Movies used to have no editing. Directors simply filmed whatever was of interest to them and stopped filming when they got bored of the subject they were recording or ran out of film. The fathers of cinema, Edison (US) and the Lumiere brothers (France), were very pessimistic about the future of film because, although moving images were of interest, what was being shown were things people could see in real life for free such as a train pulling out of a station or a silly prank with a garden hose. Auguste Lumiere even claimed that “cinema was an invention without a future”. However, when Edison's right hand man, Edwin Porter, discovered you could physically cut the film strips and put them together in different orders or mix scenes together to show several things happening at the same time opinions changed.
In the 1930s, when sound films were invented, the editing process became an assembly line. At the same time, D.W. Griffith, the first great film maker to understand the psychological importance of editing, brought the concept of the "close-up" to the big screen. Many people were skeptical of this idea, but audiences reacted with great interest for Griffith brought the audience into emotional contact with the actors. Editors used to be considered hands for hire before Griffith and other revolutionary, artistic craftsmen emerged.
The films being made in the 50s used a certain language, a formulaic way of presenting scenes. The scene always started far away with an "establishing shot" and then zoomed in or gradually cut in on the scene, to change locations an editor would use a dissolve feature, when a character was entering a building, match cuts would be used, connecting the actions of opening the door, seeing the door opening from in outside then inside, etc. In the 60s every rule was broken. Films such as Breathless are excellent examples of this revolutionary change. Breathless played with how long to hold a shot, the discontinuity of what is going on in a scene, and screen directions. Breathless showed editors a new way of crafting a film and changed perception of what filmmaking actually was.
Nowadays, there are no defined rules. Editors are all given creative freedom on their projects based on the directors vision. Walter Murch, a fantastic editor, has certain principles he follows to preserve his creativity and to avoid creating a bias so his films are always 100% for the audience. He makes it a principle not to go on the set, not to see the actors out of costume, not to see anything other than the images that come to him from location. As an editor works, all they see is what is on the screen, not what is going on at the time of shooting. That’s what the audience will see too so it is so important for Walter Murch, among others, to keep a distance from the action behind the scenes.
Lastly, the current concepts of angles and speed, continuity of cuts, and the intricacies of editing are brought into play. Firstly, more angles and higher speed add chaos to a scene. It doesn’t matter what order a scene is seen in or how many times the start or end is shown as long as the clips are fast and cuts are frequent, chaos and excitement can be achieved. A fight scene can even have 200 shots that can be split second, eye blink shots that bring the audience into the action. Kids today grew up on TV and; therefore, can process information faster and demand faster information.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a continuous cut is used to mask the cut so the audience won’t notice the cut itself and can forget they are watching a movie. Continuous cuts are gesture matches from one shot to the next. This is a great example of how editing truly is “the invisible art”. An audience does not realize the time an editor put in to create a film, but the finished product the audience sees is editing. Editing is why people like movies. A major Hollywood film uses 200 hours of film. Unspooled, the spool would stretch from LA to Vegas. Finished, it will contain thousands of 1/24th of a second frames. Each of these frames can make all the difference in a scene. For example, in Jaws, the shark looked fake at 38 frames, but real at 36. Even though it may take a long time to film, sometimes its important to just cut out that little piece that just doesn't work. It’ll be worth it in the end. As profesor Levin says, "kill your baby".
Samantha's favorite quotes from the documentary:
“What makes a movie a movie is the editing.”
“Editing is the thing you’re always looking at.”
“Editing is why people like movies because, in the end, wouldn’t we like to edit our own lives? I think we would. I think everyone would like to take out the bad parts, take out the slow parts, and look deeper into the good parts.”
“Editing is manipulation of elements within a film…creating effects…[that's what elicits] responses within an audience”
“Editing is manipulation. We’re manipulating reality as the audience sees it because you want the audience to respond in a certain way whether it’s a laugh, a sigh, a fright….all we do is manipulate” -
“Many times, editing is about when not to make the cut, when to have the silence, let the moment be itself.”
“Editing is like poetry. It has to do with rhythms it was to do with visual. It is visual poetry.”
“The last draft of the screen play is the first cut of the movie and the final cut of the movie is the last draft of the script.”
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