11
Surgery
► What Goes and What Stays
One of the most challenging aspects of the editor’s job is as trauma surgeon. Deciding what goes and what stays when the pace lags, the story grows convoluted, or a performance falters requires a discriminating eye and ear. Two primary terms describe the surgical approach to film editing: trim and lift. A lift is the more invasive approach. It involves excising an offending scene or part of a scene, the sort of item that might end up as deleted material found in a DVD’s special features. It is also known as an outtake. The removal of this portion of the film is sometimes thought of as one of the editor’s primary functions. The old-school image of filmstrips on the cutting room floor reflects this. In fact, as with surgery, total removal of a diseased organ is rare. The most common and frequent surgery performed by editors is the trim, removing portions rather than wholes.
Doctor’s Note
Again, we should differentiate between traditional film terms and their altered meanings in the electronic realm. Where a lift typically refers to the deletion of part or all of a scene, Avid altered the term to mean a type of cut where a shot is removed, leaving a gap of the same length. Though it is possible to lift an entire scene, editors generally use the lift function to remove a single shot. Either way, a gap remains behind. On Avid, using the extract function removes a shot.
The term clip also has multiple meanings. The confusion probably came from the vernacular “to screen a film clip,” which in that case meant showing a portion of a movie. But clips can also be short pieces of film. To avoid confusion, a portion of a shot will be referred to here as a trim rather than as a clip.
Practical Considerations
A trim involves shortening a portion of a shot that resides within the body of the cut sequence. Sometimes the trim can be as small as a single frame. When working with celluloid, the editor had to carefully consider the move before applying the scalpel. Once the trim was removed, it could not be reattached to the film without leaving a mark. Originally, it required glue or, subsequently, transparent tape to reunite it with the original shot.
Today, trimming has become so easy it has negated any hesitation before applying the blade. Using the Trim tool in Avid, Premier Pro, and other nonlinear systems, the editor can instantly remove or add frames of any shot in the movie. Since no physical splicing is involved and the images appear by accessing virtual addresses that link to the media, this leaves the original media intact so the process can be repeated over and over until satisfactory. In fact, one approach to trimming allows the editor to loop a section of the cut so it plays over and over while she adds and subtracts frames until the shot looks right. It should be noted that until one reaches the trimming phase of the process, an experienced editor cutting on a Moviola, paperclipping her shots together for an assistant to tape later, could assemble a film almost as fast as an editor cutting on a modern digital system. The notable difference occurs when one enters the trim function. Trimming is infinitely easier on an electronic system.
There are four basic trim functions that mirror processes used by editors cutting on celluloid. These are generally known as Roll, Slide, Slip, and Ripple. Once they are understood, these functions make life easier, though gaining command of trim operations remains one of the biggest challenges for editors learning a new system. As with film, trimming applies to the audio tracks as well as to the video tracks.
Tech Note
In Avid, the Trim Mode icon consists of a single button that toggles between the standard Source/Record editing mode and the Trim Mode. The image on the button looks like a 35 mm film cartridge for a still camera, where pulling on the film would unspool it from the cartridge and turning the spool’s nib would rewind it back into the cartridge. This graphically suggests the manner in which trim modes work, extending or contracting the amount of material to be shown.
To enter any of the trim functions, the editor simply clicks on the Trim Mode button (Figure 11.1) or taps the U shortcut key on the keyboard (though keep in mind that the keyboard can be customized to an editor’s preferences by using the Command Palette). Once in Trim Mode, a pair of pink rollers appears over the cut point. Depending on which way the cursor draws the rollers, the shot will extend into the preceding shot or over the incoming shot. In the Double Roller mode, the shot will overwrite whatever is ahead of it or behind it. To insert more material, the editor clicks on only the left or right roller, selecting a single roller. The single roller will allow material to be added (or subtracted) to the beginning or end of a shot without altering the surrounding shots. It will, however, alter the sequence’s duration. Lastly, it’s possible to change the beginning and end point within a shot without affecting the length or altering sequence duration. This is useful, for instance, in syncing a frame to a particular beat of music or sound effect.
These are the practical considerations that editors must master. However, the aesthetic decisions comprise the most important part of the process, whether today or 80 years ago. What are the aesthetic choices that precede the physical act of trimming or lifting material from an editor’s cut?
Tech Note
The revelation that allowed nonlinear editing systems to exist and to function as smoothly as they do runs counter to the traditional method with shot selection. Where the editor used to alter the physical media with every cut—marking with a white grease pencil the beginning and end of the shot, severing it from the whole with a splicer, moving it around, and attaching it to another strip of film—the nonlinear editor does not impact the actual media at all. In an NLE system, the editor is only altering addresses that tell the machine where to find the media so it can display the various images. These addresses are the timecode numbers that relate to each frame of video. By altering the addresses, the order of images changes.
Before the friendly interfaces of Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Media 100, Vegas Pro, and others, the editor was compelled to type the beginning and ending timecode as well as the shot’s duration for each and every shot in the entire movie. For instance, a desired shot might begin at 00:46:38:21 and end at 00:47:40:28. Its duration would be 00:01:02:07 or one minute, two seconds, and seven frames. Mistakes occurred when the editor accidentally typed a wrong number, which was easy to do considering how many numbers there were. This was the case with the early Editflex or CMX editing systems. Since these systems couldn’t store media on their hard drives, the numbers that were entered into a cut list referenced timecode on videotape or laserdiscs located on various decks. As the deck located the shot, it would record it onto a separate tape, where the sequence was compiled.
What made subsequent systems much easier to operate was replacing videotape decks with hard drives and then adding virtual buttons or keystrokes representing mark in and mark out. When pressed, these virtual buttons capture the timecode that corresponds to the desired point in the scene. To play the scene back, the machine simply reads through the list of addresses and displays, in sequence, the corresponding images and sound. The fact that these simple text addresses can be stored in a minimum of space, using hardly any memory, provides an added advantage. Aside from making it easy to back up or save the cut after each session, it allows the editor, if he has identical dailies loaded into his home editing system, to work remotely between the studio and home. The days of an editor working in a dark little room are over.
Trimming for Health
Beginning editors, and some directors, often obsess over whether to trim a shot by one frame or not (see Case Study, p. 170). When we speak about trimming, we are generally not concerned with single frame changes. Except in specific instances, mostly involving comedic or musical timing, one frame doesn’t make a difference.
Doctor’s Note
Richard Pearson has likened the trimming process to moving Jenga pieces around. The more you can take out, the better off you are, but if you take out too many, it collapses.
In dialogue, trims are essential because they help communicate the inner meaning of what is said. As will be discussed further in Chapters 12 and 13, the length of a character’s reaction can communicate more about the dialogue’s meaning than the actual text. Consider Natalie Portman’s revealing pause in Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier (2007), a short film preceding The Darjeeling Limited (2007). Jason Schwartzman’s character, Jack Whitman, has been holed up in a fancy Parisian hotel for over a month when he gets an unexpected visit from a former lover, played by Natalie Portman. Later, as Jack sits on the bed undressing her, she asks, “Have you slept with anyone?”
“No,” he replies. “Have you?”
After several beats she finally answers, “No.” In that hesitation Jack and the audience realize that she’s lying. “That was a long pause,” he tells her. As their lovemaking continues, he finally says, “I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Immediately she replies, “No, it doesn’t,” and they tip back onto the bed. The lack of pause preceding “No, it doesn’t” reinforces her anxiety to move past her previous fib and on with the matter at hand.
Likewise, in creating subtext through shot placement and length, the editor determines the precise moment to cut away to a reaction as well as the amount of time spent on that reaction.
In action, trims are important because they add to the scene’s excitement. When cutting action, the editor’s initial feat involves mapping out the movement so it makes sense throughout the course of the scene. After that he trims and trims until the desired pace is achieved.
Trimming involves a sense of timing. Every shot in the movie has an effect on every other. While the juxtaposition of shots remains one of the most potent aspects of editing, it is not everything. It is possible to have the correct sequence of shots, each perfectly placed beside the other, and still have a plodding cut. This is because another point on the Editing Triangle has been neglected. That is length. The length of a shot affects its meaning as well as the meaning of the shots around it. It also impacts the overall pace and rhythm of the film.
Eisenstein’s greatest theory, that of film time, directly depends on the trim function. But chronological time is different from psychological time. Time as determined by a clock varies greatly from time as perceived by our minds. Our thoughts include the memories and experiences that affect how we perceive the world and our experiences within the world. Eisenstein’s revelation that real time does not matter as much as perceived or psychological time informs editors’ decisions to this day. The fleeting time one experiences over moments of great joy as compared to the seemingly endless time that weighs upon us when we’re forced to endure an activity we despise or to suffer pain or sorrow reflects this notion.
In film, the increase or diminishment of tension and emotion relates directly to this sense of time. This is affected by the length of shots that in turn relates to the use of the trim function. The plasticity of film time exists due to the ability to extend or contract a shot or to add or lift multiple shots in a scene.
Case Study
I once had the disturbing experience of walking into the editing room of a director who’d been cutting alongside his editor. The producer had given him his own editing room, perhaps to get him out of the way. The sight that met my eyes was a large, wide fellow with meaty hands hunched over a flatbed editing machine with hundreds of single frame clips taped to the walls, windows, and trim bins. He’d been working on the same scene for weeks, cutting out frames here and there and then putting them back in, reminiscent of the torture of Prometheus. Ultimately, it didn’t make much difference, and what he eventually presented as a fine cut was taken away from him by the studio who hired a film doctor to recut it. Obviously, there were bigger issues at stake than a frame or two.
Years later, when a film I’d edited was being conformed in order to make release prints, a visit to the negative cutter finally drove the point home once and for all. I’d stopped by on an emergency mission from the director to remove a scene before the film was sent to the lab for printing. I had a workprint with me as a guide so I could match the key numbers on the negative with their printed-through counterparts on the print. Also, since it was film, I could compare the images and scene changes on the negative with those on the celluloid print. After locking the workprint, negative, and soundtrack together in the synchronizer, I carefully began rolling down to the middle of the film where the designated scene lay. Long before I reached that point, however, I noticed something that sent a chill through me.
The negative was a slightly different cut than I’d submitted in my locked reels. At first the images on the negative had corresponded exactly with the images on the workprint. Then suddenly the cuts shifted. The shot on the negative ended a frame earlier than the shot on my workprint. And the next shot began a frame earlier. As I continued to roll through the reels, I found that periodically, throughout the course of the film, shots would end a couple frames earlier or later than my version. But by the time the next scene appeared, everything was back in sync. What had happened here?
The negative cutter had recut some of my footage! She was considered one of the best in the business, so I figured there must be some explanation. That, or she had secretly been recutting, improving upon editors’ work like some elf in a workshop. I called her and asked what had happened. Because we were friends and she didn’t want to lie to me, she told me the truth. She’d messed up and cut the negative a frame early. With a negative, unlike a positive print, you can’t simply reattach it with a piece of tape. With a negative you lose a frame every time you make a cut in order to hot splice it to the next shot. The only way she could fix it and still maintain sync was to add a frame to the incoming shot. So now two of my shots were different from what I had originally produced. Since this happened periodically throughout the course of 12,000 feet of film, there were numerous places where she or her assistants had performed repairs in order to rescue the flub.
Was this particular to her? No, she told me. All negative cutters do this. It’s the law of the negative cutter’s jungle. Nobody’s perfect. But no one knows it because, to be frank, nobody ever notices a one-frame trim, not even the editor who cut the movie … unless, of course, he happens to put the negative and the workprint next to each other and compare!
► The Lift
Letting go of good material can be a painful experience for filmmakers. Directors expend major portions of their lives getting a project greenlighted, conceiving the shots that will go into it, and executing those shots. One director, when asked what one item he’d want with him on a desert island, replied without hesitation, “My dailies.” Yet some shots, and even scenes, do not belong in the final movie despite the fact that a director worked tirelessly to achieve them. Nevertheless, this labor impels some directors to become overwhelmingly attached to their creations, like a parent to a newborn. For that reason, working with a trusted film editor is essential.
Doctor’s Orders
When making a lift, be sure to save it in a bin, properly labeled. You may surprise yourself and return to it later.
Like doctors whose compassionate feelings have brought them into the profession yet must maintain a certain detachment in order to function effectively, the film editor works to remain objective. In terms of deleted material, the editor’s and director’s choices to make a lift are more drastic and less subtle than a trim. In a sense, a lift can be considered the gross adjustment on a microscope, while the trim is the fine adjustment. But why lift?
Wasn’t this all worked out beforehand in the script? Wasn’t it clear which scenes worked and which ones didn’t? If we look back at the script where original scenes were laid down, we find that every scene and portion of a scene was deemed essential, probably after months of rewriting and polishing. So what changed when the film reached the editing room? The act of visualization. The moment the text gained texture through the visual medium, things changed.
Case Study
After months and months of receiving editorial first aid, a comedy had lapsed into a coma. Instead of improving with each cut, it was growing closer and closer to death. During the initial consultation the director revealed the following about the patient. Her initial approach was toward a zany comedy with lots of fun action, over-the-top quirky characters, and a good pace. She’d agreed to take the project because it offered challenges in terms of action and character even though there were some pretty stupid jokes, as well as gaps in the story that defied logic. By the time she’d completed her director’s cut, she was feeling less than enthusiastic about the whole endeavor. A test screening reinforced her concerns. The recruited audience found the humor to be forced, the pace slow, and the story slightly confusing. A frantic and time-consuming return to the editing room unleashed a new version several weeks later. This scored even worse.
The audience found the comedy lame, the pace unbearably slow, and the story incomprehensible. At this point the director met with the producers, who were wary that they would lose their investment and decided that while they liked the current editor and had promised to credit him on the film, they had to let him go. He could share the credit with the film doctor they’d brought in.
The film doctor’s first action was to watch the film. Sure enough, the test audience had been correct. This editor sat down in the editing room with the director and asked her about the film. The director pointed out some of her chief concerns. In this meeting the editor discovered the following information—just as a doctor or detective might divine various clues that might not be obvious to the layperson. First, the director was aware of the film’s slow pace. She’d intended for it to be a spirited romp, not the plodding disaster it had turned into. In an attempt to alleviate this condition, she tried some home remedies, as it were. Considering that the film was too long and too slow, she surmised that removing scenes would both pick up the pace and shorten the overall running time. After all, unlike action films or dramas, comedies usually clock in under two hours, generally between 90 and 100 minutes. So she bit the bullet—a phrase, by the way, that derives from old-time surgery without anesthesia where the patient held a bullet between his teeth rather than risk biting off his tongue from the pain. She combed through the film and lifted scenes that weren’t absolutely essential. These were stored in a separate bin, labeled lifts.
In theory, this should have helped. In practice, it worked against the film. Why? Because as those scenes were removed, they took with them important story and character points. Just as removing a diseased kidney might save a patient’s life, removing two kidneys would end it. Other scenes had been removed for the opposite reason. They had some amusing jokes, but they did little to forward the story. But without jokes it wasn’t much of a comedy. So, in the hopes of improvement, the film’s overall health had suffered. The viewer was left with all sorts of unanswered questions about the plot. Once the audience got lost and lost interest, their perception of the film changed. Even though physically shorter, the film’s apparent length was much longer.
The solution came in the form of trims, not lifts. Since each scene contained either important story information or humor, they were all reinstated. But then the editor went through and trimmed everything he could. Entrances and exits disappeared. Pauses before and after speech disappeared. Redundant actions or dialogue disappeared. Hesitations in order to allow perfect match cuts disappeared. And after a while the scenes gained new vitality. Instead of standing out like blemishes, they merged nicely with the overall complexion of the film.
Then the editor went back to the beginning and, starting from the very first frame, examined each and every cut, finding where he could nip and tuck. He trimmed until the overall film was not only shorter but faster paced and peppier. The increased energy fueled the jokes and performances, and soon the film played as a comedy should. In the next test screening it scored exceptionally high, a response that everyone had pretty much given up on ever seeing.
Sometimes it is hard to remain objective and unattached, especially after working on a film for a year, balancing your actions between everyone else’s input and your own intuitions. One enters a “forest for the trees” state, where the editor, in a sense, becomes the film. One trick is to make notes during the first reading of the script. Often several questionable plot points, lines of dialogue, or character motivations will jump out. After months in the editing room, sometimes it helps to check back with those early notes and see if the problems you initially spotted have been solved. If not, you have fresh questions with which to approach the material.
Another trick is to temporarily flop every shot in the movie. Flopping a shot reverses the east–west orientation of the image and can alter the viewer’s perspective, giving a fresh look to the film. Since all shots receive equal treatment, orientations such as eyelines are not affected.
The Way of the Lift
In days before digital editing, a scene was removed intact, with both the workprint and the soundtrack rolled together and labeled with the scene number and a brief description of the lift. This was stored in a separate box on the film rack along with the film dailies and cut reels. In some cases, the lifts were duplicated onto black and white film (known as a dirty dupe) if the editor felt the scene might need to be revisited after the constituent parts were reconstituted into the original daily rolls for use elsewhere.
Today, it is still advisable to maintain this kind of order. Since nonlinear editing systems allow us to make as many versions as we like—a questionable advantage—it becomes possible to save the previous version without altering it. After backing up a previous version, however, it is a good idea to use the new version in the manner common to editors working on film. That is, make lifts in the new version and store them in a separate bin. This way you can keep track of every scene you removed without having to compare versions. If at some point you decide to add back certain footage, you have the luxury of the previous saved version as a reference.
Lift and Separate … or Not
Accomplishing these kinds of lifts requires not only the notion to do so but also a sense of how to create smooth transitions that weave one scene with another. Editor and postproduction supervisor Norman Wallerstein views editing as a marriage. In good marriages, even if the couple is from opposite backgrounds, they find a way to make it work. In editing, you are often required to unite disparate shots or scenes that, while they want to be together, may not fit easily. The editor’s job is to make the marriage work smoothly.
As noted before, a lift raises issues of attachment to good material. This is one of the reasons that directors who are fully capable of editing their films should not. Despite best efforts to remain objective, a director finds it hard to part with material, especially if it shines. On the other hand, some directors are all too willing to dismiss material, usually out of impatience. Where the camerawork or performance falls below their expectations, their immediate response is to lift it out. In this case the film doctor is sometimes confronted with a film that is unengaging as well as confusing. It is the film doctor’s job to revive the patient.
RX
- ► Make a lift, and be sure to save it.
- ► Create a separate bin or folder labeled “Lifts.”
- ► Mark in and out for the section to be lifted, choose Duplicate from the Edit menu, and drag the lifted scene into that folder.
- ► After the copy has been placed in the folder, press the X key or the Extract icon (on Avid) and remove it from the new sequence version.
- ► Some programs use the cut function more like a word processor, in which case it’s not necessary to duplicate the section before placing it in a lift bin. Instead, the marked section can be removed and then pasted into the lift bin.
- ► Whichever way you achieve this result, you’ll know exactly what you’d removed from the first cut, if it ever becomes necessary to refer back or reinstate a deleted scene.