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Sony G90 User Manual

Page 21

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the emotion, the mood, the action, the transfor-

mation lead the cut, rather than the other way

around. I don’t like to let picture cuts fall on

hard consonants, as that emphasizes a cut.

I enjoy prelaps to pull the narrative

along – that is, starting an incoming

line of dialog over an outgoing

scene – provided it doesn’t become

a mannerism. I generally detest

what I call the never-let-a-mod-

ulation-die-out-before-you-cut-

away school of editing, which

in our attention-deficit age

is

becoming

more

and

more common.
When

most

people

are

impressed by editing they usually

think

of

elaborate

action

sequences, but the real art of editing

lies in working with performances

and in concealment. What I care

about most is achieving a theatri-

cal sense of performance but

with filmic means. By the-

atrical, I don’t mean

ostentatious “acting”;

rather, I am referring

to the continuity you

get from a perfor-

mance on stage, the

building

up

and

releasing of tension

and emotion in an

unbroken arc of

time and space.

This

can

be

achieved on film,

but it is more

difficult because

films are made in

pieces and over

time. Usually the

master shots are done first. In a long scene,

allowing for camera setups, lighting, and rig-

ging, the director may not get around to

the close-ups until the end of the day

or the next day. Yet the shots have to

cut together. Sometimes one

actor will have his close-ups

before lunch, the other after

lunch; and emotionally, psycholog-

ically, even physiologically they’re

in completely difference places. Yet

the shots have to cut together. When scenes

involve several characters, each actor has his or her dif-

ferent way of working; they reach emotional peaks or

descend into emotional valleys at different times. Yet

the shots have to cut together. More often than not,

one actor will nail the scene in the first few

takes and setups (meaning the master),

another will not hit his stride until the

medium shots and over-the-shoulders,

and a third finally comes up to

speed in the close-ups. Yet still the

shots have to cut together.

It’s a funny thing about matching in editing. Most lay

moviegoers who pay attention to editing admire the elegance
of the shot matching; most editors brag about the mismatch-
es they manage to get away with. What experienced editors
care most about matching is the mood and emotion of the per-
formance from one shot to the next. (Even a volatile perfor-
mance that swings between extremes must have the integrity
of its changes.) Neophytes usually worry about quite trivial
matters – how much of the cigarette was burned away in this
shot as opposed to the previous one. The second scene I ever
had to cut was in a movie called The Best of Times. Kurt Rus-

sell and Robin Williams are at a bar drinking beer out of bot-
tles. The scene was covered from every conceivable angle and
size except that there were no singles – that is, a shot that con-
tains only one character. Every shot was some variety of a
two-shot, which means not only that both actors were plainly
visible, but so were their beer bottles. What a learning experi-
ence! Every time I wanted to make a cut, one bottle or the
other got in the way. Soon enough I discovered what every
editor discovers – the hell with matching. You cut for mood,
emotion, for the feeling of the moment, and then later correct
any mismatches you can’t live with.

In the scene I just described, the only cut I don’t like is the

one I absolutely had to make for the match alone: after one of
the actors delivered his line, I had to wait for him to raise the
bottle to his lips because that is where it was in the incoming
take that was best for the next line. I’d have rather cut away
sooner, but there was no other way without leaving a mis-
match so grotesque as to throw any moviegoer right out of the
moment. When I ran this scene for Garth Craven, one of my
mentors, he remarked, “Never give an actor a prop.”

Garth did not, I must add, say this to the detriment of the

actor; it was just commiseration between editors. The takes in
question were made hours apart; no actor can be expected to
turn in a good performance at the same time as he’s trying to
keep precise track of what are supposed to be casual swigs of
beer during a long scene in a neighborhood bar. That’s one of
the things editors are for.

There was a time when studio previews served an

admirable and necessary function, or complex of functions.
They let you observe how your movie played in front of an

The scr eenpl ay has a

st r uct ur e. Each scene has a

st r uct ur e – a r ange of t empos.

But t hese t hi ngs have no r eal ci n-

emat i c exi st ence unt i l t hey

l eave t he edi t or ’ s