Film Editing Read online

  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

  SUPER (SUPERIMPOSITION)

  When two shots (or more) are held on top of each other full screen.

  A super prolongs the value of each shot and intensifies the emotion of the moment. Supers are frequently used to reflect a character’s state of mind.

  SUPER 1 — THE AGONY: Howard Hughes writhes on the floor during a bout of mental illness as images from his aviation movie are superimposed over him.

  The Aviator

  SUPER 2 — THE ECSTASY: The future chef discovers the joys of gastronomy.

  Ratatouille

  SUPER 3: You can super (superimpose) a large, laughing enemy over your protagonists.

  Paprika

  SUPER 4: Or you can super a friend or guru, a familiar ploy in both animated and non-animated movies. In this case the famous chef lectures the aspiring chef.

  Ratatouille

  SUPER 5: Passersby are supered over the main character as she contemplates a rendezvous crucial to her rebel gang’s success.

  Lust, Caution

  Supers often incorporate windows to reflect a character’s worries as supers 5-7 illustrate.

  SUPER 6: A researcher frets as her co-worker undergoes surgery following an attack by their enemy.

  Paprika

  SUPER 7: The Israeli counterterrorist leader looks out the plane’s porthole (frame 1) and recalls the Munich massacre (frame 2), which bolsters his resolve to carry out the team’s next assassination.

  Munich

  Supers can also portray a character’s memories, fears, or adventures as seen in Supers 8-10.

  SUPER 8: A collage of superimposed images composes a scrapbook of Jean-Do’s past.

  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

  SUPER 9: Jean-Do’s metaphor for his paralyzed condition — a man imprisoned in a diving bell — is depicted by a superimposition.

  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

  SUPER 10: A kaleidoscope of supers accompanies the pair of investigators as they make their way across London.

  The Da Vinci Code

  SUPER 11:

  Paprika

  SUPER 12:

  Spider-Man 2

  SUPER 13:

  Brokeback Mountain

  Lastly, movie titles and credits constitute superimpositions and are placed over a variety of backgrounds such as animations, black frames, live action footage, or freeze frames.

  WRAP UP

  Now that you’ve got the hang of basic effects, we’ll look at effects that are complex and require more time, thought, and money to manufacture. Use these only if they fit your project and you have the software and the budget!

  chapter 5 CUTS THAT USE

  COMPLEX EFFECTS

  We live in an era where hardly a movie appears that doesn’t exhibit some sort of special effect; many blockbusters depend on novel effects to bolster their appeal. Effects can take days, weeks, or months to craft on the computer and in the film lab. Then they are cut into the movie by the editor and finalized during the finishing process that takes place after the editor turns in the final cut of the show.

  There are many fine books on how these effects are created. Since this book is about the types of cuts editors make to put one shot after another into a movie, we’ll focus on the complex effects editors routinely influence by either selecting the footage, helping with design, or knocking out the initial version on their digital editing system.

  WIPE

  A transitional effect where the incoming shot replaces the outgoing shot by appearing to push (wipe) it from the screen. A wipe literally pushes the action forward from one shot to the next.

  Wipes are a basic effect with an endless variety of patterns, which is why they’re included under complex effects. A wipe can draw attention to itself and act as a clear marker of change, or be subtle due to its speed or inventive use of elements.

  WIPE 1: Charging soldiers wipe to Ofelia strolling amongst the ferns. A vertical brown stripe, appearing to be a tree, forms the edge of this horizontal wipe.

  Pan’s Labyrinth

  A wipe can move horizontally — starting from the left or right — and imitate a camera pan. Or a wipe can travel vertically — up or down — and imitate a camera tilt. Note: Wipes composed on digital editing systems can start anywhere — for example, from one corner of the frame or all four — and move in any direction.

  WIPE 2: A sign moves from the bottom to the top of the frame to create this vertical wipe from theatre to Western set.

  Finding Neverland

  Wipes, like dissolves, are often used to bridge scenes or to signify the passage of time. Also, like dissolves, wipes frequently start from black or include black frames.

  WIPE 3: This vertical wipe crosses time, space, and color — from the eerie blue of the outer world to the blood orange of the womb.

  Pan’s Labyrinth

  A wipe can be an intrinsic part of the composition of a shot — a door opening, a car swooshing by, a curtain rising or falling — all repeatedly work as wipes between shots.

  WIPE 4: This “barn door” wipe uses the courthouse doors to send the action from the exterior to the interior of the courthouse.

  Cars

  WIPE 5: In this magical scene, department store elevator doors open in a wipe that takes viewers outside to the forest.

  Paprika

  Besides doors, cars, and curtains, many other innate elements in shots are used as wipes: Passersby and elements of nature are a couple of prime examples.

  WIPE 6: A bicyclist wipes the screen (middle frame), wheeling the audience from the heroine in the café (top frame) to the object of her glance (bottom frame).

  Lust, Caution

  WIPE 7: The undercarriage of a train (middle frame) transports the scene from a wide shot of cowboy to a medium shot of him having a smoke.

  Brokeback Mountain

  WIPE 8: A wave laps the screen to carry the main character from beach to sea.

  There Will Be Blood

  These two last pages of wipes highlight their variety and the witty originality of Tim Burton, director of Corpse Bride.

  WIPE 9: Birds flock, creating a wipe that sucks the groom away from his beloved betrothed on the balcony to his accidental corpse bride in the underworld.

  Corpse Bride

  WIPE 10: In the first shot (frames 10 a,b,c), the hero backs away from the crowd and toward camera, wiping the screen with his rear end. In the second shot (frames 10 d,e,f), he turns and retreats from camera and toward a new crowd — minus the corpse bride.

  Corpse Bride

  GREENSCREEN A.K.A. BLUE SCREEN)

  Creating a new shot by compositing (merging) two shots together.

  GREENSCREEN 1: Sword fighters greenscreened separately against a forest and lake background.

  Hero

  Shot 1, a live action shot, makes up the background. Example: A forested lake.

  Shot 2, the greenscreen shot, makes up the foreground. It’s created by filming the subject performing in front of a green (or blue) screen.

  Example: A sword fighter lunges at his opponent.

  When the two shots are composited, the greenscreen washes out and the subject appears to react to what’s happening in the background live action shot. Example: Now the sword fighter appears to be lunging across the lake.

  Greenscreen is used to broadcast weather reports and has become a staple effect in movies. A simple greenscreen can be composed by the editor on a digital system; more complicated greenscreens are created by a special effects house or film lab. Audiences have grown accustomed to seeing these and other complex composited shots — they’re the stuff of effects makers’ imaginations and hard work.

  What is the greenscreen shot in each of these examples? You figure it out. Hint: It’s the foreground shot.

  GREENSCREEN 2: Spidey at home with his girlfriend.

  Spider-Man 2

  GREENSCREEN 3: Villain Doc Ock give a New York City cab the heave ho. />
  Spider-Man 2

  MATTE (A.K.A. KEY)

  Creating a hole in a shot and placing (keying) another shot in that hole.

  As with split frame shots, the audience amasses knowledge at a more rapid rate when matte shots are used. The editor selects the shots to be matted, although the actual matting may be done at the film lab or postproduction facility (places where all picture and sound elements are brought together and finalized).

  MATTE 1-3: Alex Supertramp (the name Chris McCandless, the subject of this biopic, gave himself), adventures across North America (frames 1 and 2) while his parents bicker and fret back in Virginia (frame 3).

  Into the Wild

  Matte 4 contains an inset, an effect where a reduced shot is placed on another shot. Typically, an inset highlights a detail of the main shot.

  MATTE 4: Alex Supertramp backpacks (left matte) and tows his kayak through Baja California (right matte). The inset in the middle of the right-hand matte shows the towing in greater detail.

  Into the Wild

  Television sets routinely function as mattes.

  MATTE 5: A matte shot, cut into a TV, broadcasts original news footage of the 1972 Munich massacre.

  Munich

  MATTE 6: The big race is matted into the press room monitor.

  Cars

  Windows are also perfect, commonly used mattes.

  MATTE 7: The kitchen door porthole provides a matte for a shot that centers on the all-important food critic.

  Ratatouille

  MATTE 8: Travelling toward Hogwarts school for wizards, the scenery is matted in through the train window.

  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  A matte can be any shape — rectangular, round, keyhole — the list goes on.

  MATTE 9: The Daily Prophet features live news coverage embedded in a heart-shaped and a round matte.

  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  MATTE 10: A softly focused newspaper serves as a matte for this POV shot.

  Finding Neverland

  MATTE 11: Can you spot the mattes in this shot? Yep! It’s the paintings: Their frames are mattes and their subjects react along with the student wizards.

  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  MATTE 12: Here a car’s rear view mirror makes a perfect matte.

  No Country for Old Men

  MATTE 13: In this unique shot, each sliver of mirror is a matte reflecting Paprika’s reactions to a repugnant remark.

  Paprika

  SPLIT SCREEN

  Dividing the screen into two or more parts with different shots in each division.

  Split screens came in vogue with the movie Woodstock in 1970 and have been regularly seen on tube and screen ever since. A split screen can project several different shots or show the same action from slightly different perspectives. Either way, the editor selects the shots and their duration and the audience takes in more information and usually, more meaning from the doubling up of shots.

  SPLIT SCREEN 1: The Bride (left) and her enemy take a breather during their punishing fight.

  Kill Bill: Vol. 2

  SPLIT SCREEN 2: Foraging and starvation — two sides of the survival theme of this movie—are brought together in a split screen frame.

  Into the Wild

  SPLIT SCREEN 3: Converging walls form the split screen effect in this scene between a mentally ill Howard Hughes (left) and Pan Am president Juan Trippe.

  The Aviator

  SPLIT SCREEN 4: Fire splits the shots of Howard Hughes (right) and his CEO.

  The Aviator

  A split screen can also convey relation, excitement, and frenzy; a multi-split screen bombards the audience with images.

  SPLIT SCREEN 5: Two-way and four-way split screens capture surgeons fending off a patient run amok — Doc Ock.

  Spider-Man 2

  WRAP UP

  As you’ve seen, special effects can be extremely inventive and complex and make for intricate, spellbinding storytelling. We’ve just grazed the surface here — whole careers are forged in creating everyday and extraordinary effects — but hopefully you have a better appreciation of what is possible.

  In the next chapter, for a complete change of pace, we’ll talk about… pace. Along with rhythm and time, pace is critical to holding viewers’ interest: Successful editing depends on all three of these elements. The next chapter provides prime examples of the power of properly paced editing.

  chapter 6 CUTTING FOR PACE, RHYTHM, AND TIME

  The rhythm of the editing plays a vital role in every film. Why? Because rhythm corrals all the elements — performance, cinematography, sound, and story — to define the rate at which the audience receives information. It is the pulse that infuses the show into the audience’s psyche.

  So how does rhythm relate to pace? Pace is the speed at which the cuts go by. More precisely, it’s the duration of cuts and the number of cuts in a sequence, e.g. short and many or long and few. Rhythm results from pacing and bringing all the elements together — it is how the edited sequence plays. We’re aware of it in the midst of a pounding action scene or shortly thereafter when we let out our breath in the more slowly paced aftermath scene.

  Rhythm in editing is similar to rhythm in music. Indeed the terms are the same: rhythm, pace, sequence. A movie’s rhythm and pacing are often accented or driven by music or sounds. In editing, as with music, there are fast, medium, and slow sequences as well as abrupt actions that catch viewers off guard and pauses that give them a respite from the action.

  Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky claimed, in his book Sculpting in Time, “What is different about cinema editing is that it brings together time, imprinted in the segments of film.”

  How do pace and rhythm relate to time? Shots enter the cutting room, each with its own timing created by the duration of the filmed action. The editor takes these shots and uses parts of them to pace and sculpt the movie, creating a new timing and the movie’s rhythm. Editing shortens or lengthens the real time of the filmed action, causing time to be compressed or expanded.

  In this chapter we’ll examine cuts and sequences to pinpoint how time, pace, and rhythm reveal character, support the dramatic action, and affect the audience.

  COMPRESSING TIME

  Editing to contract real time.

  A time-compressed sequence conveys information swiftly. Typically, it brings high energy or chaos to the screen and startles, scares, or otherwise socks it to the audience. Dialogue, sound effects, and music often punctuate these sequences, overlapping cuts and sustaining continuity.

  Editors compress time in a number of ways including: making cuts that are short in duration (2” or less), employing dissolves, mattes, or other effects, and creating a fast pace.

  COMPRESSING TIME 1 (selected cuts): In this opening sequence, horses hurtle across ancient China to rush the nameless hero (inside the coach) toward the emperor.

  Hero

  Long journeys are edited to compress real time as well as to efficiently convey story points and provide a sense of place and time period.

  Short journeys, such as a character crossing a room or moving from one place to another, are habitually edited to avoid tedium. The result? Time is compressed.

  COMPRESSING TIME 2 (selected cuts): The hero’s final walk to the Emperor’s palace takes a thousand steps and three cuts.

  Hero

  Time compression is frequently used to show growth, change, or shape shifting such as a character turning into a werewolf.

  COMPRESSING TIME 3 (selected cuts): A running researcher changes into Paprika, her alter ego, via time-compressing cuts.

  Paprika

  When a time-compressed sequence is an action scene, close-ups and medium shots comprise the majority of shots because viewers grasp their information faster than that from long or wide shots. As the action sequence accelerates toward its climax, the cuts usually become even shorter and the rhythm rapid-fire.

  COMPRESSING TIME 4 (selected cuts): In 43 sec
onds and 36 cuts, pilot Howard Hughes goes down in flames.

  The Aviator

  SMASH CUT

  Variation on a short cut. An unexpected, lightning-quick cut designed to deliberately jar the audience by zapping the action from one place/object/person/image to another.

  SMASH CUT 1: An Iraqi girl’s carefree slide ends in the kaboom of the U.S. attack.

  Fahrenheit 911

  SMASH CUT 2: Budd, is not counting on this fatal payoff. He’s as shocked as the audience.