The Cutting Edge: Film Review

For the film review assignment, I picked a documentary entitled “The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing.”  I decided to choose this subject because I have dealt with film editing but never truly enjoyed it; So, I wanted to see what enthused these people to become editors.  My experience with editing on professional programs resulted in me wanting to pull my hair out and just give up.  How could these people choose editing as a career?

            Quickly the documentary provided me with material that would change my perspective on film editing.  Post-production is everything in a film; how the movie turns out lies in the hands of the editor.  Film directors shoot multiple shots per scene and frequently have scenes that will be cut out in post-production.  This all lies in the hands of the editor.  On award shows for movies, the directors awards are always saved for last because they are considered to be the most important and people just brush by the editors.  To me, this is because people aren’t educated enough on editing and truly aren’t exposed to it.  In movie previews the director is always mentioned, but what about the editor who is doing most of the work?

            The most striking thing in this documentary was the match on action.  The editor’s job has to inevitably be invisible.  Transitions between scenes have to be smooth and transitions between camera angles have to literally be invisible.  The match on action that makes these transitions invisible takes an excruciating amount of time.  Nothing can be different between the motions and scenery between camera angles; the only thing that can change is in fact the camera angle.  According to the movie this leaves very little room for error; in fact it leaves no room at all.  If an editor messes up in transitions or is caught “slacking on the job” then the entire movie will get discredited.  This is because although an editors job is to be imperceptible, when he by accidently doesn’t match up the action, it will be more noticeable to the viewers than a smooth transaction.  This inescapably breaks the feel that they are watching something real, and is automatically characterized as fiction and the viewer quickly looses interest. 

            The next aspect of the film that was discussed was the control that the editor had over the film.  It was as if he was the puppeteer and the actors were his puppets.  Like a news reporter has control over what facts they choose to exploit to the world, the editor decides how to portray his actors.  He can make then seem evil, make their questions unanswered; he can even make them seem like god.  On average according to the documentary there is over 200 hours of film that needs to be cut down to around a two-hour movie.  People wonder how can this be true?  How can you compact 200 hours of film into around 2 hours of film?  What they don’t realize that if two people were to have a conversation sitting in a coffee shop, although it is one scene, there is an enormous amount of angles that need to be shot.  There needs to be an establishing shot of the coffee shop; a medium shot of both characters sitting at the table; then two close ups of the characters; then two extreme close ups of the characters; then if you want to get fancier; some reaction shots of what’s occurring around the shop; some high and low angles; and some dramatized action shots of things they are holding.  Then the film editor’s job is to chop down all these 10-minute segments into one smooth flowing 2 minute clip. 

            As time went on and technology got more advanced, editors began experimenting with new techniques of cutting scenes.  This could be used in many different ways, but the way the documentary referred to is used for flashbacks.  They are mostly scene in action movies or horror movies at the climax.  They talk about intercutting or inserting an unrelated shot into the sequence.  This is normally found at the climax of an intricate film to remind the viewer of an important clue that point to the killer, or the motive behind the superheroes action of revenge.   

            Considering all the work that goes into the post-production of a film, editors don’t get enough recognition and credit that they deserve.  One thing that this movie taught me was that editing requires a great deal of patience and the editors behind these major movies really deserved the reward over the director, because in reality the editor gets the final say.  Like the documentary said, editors sometimes do work with the directors because they don’t want to alter a scenes meaning from what the director was thinking.  But when it comes down to it, the editor does all the work.  

You Tube Project Revised

You-Tube Project

When first seeing this video there are many questions that come up.  Is this shot with live footage? Or are this small clay people?  What type of film is this?  Is it stop shot? And how are the people so tiny? 

Well this is in fact real footage from Australia in 2008.  The films method of movement is portrayed through stop-shot footage.  This is where a bunch of pictures are cut down and strung together to make all the images look like it is in fact film, put together to make a movie.  I think that this is an interesting way to do this because the images are brought to life through a tiny motion.  This stop-motion technique also gives the viewer a feeling that this video that they are watching a fake feel.  But I think in this video that it is mostly due to how the camera methods were used.

In “Bathtub IV”, Keith Loutit’s uses the method of tilt-shift time-lapse; also known as “fake miniature”.  This provides a sense of fake imagery and that all the footage was shot in a controlled screen using clay figures.  He uses time and focus to scale down replications of buildings and scenery and then speeds it up to create this false reality.  In this false reality any thing can happen, like that man falling into the water while fishing.  What would normally be a frightening thing to watch becomes a scene of interest and intrigue.  By having filmed in this method of tilt-shift and time-lapse, makes the man in the water feel fake and what would normally take a couple hour rescue was cut down in about 1 minute. 

This video is very intriguing because of all the objects that make up each shot.  The shot duration from each picture is most likely about ½ of a second.  Which means that there has to be a couple thousand pictures in this entire film.  Another method of his that I found interesting was the use of blur.  He blurred out everything in his image except the center focal points, or the main subject.  This aided the viewer in many different ways.  Considering all images in this video are extreme long shots to long shots made up of vibrant colors and intriguing objects, the use of blur makes it easier for the viewer to focus on what the director wants you to see. 

I think that this was a very appealing video but there was something missing.  It would have been amusing, if there were not a sound track of music, but sound affects like the sounds of the ocean or the sounds of the helicopter.  I think this element of sound was needed to stimulate more senses and to bring a sense of life to the film.  In a lot of the comments on the video, the viewers had a hard time figuring out if this was in fact real footage or clay people molded for each shot with stop action.  But overall I thought that this clip was very intriguing considering I have done a few stop-action films myself and I know that it takes a lot harder work than just regular film because you are dealing with so many images that you have to time perfectly and cut so short.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkrtYRxGyuo

9/11 Newsuem Visit

Allison Friedman

Newsuem Exhibit

9/11 Exhibits

            The picture that I chose to reflect upon was a picture from the 9/11 exhibit of a person jumping out the window of their office on 9/11.  Most news articles and newspapers chose not to have this picture represent 9/11 because this day was already looked upon as one of the most horrifying days of the century.  But I think the picture of the people who were on fire jumping out the windows of their office bring to play a bigger picture at hand.  The camera angle is an extreme long shot so that the people who are jumping out their windows look like ants and don’t mean much to the naked eye.  But looking closer at the image you realize what is actually going on and it makes you take the image into second consideration. 

            The fact that the person jumping out their window is so blurry and so small represent s the insignificance of their death compared to the devastation of 9/11 as a whole.  Since I am from New York and just about 30 minutes outside the city, this event will forever hold meaning inside me.  I remember watching the news that day and watching the people jump out the window that were on fire because they didn’t want to deal with the horrible death that was about to be brought over them.  But looking at a photo of the same exact image, it holds much more meaning to me.  Now, many years after the tragedy struck, the image of people jumping out the windows of the building mean so much more to me then when I was a mere 4^th grader. 

            The techniques that the photographer used were very little.  The photographer had no chance to explain what was going on in front of him in a different way then how he saw it, so he documented it exactly how it was.  Therefore I think that the image is a lot stronger because it holds many truths to the actual events of the day.             

            The picture however was out of focus, which made the viewer look twice at the falling victim.  This out of focus range brought many more viewers to the problem at large because they had to really pay attention to the victim and what was going on in the world around them. 

            On a personal note and someone who experienced 9/11 at first hand I felt that this photo stuck out most to me and that’s why I chose it.  Not many people can tell me stuff about 9/11 that I already didn’t know; just in my friends I had parents who died when the building crashed and parents or relatives who are suffering now form helping the victims of 9/11.  There is truly nothing I would improve about this photo because it says so much just by being out of focus and making the viewer have to look twice at it to understand it. 

            Of course what attracted me to the piece was the personal connection and what I love about the picture is that you can’t get everything by just looking at the photo.  The viewer has to research why people are jumping out windows and really put themselves in their shoes and understand the pain that they are going through to cause this action of instant death.   

Art To Life

Group Project

Art To Life
Tomato Soup

      This project could have gone a lot more smoothly.  As a group we were a little shaky in pre production and truly couldn't decide what picture to do.  We all decided on Andy Warhol as the artist but we couldn't all decide a picture that we all liked.  We decided to settle for the Soup Can picture because logically it was the easiest to do in such short notice.  I wasn't thrilled about this because I thought that we could push our boundaries and comfort zone by doing a more challenging picture.
     Unfortunately the day of the filming, I had come down with strep throat.  Therefore I wasn't so much apart of the filming and pre production process.  There was no story board directly made, just a list of shots, which made it difficult in the post production process to decipher the time sequence because the shots were shot out of order.  To add onto this the story wasn't well thought through and the original plot line was virtually impossible to get from the scenes.
    From my understandings Ian did most of the filming considering he is a film major, and Alex, Molly and Jaclyn did the acting.  There was also a problem when it came to the acting because the actions weren't thought out prior and therefore scattered and confusing when going to shoot.  I edited the project with the help of Jaclyn to make sure things were in the right sequence.
    Editing went quite smoothly because although this was not my first encounter with Final Cut Pro, this was my first encounter where I was able to do everything by myself without getting help.  This is very important to me to take away from this project because I am a film major and editing is a big and expected part, and to be able to have a good grip on how to do everything on final cut pro without the help of others is a big deal.
   In the end although the pre production was a little sloppy causing there to be some bumps down the road, we were able to get our project done in time and with good quality.  We worked on match up action a lot, shooting the same scene multiple times from different angles so that the viewer could get the total perspective on what was going on.  We also used things like close ups and reaction shots to help further our point of the fight over the soup without saying words.  Overall this project came out good, and I would work with this group again.

Group Project Discussion

My group was well organized and everyone pulled their part.  Our word was indifference, which was difficult at first.  The word indifference itself means “lack of interest or concern.”  The firs thing my group did was focus on examples of what we thought indifferent meant to us, and where we could find it in everyday society.  We came up with some examples like, walking past a homeless person and not acknowledging them or pollution washed up on the shore of a beach.  Once we though of these examples we decided how we were going to do the project.  We decided to all work separate and all take 10 photos.  Although we worked apart, we united as a group and were able to pick the strongest photos. 

Ian went to Georgeortown where he stood on a corer documenting all the people walking by this homeless man that was simply asking for money.  He contributed a lot by going out shooting for about an hour.  Alex went away that weekend and took photos of liter on beaches.  Last Jaclyn took photos of people throwing trashcan next to the garbage instead of taking the extra step and putting it in the garbage.  These were all great examples of indifference.

Then came my contribution to the project and I didn’t have to travel far.  Walking around Tenley Town, it was overwhelming the amount of indifference that was taking place.  There were newspaper stands knocked over, beer cans thrown on the ground in a residential area, but what shocked me the most was the plastic bottles thrown in the trashcan.  American University prides itself on being a green campus and clearly most people in Tenley Town are American University students.  Therefore when there are recyclable bottles thrown in the trashcan, it defies our green statement. 

When taking the picture of the bottles in the garbage I decided to use an angle of high to low.  This was to show that the viewer can literally look down into the trashcan and realize that they are better than this because the angle they are at is higher.  When shooting I took many different angled shots and I even tried making it from the prospective of the poor bottles in the trashcan but I felt that to get in touch with my audience I needed to make them feel that they were better than this.  That’s why I chose the angle that I did, and hopefully the message was clear.  

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