Bad Editing / Bad Pacing

Hi,

This is un-FCP related, but certainly editing related.

After years of working in the biz, I was recently asked to teach a class on editing (FCP) at a local college. Things are going well, but I have encountered two problems: 1) Lack of footage to edit, 2) Lack of examples of "bad" editing.

I am working on #1 (budget), but #2 is more difficult... I see bad edits all over TV, but many are so subtle that pointing out how 1 or 2 frames should be different leaves the students sawing logs.

I'm looking for a movie/show/example so bad that we could actually re-edit it to be better. Something with reactions in the wrong place, dialogue off, awkward pauses... all of that.

Unfortunately I've spent my years in the business looking for good edits, and I don't have a short list of bad films!

Any suggestions?

-MW

God, I wish I could remember specific examples for you right now. But I'll get things started by telling you about two things I know I've seen recently, only the details of where and when escape me right now.

The first example is something I see all the time: crossing the line. If a character's eyeline goes from screen right to screen left in this shot, cutting away then cutting back to an angle where the character's eyeline goes from screen left to screen right is an editing no-no. It confuses the sense of geometry of the scene, and who's standing where relative to what.

If I remember correctly, there's a "crossing the line" cut in White Red Panic, which is available online. But I'd have to go back and watch it again to be sure. I think it was a pretty classic case of an editor having to use one setup where he really should have had another setup to cut to, which of course comes up all the time when you're editing.

Relatedly but differently, I recently saw an edit (and this is the one I really wish I could remember specifically) in a shot with three characters standing in a triangle having a three-way conversation. At one moment, A and B were both looking at C, and the editor cut from A to B. But the shots were both shallow depth of field, so the background was quite indistinct, and they were both framed very similarly. B happened to be a woman and A happened to be a man, so A was larger in the frame than B and because of the composition B's outline sort of fit neatly inside A's outline if you imagined the two shots superimposed. So when the cut happened, it almost appeared as if A had suddenly shrunk. And, incidentally, become female. It was a disorienting edit. (The fact that it was awkwardly timed, coming "between blinks" instead of "on the blink" [if you're familiar with Murch] didn't help.)

This is a tricky situation that comes up pretty frequently when you're cutting a scene with three characters. If you're lucky, the setups were thoughtfully planned: the camera never literally crosses the line, and each angle is framed in a way that cutting between them works instead of not working. But even if your setups are all meticulous, there will inevitably be certain cuts that just don't work, for reasons of geometry.

You might consider looking at some of the Bourne films, particularly the fight scenes. In my opinion, at least some of those scenes are cut in such a way to leave the audience with no sense of geometry, no idea of how the characters are moving relative to each other. Now, that gets into a more subtle point: breaking the rules on purpose. Greengrass (I suspect) wanted to disorient the audience, so those scenes are edited in a disorienting way. You might also use the famous driving scene from Breathless here: Godard used jump cuts (which were verboten at that time) on purpose. I know that gets away from your asked-for "bad examples," because those scenes actually do work, but if other scenes were cut the same way, they wouldn't work at all.

Of course there are the old continuity-errors examples as well. Pop in your DVD of Return of the Jedi and skip ahead to the bit at the end where the Emperor is lightning-ing Luke. There's a little segment where the film cuts from a close-up on Vader with his helmet scuffed to hell, to another shot, back to Vader with a pristine helmet, back to another shot, back to Vader with a scuffed helmet. Internet nerds love to nitpick continuity errors?lengths of cigarettes, levels of liquids in wine glasses?but really each one has to be judged on its merits. Is the discontinuity sufficient to catch the audience's attention? I mean the average audience member, not the obsessive nerd who's watched a movie a hundred times (see above, re: me and Jedi.) If the answer is no, then it's not really an editing "error" in any meaningful sense of the word.

In a lot of ways, editing is the art of knowing what you can get away with.

Oh, along those same lines: If I remember right, there's a sequence in The Terminator (the original) where it's full night in Los Angeles, but golden hour at a motel an hour away. Bad editing? Meh. I didn't notice it until somebody pointed it out.

(The end of Armageddon, on the other hand, gets no such pass from me. It's simultaneously golden hour at every point on the globe? Sorry, that didn't work for me.)

I could ramble on like this for a while. You get the idea.

hey, Mike, you have been very helpful to me, so let me suggest you look over the chapter on editing in FILMMAKING A TO Z. Here is the link: best how-to film book on Amazon.com

I think most movie are badly edited and in fact I consider it the number one reason why so few movies get picked up for distribution. Digital editing has opened the floodgates for filmmakers to edit their own movies. I think that young filmmakers should consider not editing movies that they directed themselves.

Editing digital is very hard to teach. With 35mm movie editing, you could give students two shots and ask them to find the best cutting point. This was a great exercise. I used to tell my students when I was teaching film many moons ago, "There is only one correct place to cut; find it."

The best way to find the worst movies is to ask ACE film editors, old timers who had the discipline of editing the great Hollywood movies of a bygone era.

Good luck with your teaching courses.

This could be a very good thread, but its not right for the Cafe. Going to move it to Show and Tell

Michael Horton
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The best way to find the worst movies is to ask ACE film editors, old timers who had the discipline of editing the great Hollywood movies of a bygone era.

Totally disagree. OMG...they will NEVER talk to a stranger about that (unless you are in the Union).

I could DEFINITELY give you at least 2 URL's with instances of beyond horrendous editing...but I don't see why...if you have the chops to edit something CORRECTLY...you just don't edit something INCORRECTLY intentionally and break it down for your students. Do it yourself.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I guess I'm too "new school" and all, but I firmly believe there are several "correct" places to cut between two shots. It depends what you are trying to convey and what story you are trying to tell.

Bad or poor continuity is very often gets confused with "bad editing", when in reality it is a production issue. Sure there are ways to minimize it. Early on, I would let continuity have a strong effect on my performance choices. Now I'm much better at letting performance dominate my 1st choice, as it is more important in the grand scheme of story telling and character development. The audience is generally very forgiving of continuity and jumping space and time. Granted if it is blatently obvious then I try not to follow a blatently bad continuity slip follow another, but generally by the time the audience member has time to think, you've hopefully moved the story on. Last thing I cut that was in theatres, there is a scene where the characters are in a car. The passenger changes from a hospital gown to a bikini white t-shirt in 1 cut. Sure you could really only see his neck/shoulders up, but still 3 previews and not 1 mention of it. Of course after the internet continuity police came out it was caught, but still, no one ever said that it ruined the entire movie for them.

In terms of pacing, that is just a tough one to teach, as really it is very subjective. What works for you may not work for me and so on. One of the more recent movies, that jumps into my head that just felt wrongly "edited" was the last Bond movie. I felt they were trying to cut it as if it was a Bourne movie. Lots of jump cuts, quick cuts but at the end of the day it just wasn't shot that way. They were jump cutting locked off or dolly shots, and MCU where as in the Bourne movies it was dirty in your face ECU handhelds. It felt like they were trying to just get through the movie as quick as possible, not letting the audience take a second to breathe. The other extreme pacing wise for me was There Will Be Blood. I felt like it became self indulgent in the use of wides. They were pretty and great, but by the end I was ready to get through them. Granted it was a style they chose, and it was shot that way, but for me became slow and redundant Lots of people loved it though. Of the two I mention, Bond felt poorly edited, where as There Will Be Blood was very well cut. So really it is all subjective.

I'd venture to guess that a lot of the "bad movies" out there really aren't edited all that poorly. (Talking bigger theatrical type of movies). They are just bad movies. Bad performances. Poorly shot. Not funny. Editing can only do so much at the end of the day.

Bad Acting is worse than bad editing....it's hard to cut around bad acting. Those that can't, really have a stinker on their hands. Totally unwatchable. What you need to do is GET PERMISSION to use a Feature in your class and chop it up / rearrange the cuts and have your students break it down as to why each cut does not work.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

>chop it up / rearrange the cuts and have your students break it down as to why each cut does
>not work.

That's gonna be kinda tough... You need the rushes.



www.strypesinpost.com

I agree 100% with Joey on this:

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What you need to do is GET PERMISSION to use a Feature in your class and chop it up / rearrange the cuts and have your students break it down as to why each cut does not work.

video: [<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application]

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That's gonna be kinda tough... You need the rushes.

...which is why I originally suggested to do it himself from scratch.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> You might consider looking at some of the Bourne films, particularly the fight scenes. In my
> opinion, at least some of those scenes are cut in such a way to leave the audience with no sense
> of geometry

I wholeheartedly agree. The Bourne films had some of the worst fight-scene editing I've seen. Actually, for utter "I don't know what's happening" chaos, try Domino or Bulletproof Monk. It's too bad about Bourne, because aside from the fight scenes, the first Bourne was actually very well edited. That scene in the farmhouse field when Bourne faces off against the sniper is one of the very few instances when a Hollywood filmmaker managed to achieve John Woo-style action cool.

You want great fight-scene editing, look up John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry and Lau Kar-leung's Drunken Master 2. Blazingly fast pace in the fight scenes, but the cuts are actually deceptively slow. The genius of good fight editing is that it makes the cuts seem faster than they are, because the overall scene is so well paced. But the editing is squeaky clean, just beautiful -- you see every move from the optimal angle.

>>chop it up / rearrange the cuts and have your students break it down as to why each cut
>> does not work.
> That's gonna be kinda tough... You need the rushes.

Not necessarily. In fact, the difference between a bad cut and a good cut is sometimes so subtle that all you have to do is snip some of the shots shorter to ruin the editing. So it's perfectly possible to ruin the editing of a pre-existing film by just deliberately over-cutting it.

Me, I use films I've cut, and I often save the first director's cut of the films to use it as a comparison to the final product. In one film I cut, I used the director's old cut (the one she did herself before I'd joined the project), then the final cut. The final cut was longer, but tighter, because it hit all the beats.

> Editing digital is very hard to teach. With 35mm movie editing, you could give students two
> shots and ask them to find the best cutting point.

Bullshit. The discipline of editing is the same whether you use a Steenbeck or Final Cut Pro. Just the very idea that two shots have an absolute "best cutting point", with no narrative or stylistic context, shows that you don't know anything about editing.


www.derekmok.com

I agree 100% with Joey again:

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...which is why I originally suggested to do it himself from scratch.

A teacher should not show students bad cutting to the extent that they get trapped in it psychologically. It's better showing them a superbly edited movie and then demonstrate whey the scenes were cut the way they were and what the mistakes would have been if a few frames were edited this way or that way, and so on. In other words, teach constructively. I like Joey's method better because it leads to creativity and excellence, instead of hero worship (someone's favorite editor; I've never seen John Woo movies. I'm sick of martial arts action movies anyways -- I've cut plenty of them when I had to take every job offered to me).

Derek Mok wrote:

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Bullshit. The discipline of editing is the same whether you use a Steenbeck or Final Cut Pro. Just the very idea that two shots have an absolute "best cutting point", with no narrative or stylistic context, shows that you don't know anything about editing.

As a teacher a simple demonstration works best when teaching the elements of editing. In the digital age, amateurs who have dreamed for a few months that they are filmmakers suddenly embark on a feature film project; they write, direct, star and edit it. So, yeah, it's a great learning experience when you have a digital camera and FCP, plus reading 10,000 page manuals on editing and voila, instant filmmakers.

The question is regarding how to teach good editing and bad editing. I think a more systematic approach is better. The biggest problem in teaching editing and filmmaking in general is that there are too many incompetent working in the industry today. There are 10,000 movies made in the US now because people in the industry are being brainwashed that digital is as good as 35mm production. Before there were 1000 movies made as a general comparison -- I'm talking rough proportions, not statistically. So it is more difficult to figure out what is good and bad editing or filmmaking.

Anyway, with all due respect, we can all disagree as much as we like, but the audience decides what movies they are going to watch and what movies are never going to make it to the big screen regardless of how brilliant they are.

>and I don't have a short list of bad films

As a suggestion, you would have access to past students works. That could spark a good editing discussion.


>So it is more difficult to figure out what is good and bad editing or filmmaking.

A bad film is a bad film. Period. All the audience cares about is whether they like the film or not. And editing is the same whether you're working on a linear or non linear machine. It's the story that matters.


>because people in the industry are being brainwashed that digital is as good as 35mm production

I won't use the word brainwashed. Most students would shoot on a format that is readily available. And with the influx of digital formats, you have a lot more people making films now than in the past, where film making, to a large degree was restricted to a privileged few.

On one hand you could say that training a carrier pigeon is an art, and the telephone made that obsolete, but I won't go as far as to petition to ban the telephone or say that people are brainwashed into thinking that a telephone is better than sending messages via a carrier pigeon.

You shot your films on HDV. Why not 35mm?



www.strypesinpost.com

No, you're right, strypes:digital video is a great teaching tool; but what I was trying to say is that the new revolution in motion picture technology, namely the proliferation of digital cameras and digital editing software, has led to bad editing practices. The discipline of the classical way of shooting and editing movies is being lost.

So, yeah, perhaps "brainwashed" was a bad term to use. In fact, you're right: I do shoot my experimental, no-budget movies with my Sony Z1U camera (which does a beautiful job for quick capture and exhibition of video on the web). But if a movie has a budget and is intended for the cinema, it doesn't make sense to shoot it in digital. 35mm film has a preservation span of over 100 years. Take a look at some Kodak testimonials about film vs. digital.

Also, Mike has top 35mm film editors giving talks and demonstrations of editorial practices at LAFCPUG meetings for a reason: the discipline of 35mm editing is crucial and has to be transferred to digital editors if the art of cinematic language is going to survive -- my opinion.

I posted the scene from The Waterfront with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger as an example of a well-edited sequence to show great editing. In fact, it would be a great exercise to ask students to shoot and edit the same sequence (in video) just for exercise. I would ask them to shoot it and edit it in their own way using a digital camera and student actors. The idea would be to do it in their own way and edit the scene for the sake of exercise.

Anyway, there are some excellent editors on this user group. There are many experts in NLE editing as well, and my point is that most of them have learned their skills from studying 35mm editing techniques of the classical Hollywood way of editing. Film language itself comes from the classical Hollywood standards of filmmaking. Even foreign directors have learned from Hollywood. It is safe to say: without Hollywood there would be no film art. I think many people in the business would share that opinion. I've worked all over the world making movies, everyone will tell you that. But I don't need to argue with anyone about it -- it's an opinion.

I respect all the people working in film and digital. Like you say, in the end it's the audiences that decide....

strypes, here is the link I'd like you to see:

[motion.kodak.com]

> As a suggestion, you would have access to past students works. That could spark a good editing
> discussion.

Great suggestion. "Show and tell" is a great way to know exactly where each student is coming from.

In fact, if you have a set of raw uncut footage, a great exercise is to simply ask the students to cut it in any way they want, without input from others. Then show the works.

Next step: Ask them to try to cut the footage in specific styles -- for example, '70s paranoid thriller , horror, music video. Or, if the footage isn't that versatile, just asking them to cut with a certain tone (eg. slow music vs. fast music vs. no music) teaches a great deal.

Constructive critiques among students teaches a lot. I learned as much as I'd divulged when I was in Master Editing and gave notes on other people's films.

Yet another approach: If the students are shooting their own material, they are likely to be cutting it themselves, or collaborating with another person of their own choosing. For editing class, force them to bring in a scene of raw footage, then mix and match without any input with the director. Let them cut other people's footage into scenes, then come back together and see what happened.


www.derekmok.com

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The biggest problem in teaching editing and filmmaking in general is that there are too many incompetent working in the industry today.

That is the one thing you have ever said that I AGREE WITH.

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There are 10,000 movies made in the US now because people in the industry are being brainwashed that digital is as good as 35mm production.

This is a warning vic - DO NOT hijack and destroy another helpful topical thread for your well-known "film vs Digital" soapbox. DO NOT GO THERE - I will personally delete your posts.

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...but what I was trying to say is that the new revolution in motion picture technology, namely the proliferation of digital cameras and digital editing software, has led to bad editing practices.

What on earth are you talking about? According to who?? Where do you get your information / knowledge?? It has ENHANCED EDITING PRACTICES IF ANYTHING. Please, vic...do some homework before you post such garbage.

Derek is right...EDITING IS EDITING...whether it's with a razor blade & tape or FCP. If you were an Editor, you would know that. It's not about the AUDIENCE...it's about the STORY. You really shouldn't be commenting about editing if it is a subject you are not well versed in.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Oh, Joey, it's so good to hear you agree with me on one point.LOL

The rest of the points you make I don't agree with, but they would be off topic for this thread ... and besides they would require too much debate, so I leave them alone.

This thread is about bad editing / bad pacing, and I think I've said all that I want to say on the subject. Since you have shown so much personal interest in me, I want to thank you for keeping me on my toes.LOL

It's a nice discourse. I agree with some of the points mentioned...

>It is safe to say: without Hollywood there would be no film art.

I would totally disagree with this. Art itself will survive, in one form or another, or it will evolve to something else. To some degree, your statement is like saying that without the USA, there will be no rest of the world. Or that without Microsoft, we would have no home computer. And we both know that is bollocks.

In most cultures, there are musical styles and art forms, that did not come from an American or Western European system. You have music from India, from Africa, parts of Eastern Europe as well as Asia and South America. And you have unique instruments- the didgeridoo from Australia, polyphonic chants from Tibet and Central Asia, the balalaika, the gamelan, etc... and it's also safe to say that without traditional African music, there would be no rock n' roll as we know of today. Some things go a long way.

Sure, a lot of editing rules, aesthetics, systems, were inherited from the classical Hollywood tradition. On the other hand, there was also the rest of the world, which we cannot say was smaller, but to some degree, due to an improvement in communications, everything was allowed to evolve interdependently and there were lots of cross influences. You had the Lumiere Brothers before you had Hollywood. From the former USSR, you had Sergei Eisenstein, the Kuleshov experiments, from Sweden, Ingmar Bergman, and there was Jean Luc-Godard, Francois Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc... Lots of these folks were making films that were quite different from the standard Hollywood fare and out of the control of the Hollywood Studios.

But we're digressing.

I do have to admit that with every innovation, you get the pros and cons that come with it. Walter Murch mentioned in his book, 'The Blink of an Eye', that on Apocalypse Now,"...the rate of cuts per editor per day... turned out to be 1.47!", and on a side note, the average theatrical feature may have cuts per day average of 8. I'm pretty sure we do a lot more than that these days, and I can safely say that I would get in trouble with a lot of producers if I told them that I can only make 8 cuts a day.

When I started cutting, I used to sketch out my edit beforehand, then put the cut together in the machine to see if it worked, and of course, the fact that it's more time consuming and you have less room for error in a non-NLE workstation means that you are inclined to think more about what you're cutting before you actually make the cut. I can't say it's that much different, but that's kinda my process- I'll brainstorm the edit and the story flow, sometimes on a piece of paper, before I even start cutting. On the other hand, an NLE makes it easier to make cuts- so you can have all the time in the world to trim off frames, try out different shot variations and different structures, a lot more easily than you can if you were on a linear suite or a Steenbeck flatbed. And of course, the biggest benefit of an NLE today, is non-destructive editing, as well as having a lot of powerful tools at your fingertips that used to belong solely to a privileged few.

Regarding the Kodak link, I'm not as interested in that, as they would have an agenda to push, but the Digital Dilemma pdf looks quite interesting.

[www.oscars.org]


Also, Vic, if you were to make a self endorsement, I would really prefer you to mention of it, as you aren't posting with your real name, for the sake of being impartial.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes, it's obvious to me that you're very technically proficient. You have helped so many times. But I didn't realize you had so much insight in the philosophy and art of editing. You have made so many excellent points in response to my comments that I will grant you that I haven't made the transition to NLE editing very well. I guess it's too late for me.LOL I'm going to stick with the concepts I know work for me in 35mm editing for a while longer. I know it tends to irritate more knowledgeable editors like Jeff Harrell and Ben King, but I need to learn about digital editing and so sometimes I have to ask an irritating question (on account of my enthusiasm for film.)

You're right about the influence of European film on American filmmaking. And I admire world cinema in general. The only point I will add is that when we speak of the the Industry Standard film we mean Hollywood. That's my opinion...

As for my identity, all you have to do is click on my nick here: filmman. Email me if you wish. I'd love to work with you sometime. I've shot a feature in the Philippines -- a war movie with a lot of martial arts. I might be shooting in the Far East again. I like the locations. I was talking to the Commissioner from Java yesterday. They have great incentives for filmmakers from abroad. Email me: vic@felliniesque.com

Vic Alexander
[www.releasing.net]