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.
