Alois Fisárek is another witness to and participant in the flowering of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s. For instance he was the editor on three of Vera Chytilová’s important features. More recently he has worked a number of times with Jan Sverák. The decay of the State Cinema Industry in the Czech Republic has created an artistic vacuum which leaves Alois sceptical about the future.
I was born on January 7th 1943 at Opočno which is in Eastern Bohemia (Czech Republic). My Father was an academic painter and a professor at the Artistic-Industrial University in Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His creative period was between the 1930s and 1970s. My Mother was a literary agent and publisher.
Alois Fisáek (Courtesy of Alois Fisáek)
In 1960 I graduated from the gymnasium (academic secondary school), and in 1968 I completed my studies at FAMU (Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) having specialised in film editing under senior lecturer, Jan Kucera.
In my youth I was interested in sports, literature, art music and film, but I have no special skills. With regard to cinema, in the 1950s at the Cas Cinema there was a regular programme of films about nature, popular educational films about various disciplines and mainly comedies – Chaplin, Frigo, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd.1 It was comedy that initiated my deeper interest in film.
In 1961 I started studying at FAMU under Professor Karel Kachyna without any detailed knowledge of film editing. In view of the fact that a director needs an ability for criticism in order to accomplish his work and because I do not possess this ability, I began studying film editing in my third year at FAMU.
After graduation, I began to work at Armadni film (the army film studio) and during studying I assisted the prominent editor Pavlicek at Kratky film (the short film). He taught me all the basic things (including the mentality of the editor). The first outstanding directors that I encountered were Elo Havetta and Ivan Balad’a (who became my close friends), as well as Juraj Jakubisko. Of interest is the fact that all three are Slovaks.2
Although Eisenstein, Griffith, Clair, Fellini, Antonioni and Bun˜uel, etc. influenced me from the past, when I started studying at FAMU there was a huge revolution sweeping across cinema. In France the New Wave emerged under the leadership of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and others.
In Czechoslovakia a New Wave emerged with Vera Chytilova, Evald Schorm, Jan Nemec, Jirí Menzel and Jaromil Jires.3 They were my older fellow students at FAMU. They were giving life to the whole school, and I worked with all of them, except Menzel. I worked with Vera Chytilova on three of her very important feature films as well as a one-hour documentary. I worked with Schorm at the Laterna Magica and with others. All of this had an effect on my opinions and influenced my subsequent professional life.
In my career I have worked with every kind of film – documentaries, educational films, television films, feature films, Laterna Magica and multi-projectional advertising. The film editor is the partner of the director in discussions about the concrete editing of the film. His collaboration in the evaluation of the ideas of the film is crucial – ideas which could be poorly scripted or even more poorly realised and which should therefore be softened in the editing or even completely cut out. Independent decision making about the component ideas is extremely complicated. I therefore see the component ideas as new ones without an understanding of the entire final assembly and cut of the film. For these reasons I think the discussion between the director (or producer) and the film editor are fundamental to the quality of the resulting film. Obviously, I prefer discussion in my work.
If I compare European cinema and that of Hollywood, I believe that European film is searching for a thematic place in the person and for the person on earth, whereas American film is searching for a place for the nation. For example the films of Antonioni and Bergman are very different but in their searching they are very similar. At the same time I believe that European film is just as dramatic as American.
The application of non-linear technology has resulted in the elimination of a great deal of the physical work in editing. The search for clips (trims) and single frames has been greatly sped up and simplified. But the work of the editor has been sped up only in the mechanical sense: there is no way of speeding up thinking. Unfortunately a problem has arisen. Everyone who has learned how to use a computer believes he or she has become a film editor.
At the same time the opinion has arisen among producers (and for this reason among other members of the film crew) that for financial reasons it is not necessary to see the film on a screen in the course of the film editing – at least in my industry. As I see it, the main problem lies in the fact that everything gets done very easily on a digital computer and for this reason nothing is done with due consideration and concentration. This is also how bad mistakes are accepted as if they were entirely well edited sequences. At this time however I consider digital technology to be an accomplished fact from which it is no longer possible to back away.
Looking back, in the 1960s there were very few film editors. Today, because of the new technologies, anybody who wants to can make recordings of pictures and sounds, but then it is necessary to process the recorded material further. Here is where the growing need for experienced and educated film editors is seen. That is why I think that there will always be a need for editing and demands on editors will steadily increase. In the course of my pedagogical work at FAMU, it has been possible to observe the growth in the number of candidates for studies in the Department of Film Editing. I also believe that the technological development will bring about an expansion in thinking about editing.
I work in the cutting room (when I have work) roughly from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. with a break of about an hour around noon. In the main, I am able to work with all kinds of directors, because I place work and the discussion connected with it, ahead of all surrounding influences. I try not to pay attention to side issues – e.g. a talkative, aggressive, dictatorial director. Otherwise I have no special habits, and I am even able to free myself during work from any sort of external influences, even from outside of the cutting room. The only time I lose my certainty is when a producer wants me to work with what is for me a new computer system. In this situation I have to think about how the computer works in addition to my own editing. For me even the script is not as important as the recorded material and the results of the rough cut projected on the screen.
I have worked a great deal all my life (I am now sixty years). I used to work from nine o’ clock in the morning until midnight, including Saturdays and Sundays. There were years in which I was not able to take a vacation, but for a long time now I have not had enough work. This has come about with the development of technology. There has also been an increase in the number of young and gifted editors. Many of the directors with whom I worked all my life have died or now devote themselves to something completely different.
The lack of work in my country can even be traced to the total disappearance of state cinema, which was not all negative. It had a functioning script editing and dramaturgy. ‘Customary rights’ were observed – beginners worked as assistants for older and mainly more experienced colleagues. State cinema had certain financial resources with which it financed films and in this way set up a small film market in our Republic.
Today, the law of the jungle rules in the world of film, and new ways and alternative habits are searched for very slowly, which may improve the situation not only for film editors but for the whole of cinema. Today in the Czech Republic we live in a time of great searching not only in financing films and film-making but in creative searching in general.
The ideal editor is a person who, besides having a cultural and general education, can remember all the picture material including camera movements, lighting actors performances, etc., and all sound material including its quality and its breadth. He has to know how to improvise professionally with this material. He has to know about film genres. He has to know how to work the timing of the material in such a way that there is nothing unnecessary and at the same time nothing missing – which is often a very difficult decision. To be able to make such decisions without mistakes requires a definite talent, or it even requires that a person has an instinctive feeling for it. However the editor must let go of his decision, if the director or producer wants something different. So an editor has to be a patient and communicative person, who can feel collectively.
In terms of choosing projects for the most part I don’t read scripts, instead I follow the director whom I trust. The same is true when I start to cut – I am not interested in the script – I am interested in the rushes or recorded material.
Formerly in the days of classical film editing, I had my own cutting room and my own permanent better quality cutting tables. The last classical table was a three screen KEM, which had its own facility for video. Today I usually work with an Avid or Lightworks, and I work where the producer wants me to.
When I start to cut I always try right from the beginning to produce the final version, but in the final cut I always realise that the material has been cut very roughly at the start. This happens because in the beginning I know very little about the material and I have to make decisions in unfamiliar circumstances. Sometimes I do the final refinement of the cut several times.
Sound is just as important as picture. Today space has to be made for sound because five- or six-track sound recordings are being made. I always have to pay attention because this can be quite tricky. When I was editing a film of the Second World War about Czech pilots in Britain ‘Dark Blue World’, directed by Jan Sverak,4 which was using a six-track sound recording, I had to have a very precise space for the sound (e.g. the flight of one plane from the right rear corner to the front left corner of the screening room). For the most part, though, I can tell how many frames are needed.
I feel that my cutting has a huge effect on viewers, but that they are unaware that it is done by editing. I find this very pleasing. I am doing work about which no one knows the kind of effectiveness and influence it has. I probably like comedies most of all, even though I am not a particularly humorous person. I have the feeling that it is possible to communicate serious things even more in comedies.
Notes
1. Comedies – Chaplin/Lloyd. Why is it that people who mention Chaplin ignore Keaton and vice-versa?
2. Elo Havetta (1938–75) – ‘Field of Lilies’, 1972.
Ivan Balad’a – Born 1936.
Juraj Jakubisko – Born 1938, e.g. ‘The Deserter and the Nomads’, 1968.
3. Vera Chytilova – Born 1929, e.g. ‘Daisies’ 1967.
Evald Schorm (1931–88) – ‘The Joke’, 1969.
Jan Nemec – Born 1936, ‘The Party and the Guests’, 1966.
Jirí Menzel – Born 1938, ‘Closely Observed Trains’, 1966.
Jaromil Jires (1935–2001) –Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’, 1970.
4. Jan Sverak – Born 1965, ‘Dark Blue World’ (2001). Also ‘Kolya’ (1996).