POST-PRODUCTION
A lthough I consider myself very much to be a filmmaker first and foremost, editing is just one of those things that I’ve reluctantly taken on over the years. It’s not that I actively dislike the process, more that I can see the benefit of having fresh eyes going through footage, even if I might have worked on it as a director or DP. There’s also the point that having a specialist do this work for you undeniably does save a vast amount of post-production time. However, the budget to pay for a dedicated editor often isn’t there, and so there has been no option but to take on the cutting myself. The positives in this include the fact that editing your own work and having no-one else to bail you out when you’ve missed the shots you need does give you more of a grasp of the art of storytelling and should make you a more rounded filmmaker. For those coming into this area for the first time here are a few general and easy editing tips, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t call himself an editor, that have helped me a lot and might be useful for your own business.
ABOVE Editing your own work is seen by many filmmakers as a chore, but getting to grips with the process can actually help you develop a keener eye for getting the shots you need and a better grasp of the art of storytelling.
to get organised before editing the more efficient you’ll be when you actually start the process. For the recent short film I directed for the charity CARE, I organised all of my clips into bins that were specified by scenes, and this subsequently made it very easy to find everything and saved me missing a crucial sequence. Had I been undertaking a longer project I would have actually labelled every clip by its scene, shot number and take. This is the industry standard, but I didn’t find it necessary for a film that featured just 12 scenes. 2 Watch ALL the footage I used to just scrub through clips but my editing experience has taught me that actually watching all your footage is helpful. Even if you were on set the day of the shoot, operating camera and directing, there will still be things you don’t remember happening in any given take. You could find yourself surprised by what you find. Of course, just as with organising clips, this process will take more time, but it will be well worth it if you come across that one golden take that wasn’t expected. 3 Realise your rough cut will be rough Martin Scorsese said: “If you don’t get physically ill after seeing your first rough cut, something is wrong.” The more experience I’ve had with filmmaking, the more and more this statement rings true.
Often I feel the panic levels rising a little after I finalise a rough cut. Inevitably, my first thought is that it isn’t going to work. However, a few deep breaths later I remind myself that there’s a reason why a rough cut gets its name, and it’s rare that you can’t polish or rescue it. However, while I know this to be true I still wouldn’t show a client, who might not be fully up to speed on what a first edit is. Rather I will use my panic to drive me to edit some more and to tidy things up before there’s any external input. Editing is all about refining the story, so just keep editing. 4 Remember…Wide, Medium, Tight, Repeat In any given story it helps the audience to start a scene with a wide establishing shot, so that they can understand the environment the actors are living in. Wide shots also orientate the audience in such a way that it enables them to understand how the actors relate to their environment, and from here you can move into medium and close up shots. This is a time-honoured rule that editors live by for good reason. However, I break the rule at times. Maybe I want to disorientate the audience at the beginning of a scene by starting on a close-up and then cutting to a wide to reveal what the character is reacting to. For example, in the last scene of the CARE film, there’s no real wide establishing shot but the audience can see that the main character is driving a car. When she arrives to pick up the boy there’s still no wide shot, because I wanted the audience to focus on the actor’s response. That was the most important part of the story in this scene and it wouldn’t have worked so well had I stuck to a rigid formula.
1 Get organised
The first thing I do when I start editing is to organise my files. This
might come across as a little obvious, but there are some editors who simply don’t have the patience to do this at the very start of the process and who then just start grabbing clips and throwing them on a timeline. If you start cutting from here, the danger is that you’ll miss things and potentially create more work for yourself down the line. I approach the organisation of files the same way I do the pre-production for a shoot. The way it works is that the more organised you are at this stage, the easier the actual production days will be. By the same token, the more time you take
“It helps the audience to start a scene with a wide establishing shot, so that they can understand the environment the actors are living in”
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AUTUMN 2018 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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