Art of the Edit?

Quote

On the second or third cut of a film, we go through a process I sometimes call the "Brutal Cut" or the "Babykiller Cut"

LOL - I like it when "Mr Hatchet Man" comes to the edit... its so satisfying when you end the day and feel like you've hacked it into a really good shape.

Not so far OT I just remembered a good Charlie Brooker programme on TV reality editing there is a clip on YouTube here:







For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Derek wrote:

"sometimes less is more."

that's my mantra for editing, or making music, writing or whatever.

What you leave out is as important as what you include. Often its more important. Most of my favourite films are cut in a very streamlined, economical style. It's a bit harsh on the cameraman who's shot lots of lovely stuff which ends up on the cutting room floor but c'est la vie.

Writing is the same. There's a tendency to want to shower the reader with adjectives and metaphors, but the best writers cut to the chase and focus on story and character.

Music is the same. My favourite British songwriter is Elvis Costello, but his biggest enemy is often his own intelligence, and his temptation to succumb to his own clever ideas. Some of his best songs have fallen prey to intellectual excesses.

Feeling is always the best guide IMO.

> It's a bit harsh on the cameraman who's shot lots of lovely stuff which ends up on the cutting
> room floor but c'est la vie.

The good DPs I've worked with tend to get what we editors do and appreciate it, and vice versa. Akira Kurosawa shot a bunch of footage for Throne of Blood, and it was reported that he rejected four out of five shots: "Too beautiful", "too intense", "too wide" etc. Now that's editorial discipline. Although late in his career Kurosawa got pretty indulgent as well. Kagemusha should've been two hours instead of three.

> Writing is the same. There's a tendency to want to shower the reader with adjectives and
> metaphors, but the best writers cut to the chase and focus on story and character.

Here's where my director partner taught me a lot. He writes tons and tons of back story, character details and monologues into his scripts. Then, either in later drafts or in the editing room, he starts tossing them out. But as in acting, you can't hold yourself back until you've gone too far.

> Music is the same. My favourite British songwriter is Elvis Costello, but his biggest enemy is
> often his own intelligence, and his temptation to succumb to his own clever ideas. Some of his
> best songs have fallen prey to intellectual excesses.

There's a middle ground between Bob Dylan and AC/DC...
David Mamet writes great dialogue, but his songwriting is pretty weak. Bruce Springsteen's early, hyper-verbose lyrics sucked until he simplified things and started writing about growing up, cars, girls and rock and roll. But Bob Dylan could pull off the verbose thing, and usually Laura Nyro can as well. It all depends!


www.derekmok.com

> My favourite British songwriter
> is Elvis Costello, but his biggest enemy is often
> his own intelligence, and his temptation to
> succumb to his own clever ideas. Some of his best
> songs have fallen prey to intellectual excesses.
>

My favourite part about Elvis Costello is his ability to walk the tightrope and balance just before making it turns almost cheesy.

I've been noticing something lately in terms of the relationship between music to action- the point where an action occurs, if it falls on an accented beat, it sometimes over emphasizes that action. I've been trying some musical ideas lately, like cutting on triplets even if there isn't a turnaround or a drum roll in the music.

Fast cuts? That's where i prefer films over TV- TV in many cases over saturated with cuts that could have been slower. Although I got that feeling watching Redford's Lions for Lambs- that many of the cuts during the dialogue was just too hasty.

Just watched Heat. Pretty darn cool!

> Just watched Heat. Pretty darn cool!

Notice -- no music whatsoever once the gunfight at the bank starts.

That's excitement. That's skill. That's smarts. I'm willing to wager that if the director weren't around, 99.9 per cent of producers would have told the editor: "Okay, let's have some exciting music here...it sounds bare". I'd first watched this gunfight scene around 1996 on a two-cassette VHS set and this gunfight was at the beginning of the second tape, which means I'd known there had to be a lot more of the film afterwards. But when I watched the gunfight, I was very much fearing for Val Kilmer and De Niro's characters' lives. Quite a feat.

It's mind-boggling that after those killer action scenes in Heat and Collateral, Michael Mann completely botched it on Miami Vice. The ending was one of the worst action scenes he's ever directed. Having so much of Gong Li ("I'm so pretty I don't have to act or learn English" didn't help any.


www.derekmok.com

To add to that- that ending gunfight scene was pretty long, duration wise, and it still kept up the suspense. Which is quite a feat.


Although there was one moment where i couldn't help laughing- when De Niro comforts his wife. It didn't seem like the best of acting (or maybe i'm not in for these sappy scenes), the reverse shot on De Niro, in this "what the f*ck" expression.

The sound design was pretty cool too- the surreal pumping of the organ. Which they also used as a recurring motif to describe the emotional states of the characters. I can't imagine how many producers would have opted for the cliche violin lines.

Derek, was that a green screen on the balcony in Heat when Robert De Niro and Amy Brenneman are getting to know each other? I thought that was a poor job, maybe it was the lighting but I've always disliked it.

Greatest gun battle ever shot/cut.

www.markdavid.tv

I bet it was- chroma keying wasn't that advanced then.

> Although there was one moment where i couldn't help laughing- when De Niro comforts his wife.

Girlfriend.

Let's face it, Michael Mann sucks at writing and directing female characters. Dennis Haysbert's girlfriend was one-dimensional; Amy Brenneman did the clichéd "traumatized girlfriend" thing (worst acting she's ever done, I think); and Diane Venora was just plain awful as Pacino's depressed wife. She was even worse in The Insider. She was so phony that she took away from Russell Crowe's character sympathy and the stakes, instead of helping them.

Like John Woo, Michael Mann really is so much better at male interactions, which is why I think Collateral is overall the best-acted Mann film for the last 20 years or so. In fact, I think the best female character he's ever directed might be the mother of Jamie Foxx's character in Collateral. Jada Pinkett Smith was just as boring as the other Mann women, but at least there's so much less of her. And the male characters in that film were great -- Foxx and Cruise, obviously, but also Mark Ruffalo (the grungy cop) and Barry Shabaka Henley (the jazz musician who's assassinated).

So often Mann is tempted to make his women oh-so-tender-and-feminine that it backfires -- they become sobbing, bawling, female clichés with no strength. (The show 24 has this chronic problem as well.) The mother in Collateral had so much more personality because there was a real conflict between her and Foxx. Conflict creates character sympathy; a "nice" character isn't necessarily sympathetic. Henry Hill in GoodFellas was sympathetic, and not because he was nice, but because he was charming, interesting, funny, brutal (the way he treats his wife is nicely complicated), and his was our perspective.


www.derekmok.com

Haha. And i was wondering whether I was watching the possibly censored code 6 version of the movie (was the only version i could get my hands on). The alpha male characters were definitely way cool, but it was that one reverse shot (sorry, that was al pacino) that had me rolling with laughter. Can't remember which scene it was off hand, but man! that was so bad it was funny. It's like a "wtf, i don't even know you, why are you crying" expression, but it was more likely the build-up with the bad acting that made that shot look way off beat.

Also the scene where de niro gets up to call his girlfriend... at the dinner party. The set-up wasn't great. I can imagine Nora Ephron with a more sophisticated build up to that scene, although she probably would have sucked at the major action scenes. The fine balance was the type of empathy you'd feel for the characters and the action. No mean feat. The audio design was pretty good as well- the sawing sound became an identity for Val Kilmer (and gang) at work, and the pumping organ sound for character states. I like that detached feel during the emotional scenes though- if anything, that was worth far more than the sappy scenes.

Cant argue too much with you here Derek but you got to love Tuesday Weld's character/performance in Theif. Exceptional. Watch it again.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I saw Thief in my pre-film-school film-rat days and it didn't leave much impression. Maybe because it was so dated (1981...stuck between the '70s and '80s, I think). I'll peep it again when I get a chance.

Actors love to cry (especially in auditions), and it's up to directors to stop them when it ain't right!


www.derekmok.com

Anything Michael Mann or Brian DePalma did is well edited. One of my favorite sequences of all time is the train station sequence in The Untouchables (DePalma).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

yeah, but wasn't that almost a shot for shot remake of Sergei Eisenstein's baby carriage sequence in ...can't remember the movie.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Yes i think it was, they mention it in "the Cutting Edge" the art of movie editing.

www.markdavid.tv

> yeah, but wasn't that almost a shot for shot remake of Sergei Eisenstein's baby carriage
> sequence in ...can't remember the movie.

The Battleship Potemkin, Odessa Steps massacre sequence. Eisenstein did it better than De Palma in terms of emotional impact (I think De Palma went way too far in the mushy mother-baby stuff, and Costner is his usual wooden self). However, De Palma's sequence had a brilliant approach towards slow-motion and sound design. No music!

The Untouchables is also David Mamet's writing at its best. Not bogged down by pretensions
because he was working for a commercial project, but still crisp dialogue and concepts. And Sean Connery never had such a great script and character and hasn't had one since, though he was great in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.


www.derekmok.com

Re De Palma:

Let's not forget Carlito's way which i watched again the other night. Stands up really well and is IMO one of the best gangster movies of the last 20 years.

Thought his last one was a bit of a turkey though, Blue Dahlia or something.

Krystoff Kielowski's Three Colours Blue is an interesting film. He fades down to black and cranks up the music throughout the film giving the viewer the impression its the end of the scene. Only to fade up again and continue with the scene. Haven't seen anything else quite like it.

The gangster genre fits De Palma well. His over-the-top style falls apart when the genre, subject matter and script don't have enough mystique and intensity to sustain the show-offy camera and direction: Sisters, Body Double, Dressed to Kill, Snake Eyes, Femme Fatale -- all pretty bad films. But give him a commercial, franchise film like The Untouchables, Carrie, Mission: Impossible -- magic. I think he's one of those rare filmmakers whose "personal" films are irritating and pretentious, but his commercial work is great. The exact opposite of Martin Scorsese, in many ways.

> Thought his last one was a bit of a turkey though, Blue Dahlia or something.

The Black Dahlia, about the murder of Elizabeth Short. Didn't see it.


www.derekmok.com

The Untouchables scene was a remake, i remember that from back in school.
Any word on the russian directors? I absolutely loved aronofsky's requiem for a dream, which i thought he brought eisenstein's idea to a whole new level. Although the soundtrack got a little heavy at the end.

Speaking of Mission Impossible- what really amazes me, is the difference in film making these days. It's almost as if movie making budgets and technology went on an exponential explosion. I suppose non linear editing did have more of an impact on the industry as well- because it's easier to make a cut, more effort is spent polishing up the shots, matching shots properly, etc...

This is getting to be quite a thread, btw.

I'm more a fan of German directors than either French or Russian. The German film sensibility has been one of the most consistent in history; I can't remember any time when there hasn't been interesting, major work coming out of there. Fritz Lang is underappreciated, and so are Volker Schlöndorff, Doris Dörrie, Werner Herzog, Michael Verhoeven. Even the Criterion Collection underrepresents the Germans -- only 14 entries so far out of 423 titles, an abysmally low count for such a vibrant film scene and history.

And Darren Aronofsky is from Brooklyn, New York, educated at Harvard and AFI...I'd hardly call him a Russian director or even a member of that tradition. His style is more derived from post-modern image collages, from music videos and commercials -- an overwhelmingly American sensibility, though Asian and Latin American cinema have taken heavily from that style.


www.derekmok.com

Ah... So he's american. The moment i heard his name i figured he either russian or polish and didn't read up on that part- my bad. He should have gotten a more english name like "The Plastic Daren" (hint: woody).

Post modernism in Asian Cinema? Or do you mean Wong Kar Wai? I feel the epitome of his career came with the Chungking Express/Fallen Angels films. After that, he became too pretentious for my liking- the long takes, back shots of the head... it seemed like he was trying to target his films for the European art circuits. His last two films seemed more like tourist attractions than authenticity.

Have you seen Fassbinders "Querelle", his film of Cocteau's novel Querelle of Brest?
Crazy French/German co-production. My girlfriend loved it more than me, but its an interesting film. And this year the wonderful "Lives Of Others" of course.

Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood For Love is one of my all time favourites.

Satyajit Ray"s Pathar Panjali is also one of the great films of Asian cinema.

Who cares if The Untouchables scene was a remake? Not me, dudes. That's something I didn't even know so it doesn't mean a hoot to me. I am not a film snob. I love a good story. I also love disaster / Sci-Fi / Horror films, a killer who cuts off his fingerprints, the Starship Enterprise transporting whales through time to save the earth from extinction, aliens attacking the Empire State Building, vampire bartenders...and I LOVE a good remake.

First time I saw that train station scene in The Untouchables, it blew my mind. It was great...period. I enjoyed it & will never forget the first time I saw it in the theater. I believe I counted 108 cuts in that short sequence.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> Who cares if The Untouchables scene was a remake?

No, that's a non-issue for me as well. My issue was with Costner's wood-faced performance and the sappy mother and baby.

But Andy Garcia sliding to prop his knee against the carriage was just...freakin' cool. It's John Woo before John Woo was chic in America,, achieving an effect much like the first hit in A Better Tomorrow.

> I LOVE a good remake.

We just had one of the best remakes of all time: The Departed was leagues above Infernal Affairs.


www.derekmok.com

P.S. You guys know the story behind the train scene? Mamet had originally written a climax that was on board a moving train, but they ran out of budget, thus forcing De Palma to make a very film-school-like move by paying tribute to Potemkin. Ballsy.


www.derekmok.com

i agree about the baby and mom scene sections of the scene being sappy, maybe seeing the baby face shot at the end when all are dead, smiling maybe.

my thing with that film is the reflection of the whole camera crew in the windows outside sean connery's apt. it was cool to follow him walking in his apt from outside, but that was just what i noticed. is it right that De Palma does not care about that kind of thing?

www.markdavid.tv

Someone mentioned Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Don't even ask for my opinion on that movie (oh that's right, you didn't), but I will say he should be put in movie jail for the pill-popping/eyes dilating/coffee-making montages in that movie, as they are just about frame-for-frame theft from All That Jazz. Not homage. Theft.

He simply was praying that you never saw that movie.

Which brings up the larger issue. Bottom line? Everybody steals/borrows. BUT. If you steal the SIGNATURE scene or element from another movie (see Untouchables/Battleship Potemkin) without adding to it, you are a worthless hack. You may as well break into the original artist's home and clean the place out.

It's the same for music. Licks are traded, used, quoted, everything, all the time, by everyone, especially the greats like Coltrane. But don't use the MAIN RIFF from a song and pretend it's yours. "Hey, I wrote this awesome song yesterday. It's called Stairwell to Heaven!"

I have a lot of professional stand-up comedian friends, and they have it right. When they hear a comedian literally lift someone else's material, they yell "Stolen!" right there in the club. Just call it out. And you know what? Those comics never steal that joke again.

Wish that would work for movies...

All that jazz? Cool! gotta catch that!

derek wrote:

"We just had one of the best remakes of all time: The Departed was leagues above Infernal affairs"

Couldn't disagree with you more, and you're the first person i've heard say that. I did enjoy the remake, but the whole point about the original was that you never knew who was the good guy and who was the bad. This ambiguity was crucial to the film and didn't even figure in the remake.

I thought the Aviator was better, especially the grading which was out of this world.


\All that Jazz is great.