. It is locked.

The time has come to hand the movie over to the crews who will take it to the final stage of completion. It is like an excellent general practitioner referring his patient to other specialists. On a film these include the sound editors, the effects crew, and the composer. Some of these specialists, such as the visual effects crew, will have been on the film since the beginning. Others, such as the composer, may be seeing the movie for the first time. But one of the first questions they ask is, “Is the picture locked?” From here on, it will be more expensive and time-consuming to make changes.

► After the Hard Labor: Delivery

The time has come to deliver the film. For independent filmmakers that may mean completing a DCP or Blu-ray that can be shopped at film markets such as the American Film Market, Cannes, or the Hong Kong FILMART. Or they may enter the movie in any of the hundreds of film festivals, such as Sundance, Toronto, or Tribeca. In either case the movie must look and sound as good as possible, since it will be judged on its presentation.

For films that are produced by studios or that already have a distribution deal, the editor and postproduction supervisor are responsible for fulfilling the delivery requirements that have been previously negotiated with the distribution company. These delivery lists can be daunting, and it is important to be aware of what is being asked for. Delivery lists can run up to 20 pages or more, giving exact specifications for the motion picture that is being turned over to the distributor. For movies shot on film these items can include the original cut negative or digital master; dailies; trims; IP (interpositive), IN (internegative), or DI (digital intermediate); soundtrack negative; Dolby masters; M&Es (music and effects tracks); lined script; composer’s cue sheets; composer’s music masters; fully timed answer print; check print; video masters; audio master tapes; and corresponding elements for the trailer. For films that originated on high-definition video the list may be shorter, and include such items as DCPs, Blu-rays, digital mix tracks with LTRT stereo and stems for 5.1, 7.1, or higher, as well as the supporting documents.

But how do all these elements fit together in the end? Accompanying this chapter is a breakdown of the workflow. Keep in mind that the work that was once united on the editing system is broken down into separate audio and video elements that are split off for the different departments. Now they must be delivered. Celluloid release prints have all but disappeared. Even movies that are shot on film eventually make their way into a digital format. In the past, the editor and her assistant would create a negative cut list to be given to the negative cutter but these days they generally provide a project file or an EDL for online conforming of the cut to a high-definition digital intermediate.

The digital media is delivered to theaters on hard drives known as DCPs or from Cloud drives, or transmitted via satellite or fiber-optic cable.

The following is a breakdown of the workflow with which every filmmaker should be familiar. It incorporates current file-based workflow as well as traditional film-based procedures.

• Film: Original camera negative.
• Video: Ultra high-definition video card.
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• Film: Scanned to digital video.
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• Video: Inputted into the nonlinear editing system at less than full resolution, often as a linked file that is later transcoded.
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• Video: Editor cuts the movie in nonlinear digital realm.
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• Film: Editor outputs a negative cut list, or edit decision list, along with timecoded reference QuickTime from nonlinear video editing system.
• Video: Editor outputs an EDL or nonlinear project file, along with a QuickTime reference movie with timecode burn-in, and AAF files for audio.
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• Film and Video: Sound editors build tracks for final mix using digital workstations, such as ProTools, and composer creates score for final mix.
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• Film: Negative cutter conforms negative to the picture editor’s workprint or cut list. Alternatively, a digital master is conformed directly from an EDL.
• Video: The offline editor’s project file is onlined at maximum resolution and then color- graded to produce a digital intermediate (DI).
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• Film: The cut negative is timed (corrected for color and density) at the film lab to produce an answer print.
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• Film: Timed color negative is printed to an interpositive (IP) or digital intermediate (DI).
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• Film: Internegative (IN) is struck from the IP or DI.
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• Film: Check print is made from the IN.
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• Film: Final digital sound mix is transferred to a soundtrack negative.
• Video: Final digital sound mix is married to the digital intermediate.
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• Film: Multiple release prints are produced from the IN combined with the soundtrack negative.
• Video: A DCP, Blu-ray, or other digital delivery system is created from the digital intermediate.

Figure 21.1 35 mm release print

Note: Though not immediately apparent, this filmstrip contains four soundtracks. The track with the waveform is Dolby SR. The gray area between the upper sprocket holes is Dolby Digital. And the stripes on the outer edges of the film support SDDS. A fourth format, DTS, is encoded next to the Dolby SR waveform. It appears as white dashes, and syncs to a CD-ROM.

In the final mix all the various tracks are blended together and equalized. Potentially hundreds of tracks are woven down into a small subset of stereo tracks. Finally, the stereo tracks will be encoded onto a soundtrack negative that, like the film negative, will be printed onto a roll of film stock to be projected in theaters. In Figure 21.1 four soundtracks have been printed onto the filmstrip. The analog Dolby SR track, which looks like two parallel waveforms, lies to one side of the picture area. Between it and the picture lies a dot-dash like configuration. This is DTS, a digital soundtrack. The outer edges of the film, bordered with light green stripes, holds the digital information for Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS). But where’s the most common digital track, Dolby Digital? Since the filmstrip is already crowded, Dolby cleverly placed the digital track between the sprocket holes. If you look closely you will see how the sprocket area on one side looks grayer than the one on the other side. The gray area is made up of thousands of tiny black and white dots that produce the digital signal. If you look even closer, you’ll see the Dolby logo in the middle of all those tiny dots! When played back, digital surround sound gives the audience a heightened experience of being in the scene. Rain falls all around, bullets whiz past, wind shakes the leaves, and so on.

► The End Backward

Movies are best cut in reverse. That doesn’t mean the editor should start at the last scene and work toward the first. It implies something more subtle. It suggests that movement enfolds into itself. Strangely, that which will play best in forward motion will reveal itself when played backward. This may sound counterintuitive and even a bit bizarre, yet it works. Let’s back up a moment to try to understand this phenomenon.

Flow, that hard to define but impossible to miss quality, is essential to editing. And flow, a deeper movement operating beneath the surface of story and character, is what editing is all about. Interestingly, the concept of flow is demonstrated in the physics of an ink drop experiment. In visits with the late theoretical physicist and Einstein colleague David Bohm, I had the privilege of discussing his theories of order. His straightforward approach and deep understanding brought clarity to the issue of flow and connectivity. These elements play a significant role in the art and craft of film editing.

One of Dr. Bohm’s discoveries that particularly resonated with me derives from an experiment he performed using an ink drop suspended in glycerin. The glycerin was held between two cylinders. As the inner cylinder rotated, the ink drop dispersed into the glycerin, eventually disappearing. When Dr. Bohm reversed the rotation of the inner cylinder, however, a strange event occurred. The drop reunited with all its elements, reappearing before one’s eyes.

The experiment was repeated, this time adding an additional drop after the first disappeared. This drop also disappeared after additional turns of the cylinder. Yet, when the process was reversed, the drops reappeared in the order in which they were dispersed. It was similar to running a movie in reverse.

This striking yet simple experiment reveals a deeper order that exists in movement and, perhaps, in the universe as a whole. Dr. Bohm spoke in terms of implicate and explicate order. In this experiment the ink drop, the explicate order, enfolds into the implicate order. Just as with a hologram, the whole image is enfolded into the one. While the explicate order is knowable and describable, the implicate order is beyond description.

This experiment illuminates a profound and rarely discussed editing technique. In film editing we perform a version of this experiment every time we cut a scene. On a practical physical level we are encoding information into film or video through a variety of cuts. But in a deeper sense, we are creating flow by enfolding multiple elements into a larger whole.

Enfolded within the movie are separate, describable elements—a shot’s length, an actor’s close-up, the sound of a car horn—but the larger, overall order from which these separate elements arise cannot be stated. This is the value of experience, creativity, and spontaneity. In film editing, it is impossible to discover the implicate order while working piecemeal or step by step. Yet an experienced editor, one who has thorough command of the technology as well as an intuitive understanding of the process, must trust in the implicate order.

Something occurred to early film editors when running their films in high-speed rewind on Moviolas, Steenbecks, and KEMs. Though the movie made no particular sense in this direction, the images revealed a kind of flow, enfolding into each other. Where the cut wasn’t working, one noticed a break in the flow. For some, it became a way of checking their work.

More importantly, when making an edit it is possible to determine the perfect frame to cut on by stepping backward into the cut. This means roughly determining the end point of the cut and then playing the clip backward until one feels the exact frame to begin on. Determining that, the editor then plays forward to find the end. The end becomes the beginning, the beginning the end. Using the J-K-L keys on electronic systems, today’s editors can discover the exact right frame. In this sense, the film is assembled in reverse!

We know that film, in its mask-like quality of illusion, provides stories and entertainment for people throughout the world. But in its enfolding of images and content, it can reveal a connection to something deeper, a reflection of human experience.

It all began with an idea that progressed to a screenplay that was visualized by a director and was finally put together by an editor. The editor and the director are often the only members of the creative team who see the film through to its completion, beginning with production and progressing to a release print projected onto a theater screen. Along the way, every aspect of filmic medicine has come into play. Whether fighting for the life of a struggling film that requires another’s intervention or maintaining the health of a robust and innovative film to which he is aligned, the editor possesses the key to the kingdom. It is an amazing process. Especially when done well.