All language subtitles for 128 - Editing Part 1

editing is the process where the movie

or the television show is actually made

everything else is gathering the raw materials

as my friend George Lucas likes to say

um it's it's also the place where you

you execute your final rewrite

because there are so many creative decisions

still to be made during the editing

and so much that you learn about the story

it is that you want to tell

one of the most uh

exciting but daunting things about the editing process

it's the time in which you

you actually come to terms with the possibilities

of your story

everything else has been a sort of a hope

a belief now

in very tangible ways

you're looking at what your story actually has to say

what is it what is it convey

how effective can it be

now if the results of that are unsatisfactory for you

or your audience

there's still a lot you can do about it

and that is what it's important to understand

is that despite your plan

despite you know

everything that went into all the choices that you made

from the script

through the casting

through the production design

the budgeting

the scheduling

the shooting

well it doesn't matter what you thought you were doing

or what you hoped you were going to get

what matters now is what you have to work with

so it's important to put all of that behind you

and have an open mind

I always like to turn to the editors at a certain point

when I see a scene that's not working very well

and I like to say

what idiot directed that scene

because it's just a way of

what kind of formally

just putting all that behind us

it doesn't matter

this is the task at hand

a good editor is proficient

is professional

um is is willing

hardworking um

and um you know

doesn't have a lot of ego

is is is is willing to follow direction um

and um and you know

and and and has

and has good

solid taste

a great editor

is somebody who has all of those qualities

and yet can look at a scene in a slightly different way

has superb taste and um

a creative imagination

that sort of inspires him or her to re edit the scenes

in ways that the director didn't present

uh that weren't necessarily scripted in a

in a particular way

might reorder some of the dialogue

might uh you know

structurally reshape things

I I wouldn't want that to be the primary initial cut

but I love it when an editor has the confidence

to take some sort of creative authorship over a scene

and have it as an alternate version

ultimately however

editors are not the people who are supposed to all

to decide what the final cut is um

whether the director has final cut in a contract or not

uh you know

I believe that the best films um

benefit from

you know this

this sort of single um

over oversight and um

and and that's the director

but I work very closely with editors

who are extremely talented and very creative

and it's another one of those key collaborations

that yields um

a set of options and um

and ultimately um

it's you know

it's my job to

to choose the

the the approach um

same with you know

director of photography um and

and and all of his other categories yes

they have a tremendous amount of autonomy and authority

but um they're all

they're all reporting to um

the CEO of the movie

and that's the director

you and your editor

assuming you are working with somebody in that capacity

um need to have a conversation early on

and the conversation needs to go something like this um

editor to the director um

do you wanna let me know which takes you liked the most

or do you want me to watch the footage and make my own

autonomous decisions

the director's answer could be a or B

a would be no

I'll tell you which takes that I like

and I'll even give you a sense of how I think

the scene should be edited together either

either I'll call you on the phone

we'll watch the dailies together

or I'll send you

you know a memo and email some notes

or could be be

which is well

I know how I think it should go together

um or the options for the ways it could go together

um but why don't you creatively

see what the scene says to you and try it

because I I

I've always got my plan

that's not going anywhere

and yet you may have a great new idea

so that's that initial conversation

um well let's uh

we'll assume that they picked um

a you know follow the director's notes as best you can

uh the the the

it's a good idea for the editor

and the director to meet whenever possible

sometimes it's on the weekends

sometimes it's after shooting

sometimes it's

it can be stent you know

over the internet

um and you can

you can just download a scene or two and look at it

so that the director learns a couple of things

the director first learns that

the scenes are coming together

in a way that may not be exactly refined and um

it may not include all the choices

that the director has in mind

but basically

it looks good

the actors you know

feel right in their characters

the approach is working

it may reveal some disappointments

and that will give

the director a chance to analyze those

come to terms with them

and either make some adjustments or um

you know or not

but at least that's an opportunity

before the whole movie is finished to

to make some decisions

so it's very important and helpful

if the editor can be working quickly um

right behind the principal photography and

and sharing scenes uh

with the director as soon as possible

the editing style is often born out of

the kind of nature of the central characters um

and you're telling the story through these characters

and so often they set a kind of a feeling or a rhythm

Cinderella Man was an interesting combination

because on the one hand

it's the depression

it's a very humanistic

honorable but everyday

kind of a central hero

Jim Braddock

and whenever we were in his world

there was something about it that was modest

it was it was

um um harsh

it reflected um

you know his

his lack of resources as a

as a father and a

and a husband there

and there was a

and there was a kind of a simplicity to it

and a sense of pressure and um

and a bit of darkness

you know around him

um usually with some warm light uh

that they were

you know kind of hovering around

and the editing and the camera work um

followed that with him

in the ring

he became a different person with a different objective

and the intensity in the violence often suggested in

demanded tight cuts

shortcuts explosions

and that was the paradox of Jim Braddock

is he was a kind

gentle honorable man

and away from the ring

but when he was fighting for his family

you would do anything to win if it was honorable

he was uniquely

you know remarkably great guy

and in principled guy

Frost Nixon

has some similarities because there

there is a kind of combat there

and in fact

Salvatore Totino

the cinematographer

and Dan Handling Mike Hill

the editors

worked on both projects

we were very open about the fact that some of the

inter interview scenes

needed to have that same kind of combative intensity

and we should use some of the cutting patterns

and some of the stylistic choices

that we had used in Cinderella Man

which we'd made a couple you know

4 5 years before

and so it was really fun and interesting to see

how we could take this verbal combat and

and make it you know

a little more visceral and intense for the for the

for the audience

and the shooting mattered

but so did the editing and

and so sometimes those scenes are cut

in a way that's a little bit similar

to some of the punch exchanges in Cinderella Man um

the but away from those interview scenes

Frost Nixon had a very different editorial rhythm

because David Frost was a completely different kind of

uh of a protagonist

um he was glamorous

he was fast

he was bright

he was the sexier

more kinetic environment that that he

that he was in

and so that suggested another kind of pace

and another kind of editing rhythm

so I needed to have a sense of that

in staging the scenes

more camera movement

shorter cuts

more variety

um not using the same shot repeatedly

or not staying in the same shot for a long time

but having lots of cover coverage

lots of angles

and the editors saw that

saw the way I was approaching it

and understood the kind of pace that we were going for

which was much more contemporary

uh and um and

and and just

and just you know

um pacier um

breathless almost in places

Apollo 13 was the most challenging

uh editorial project that I've ever been involved with

I believe and I and I've

and I've been in some

some very challenging ones

rush was a huge challenge

Cinderella man

big challenge

uh backdraft very

very challenging in its own way

Frost Nixon

very challenging

uh but the nature of telling the story of Apollo 13

in an authentic way

suggested to me that I needed to look at the crisis

from three different perspectives

and each step along the way that

the way that the suspense there needed to be

sort of filtered through three different perspectives

um the astronauts themselves

the mission control team

who is trying to rescue them

and do everything they could

from thousands of miles away

and the family at home

that actually had communication with Mission Control

and no way to talk back

but between what was on the television

and what they were hearing over the NASA speaker

was keeping them on the edge of their seat

and emotionally

you know wrought

and so I fully shot

every crisis point from all three vantages

and it was not until we reached the editing room

that we began to focus

the way in which we

we were going to um

um you know

sort of develop each of these crises

and I wanted I

I knew I wanted them to unfold in different ways

from different perspectives

so sometimes you'd feel it more from the family

sometimes you'd feel it more from Mission Control

and of course many times

you know you'd

you'd want to be there alongside the astronauts

well these were

these were editorial decisions ultimately

and it required um

months of editing re editing

looking at scenes

looking at entire sequences

looking at entire movies

and saying um

taking notes while watching it

and then having these long conversations

and days and days of going through the film

stopping and going and um

um there were some scenes that were

without any reshooting

were completely recut and re engineered

to reflect some other insight

we would literally do things like

use one or two lines on camera

and then record new dialogue

to try to clarify some

you know moment of tension in crisis

and let that play over somebody's head

or off camera

or over in a wide shot where you

you couldn't tell what the people were saying

and we were able to invent

scenes that ratcheted up the tension

and made it more emotional and

and you know

all of that

is about discovering the possibilities of the

of the footage you have

of the material that you have in the editing room

by the time you see a scene

back and forth a number of times and try um

beginning in a different place

or using a different shot to start

than the one you'd

that you'd initially planned um

ending at a different point because um

one of the things that you're looking for

of course is not just

refining the elements of that scene

to deliver its full potential

but you also have to think about

the scenes that precede it

the scenes that follow it

uh it's in its

its meaning

to the entire uh

story when you

when you recognize that a scene could

could uh perhaps

achieve more

or you know

be clearer or be more mysterious

well that generally

boils down to some kind of a

of a re editing

to try to play with the shots and the footage to

to create a different rhythm

and therefore

a different feeling

and a sort of a

you know a sort of

a set of of

of impulses or data

that are coming to the

to the viewer