How is the craft of editing Changing

Lump

Hi, with all these essays I've been doing, I started to think about how the craft, not technical aspects, or editing is changing.

Any opinions anyone?


John

Dustaz

I dont think the craft has changed that much altho i only really have experience with tape and non-linear (one of my first assisting jobs was the last commercial to be cut on film in ireland to the best of my knowledge) so i dont really have any experiece of actual film editing.

The basics remain the same and, apart from the physical aspect of cutting and taping up the film (which still impresses me when i see an old pro doing it) which only seems to be used by feature assembly editors, will always remain so.

The only thing that strikes me is how schedules seemed to become shorter when NLE came in. 16 week edits became 12 week edits and 6 week edits became 4 week edits etc etc. In a lot of cases this is an unjustified drop and gives you a lot less time to actually view rushes.


Now that i think about it, probably the biggest change i have noticed in cutting programmes, drama and to a lesser extent commercials has been the advent of DV. ARGH. DV has revolutionised production, allowing smaller crews, easier access, cheaper production costs and probably more that i cant think of. Its a BLOODY NIGHTMARE though. People tend to overshoot massively with it and you end up with hours of unusable material which you still have to actually view. Its like the anti-Super 8. With super8, you get a tiny amount of material and nearly all of it is good. Its the opposite with dv, sometimes the ratio can be 20 or 30:1. Add to this the fact that generally there are massive timecode issues with the format which make digitising and conforming direct from the dv tapes a hazardous procedure and the awful onboard sound and youve got yourself an editors headache sir

Dont get me wrong, I think dv is great and allows productions that could not have been made before its advent. I just with that people realised that the red button on the camera indicated Stop as well as Start

Lump

Oh sweet sweet DV. I've spent many many hours looking through "Quick Pick up shots" they are never quick when you put them all together. and most of them cant be used!


John

Dustaz

If mycroft is who i think he is, then i suspect hell have a thing or two to say about dv also

Lump

Oh don't be like that, we all love cheap, easy to use stock.... Don't we? I look forward to shooting my Major project on film, if the budget get's through. I may only have 2 Hours of stuff to choose from, for a 30 minute film. Actually the Director I work with at the moment is very specific, knows how the scene will cut when he's shooting it. So I tend not to have to many shots etc to choose from. Mostly just camera men/actors ****ing up.


John

mycroft

I am Dustaz.

And on the show you're refering to.

1. Shot two camera dv. With up to 4 and half hours of rushes a day. Making it a shooting ratio of 23:1, averaging more rushes then fecking king arthur.

2. Audio was only recorded onto one DV, so the audio from the first cam had to be sunk with picture on the second cam. This becomes fun, when you discover that because these are new fangled progressive scan dv cams, sound is actually arriving 2 frames before picture on the first camera (and no one from the production realised this before the shoot) so to keep the offset constant, you have to sync the b camera two frames out. This becomes an issue when you're doing eye synching.

3. t/c breaks, no pre roll AARAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH

Look suffice to say DV is the most assistant intensive format out there, aside from printing on film. But because budgets have shrunk, very off it's just done in a post house with several assistants working on it in different shift.

Has tech changes editing yes absolutely.

Heres my theory. 10 or even 5 years ago, assistant editing was labour instensive. cutting on film meant that an assistant was constantly over the shoulder of the editor watching them work.

Now with limits on budget, in house assistants, non linear, an assistant can't pick up nearly as much from watching an editor work.

This is leading towards a generation of editors who will cut their teeth on promos etc, but when it comes to things like, operating as part of a crew, or sinking your teeth into developing and changing a films/doc structure, which in my opinion true editing, anyone can cut together a montage to some music, these skills will be lost.

You can see it already, very often modern film, and I'm looking at both Irish and international, look great, shiny snappy cutting, but have saggy plots, or pacing. Too much energy and effort is spent on the films feel, while people are ignoring or aren't capable of understanding the idea that you should be experimenting with structure.

Working on both high and low end productions, I've found that the experience of watching printed film dailies with the editor to be immensely rewarding, good editors enjoy discussing scene and plot structure as dailies are being screened, and I've picked up more about real editing from these casual chats then you'll never get in a book.

Hugh_C

I don't think you can decouple the technology from the craft; they inherently affect each other.

When I started editing, about 16 years ago, tape editing was nearing its zenith, although flatbed editing was still pretty popular. Tape editing had introduced the idea of the instant optical - just add water. Now, dissolves weren't a thing you had to wait three days for, sending your cut list over to the lab and waiting for Norman and Cecil with their white coats and pen savers and smell of chemicals just next to Highbury to practice their black art and send something back. Good editors were those who could rattle off flashy opticals in no time at all, and the craft took on an emphasis of technical ability at the expense of narrative dexterity. Sadly this was reflected in the quality of the material to be seen on an emergent MTv, so much unwatchably flashy goo.

Wind the clock on about five years to the birth of Non Linear. Not to be confused with the Birth of Cool, which was, in fact, culturally important. Your dailies were at your fingertips. ALL of your dailies ALL of the time. And the nature of the software was such that you could experiment with structure. And restructure we did, in spades. In fact, so much restructuring was done that narrative suffered and you had very self-conscious, overly complex and ultimately incomprehensible poo to watch on your screen. People carved chunks out of perfectly respectable narratives and rearranged them in ways previously unknown to Mankind. Time slipped, slid and wavered. Time stood still, time went backwards. People grew young. David Lynch was the flavour du jour. New techniques for complexity were invented.

Move to the present. Systems are cheap. Anyone with a fat pipe or a few hundred quid can get FCP. The market is flooded. Experience will out, I cry. No it flucking won’t. Production companies are greedy. Broadcasters are tight. Post-production executives are even more unscrupulous. What do we watch? You’re a Star. What do we train on? You’re a Star. Is it good? Not really. Do people watch it? Yes. Why? I don’t know, maybe it enables people to feel superior to the poor saps who’ve been hoodwinked into participating. What will happen all these highly trained technical editors when they reach a certain age and cannot take the dross any more? We’ll have a slew of great technical editors who can’t cut a sentence together – or apart. What will happen then? A different genus of You’re a Star where people dance in the nude or something. Does it depress me? Yes, hugely. What will I do? I dunno, cook well or write bad prose or something. Where will it all end up? With polydactyllic editors who can cut and perform technical support simultaneously, read the paper and listen to the news while multicamming the intricate steps of naked red-headed twins from Moate while they dance to the Walls of Limerick being played backwards on a finely carved length of Wavin..

You’re a Star; You’re my Lady.

Dustaz

LMAO

Dont know if thats quite the right example though. If you want the seminal example of "Look what this button does", just watch any of mtv's latest output and inparticular Cribs. Sweet god almighty, is there some law about not having a shot last more than 20 frames?

Wilbert

The only real change it will have to the craft of editing is this;
previously editing was difficult to do and you had to be pretty certain about your edits as undoing them was not easy. Now you can chop and change so much and so simply that you don't feel like you are committing to an edit. Sounds arsey but I think it's true. Also, effects are so easy to achieve that people tend to add them just because they are there and not because they benefit the finished program. The good thing is that affordable, powerful editing systems have levelled the playing field and I do think that talent will out. Anyone can learn to press the buttons but not everyone is an editor.