All language subtitles for Module 14

When Damien

Chazelle and I were embarking
on the editing of The End of Whiplash,

we discussed the car
chase from the French Connection,

a film directed by William Friedkin
and edited by Jerry Greenberg.

Jerry Greenberg won an Academy
Award for this amazing iconic car chase,

a car chase that featured amazing
car stunts, incredible

dangerous photography, and unforgettable
performance by Gene Hackman.

Jerry Greenberg used quick cuts
to create an immersive experience

to literally take the audience
and slam them into the front seat of a car

and send them careening
through New York City traffic

while chasing a New York City
subway train.

And in 1971, this became the gold standard

for film editing of an action film.

And there's an interesting scene

from Alfred Hitchcock's film North
by Northwest, edited by George Tommasini.

Cary Grant goes to the United Nations
looking for a person of specific person.

He goes and finds this person
and we get into a conversation.

The conversation
is played in a master shot

here.

Two towns and the losing man.

Right.

Are we neighbors?

A large red brick house
with a curved tree lined driveway.

That's the one.

Were you at home last night, Mr. Townsend?

You mean in Glencoe yet?

No. I've been staying in my apartment
here in town for the last month.

I always do when we're in session here.

So there's a point in the conversation
when Cary Grant asks

the man about his wife.

And at that point, the man says,
My wife has been dead for many years.

It's a turn in the conversation.

And it's at that point
when we leave the master,

we make a cut at that exact point,
and we know we feel as an audience member,

we feel that there's something
significant to that point.

What about Mrs.

Townsend?

My wife has been dead for many years.

Oh, now, Mr. Captain,
what's this all about?

The secretary.

Forgive me, but who are those people
living in your house?

What people?

House is completely closed up.

So there's a sequence in the movie

Heat directed by Michael
Mann that uses contrast,

uses contrast to set up a certain rhythm,

a certain pace, and then.

Change it.

And what's interesting about this scene
is that as the men are leaving the bank,

as the police are approaching,
as we intercut the two elements, parallel

cut the two elements.

It's played out at a measured, slow pace.

We take our time.

We we see all the details of both stories,
and we interweave them.

We braid them together.

But this is done in a very methodical,
deliberate way

in order to build suspense
and also to build contrast.

And when these two groups,

the police and the bank robbers,
when these two groups intersect,

when they meet each other,
it becomes explosive.

The editing becomes explosive.

The pace becomes explosive.
It becomes fast.

It becomes a different sequence.

The shootout becomes violent.

And that is

enhanced because what has come before,
it has been slow and deliberate.

The pace has been slow.

So when we start cutting faster,

we really feel it.

Did you get down?

Now. Jackie

Brown.

So when the shootout starts

we're overwhelmed
with the volume of angles were overwhelmed

with the number of cuts

in the same way that we're overwhelmed
with the number of gunshots that we hear

and we see.

It's about shots. It's about pieces.

Whereas what's come before is more
methodical and more about slow rhythms.

It's it's designed to set up suspense
and then pull the trigger

and explode.

Sometimes editing can be used for impact.

A great example,
an example that I really love is

from the David Lynch movie
Blue Velvet, edited by Dwayne Dunham.

In the scene,
the camera pushes in on the character

that Dennis Hopper plays,
and just as he is screaming and laughing,

we do a jump cut and all of a sudden
everyone is disappeared from the frame.

And there is nothing
in the editing of the movie prior to this

that has set this up.

There's nothing in the movie
before editing wise

that has told us that
a type of cut like this might happen.

So when we see this cut, it has impact
because we're not expecting it.

It's jarring, it's grotesque.

There's something disturbing about it.

And that's the point.

The Odessa

Steps
sequence, the iconic Odessa Steps sequence

from Eisenstein's Battleship
Potemkin is a great example of.

Telling stories through film editing.

Impactful cuts.

It uses screen direction.

It uses juxtaposition to create emotion
and to create action.

And it uses all of these techniques

to create a motion to create

fear and excitement and horror.

Stanley Kubrick's

2001 A Space Odyssey, edited by Ray
Lovejoy, has perhaps

what is the most famous time
cut in film history.

In the sequence at the end of the battle

in eight throws a bone up in the air
and there's a match cut.

A match cut to a spacecraft
floating in space.

The clever juxtaposition is clear.

The tool, the bone that we saw during
the dawn of man

has now given way to the spacecraft.

And Martin Scorsese's film Raging Bull,
edited by Thelma

Schoonmaker, was was a big reference
for Damien Chazelle and I.

When we worked on Whiplash,
there was a moment when there was a cut

that had impact
that felt like a punch to the face,

and it felt that way because we were
literally cutting to a punch in the face.

And that was a big reference for us

when we edited Whiplash in the scene.

Robert De Niro was following his wife
around the room as she packs to leave.

He tries to stop her.

The scene is played with no dialog
or very, very little dialog.

It's quiet.

And this adds contrast to what comes next.

What comes next is a cut.

And as soon as we cut,
we show Robert De Niro

in a close up in a boxing ring
being punched in the face.

As an audience member,
we feel this, we feel impact.

We have a reaction, we have emotion.

And that's part of the point.

Less than

a minute to go
and my mom is losing the title that he won

the gallon Marcellus seltzer down
after the tragic plane crash that.

A great example

of a film starting with a bang,
starting with impact

is All The President's Men, directed
by Alan Pakula and edited by Robert Wolf.

As the film starts and the studio logo

disappears, we come upon a white frame.

We hold this white frame
for what seems like an eternity.

And then out of nowhere,
there's a smash cut

by a typewriter key hitting a page.

And it's the typewriter
that's going to be become

an important ingredient in the story,
in this story

of these reporters uncovering
the mystery of Watergate in a way.

Seeing these kids,
seeing these close up details

is actually creating a roadmap,
an editorial roadmap

for what
we're going to see during the story

and what we're going to
see in the end of the film.

And the sound of this key hitting
the paper is deafening.

It's it's it's as powerful as a gunshot.

And the juxtaposition is clear.

The typewriter is is
the tool is the weapon of choice

by our main characters in this story.

A great example of film editing,

creating excitement
and creating action is The Bourne

Ultimatum, directed by Paul Greengrass
and edited by Chris Rouse.

Chris Rouse's Academy Award
winning work in this film

set the standard of action films for years
to come

through the use of extremely fast cuts

and different rhythms and different paces.

Chris Rouse created a visceral,
unforgettable experience through his film

editing.

You know,

it's just.

The movie Jaws,
directed by Steven Spielberg

and edited by Verna Fields, proved
that less is more.

The less you see of the shark, the scary
it is.

And it's scarier because you're letting
the audience fill in the blanks.

You're letting the audience
create the monster in their imagination,

and that's more effective.

Ow, ow, ow,

ow, ow,

ow. They knew that the audiences

imagination would do a better job
of building the terror

and that whatever they could imagine,
whatever was in their head

would be ten times scarier
than what they could actually show.

And it was this attention to detail,

this editing that won Verna Fields
an Academy Award.

The effectiveness of the film
has a lot to do

with the use of music
and the power of suggestion.

Another film I saw as a kid was John

Schlesinger's thriller Marathon Man,
which was edited by Jim Clark.

And it was a very complicated thriller

that was kind of punctuated
by some very brutal action scenes.

And I don't really think of it
as an action thriller,

but I do think of it
as a thriller punctuated by action.

And there's a scene that.

Makes great use
of a lot of different pieces.

It great it makes great use of wide shots,

close ups,

but also point of view.

And it fluidly transitions
between the two things.

It goes back and forth.

And there's a fight sequence

between Roy Scheider
and an assassin in his hotel room.

At the beginning of the scene, Roy
Scheider is seen doing pushups.

He's exercising in his hotel room.

He goes to grab a a glass of orange juice
and he goes out on his balcony

because he hears
that there is a big parade going on.

And he looks down at the parade.

And cinematically

we see Roy Scheider from the point of view

of a elderly man, a senior citizen

who's sitting in a wheelchair
in the balcony across the boulevard.

And he is not a character that is

related to Roy Scheider's character.

He's just simply an onlooker and.

The editor will cut between.

Shots of Roy Scheider,
but also shots of Roy Scheider

from this onlookers point of view.

So we're switching our point of view
all the time.

And as Roy Scheider's
character is attacked,

we are sometimes thrown into Roy
Scheider's

point of view of his seeing his attacker
moving toward him.

So there's a there's a very complex

but invisible switching back

and forth between different point of views
to give different perspectives.

But one that I think Jim Clark did
very well

and one that
I think you don't really notice.

But you feel and what you feel is.

At certain points the

the scope of the surroundings

you feel, the geography,
but then other points you feel like

you're completely inside the fight itself,

which makes it that much more scary.

I think Eisenstein's work.

The work by Sergei Eisenstein, I think.

His work to me never stops being exciting.

One film that he did called

October Ten Days that Shook the World

has great examples of innovative editing

technique techniques
that still feel and innovative today.

There's a great scene during

During an attack, a battle scene

where he intercuts

a close up of the barrel of a machine gun

with the man who the close up of the face
of the man who is firing the machine gun.

And these shots that he intercuts

are maybe only two or three
frames in length, but he goes back

and forth to them very quickly
that it's that it's that it's strobes.

Scott Peck,

you feel the strobing of images

and and what it really feels like is

you feel like you're inside
the muzzle flash of a machine gun .

You feel like you're inside that action.

So he found a way through
his editing to actually.

Put you inside

that violence, puts you inside that
that that machine gun firing.

And that's something that felt new back

when the movie was first edited,
when it was first played.

To me, it feels new today.

It feels innovative today.

I think Jean-Luc Godard's

Breathless is an exciting film
to watch for editing.

It's a great example
of how you can use associative editing to

to tell your story, to use juxtaposition.

There's a scene where Jean-Paul Belmondo
is being chased by the police.

And it's a scene where we see police cars

speed by a country road and we see him
running in a different direction

and we see a close up shot
panning past a gun.

And it's a close up insert of this gun.

And in some ways, it's abstract.

You know, how are these shots related?

But once you juxtapose them together,

you realize that

there's been a shootout
or that there's you.

There's been some violence.

And you connect the dots between these
very different sort of shots that

that don't seem continuous or don't seem
like they belong together at all.

But through editing, you kind of

look at the sum of its parts.

There are very few films that are famous

for single cuts, but.

I think that Lawrence of Arabia is
is one of the few examples of that.

It's a it's a film
that is for editors is known for one cut.

That's a cut that that and made

and it's a cut of Peter O'Toole
in close up.

Blowing out a match.

People referred to it as the match cut
and it literally

is a match cut in that he's
blowing out a match and then it cuts

to basically a a sunrise

and it cuts to a landscape where we see
the sun is coming up.

So it's this has the
the shot has has this orange hue

and the sound of the match being blown out

kind of overlaps that cut in a way.

And it's such an elegant

time cut.

It's going to be fun.

It is recognized

that you have a funny sense of fun.

That MASH cut is

is particularly exciting because.

It is very modern.

Up until that point, it was not uncommon

to show people.

Entering rooms and exiting rooms.

It was not uncommon to

to edit scenes in a way
that would pull out

so that so that we could know that.

At least on a gut level,
that that a scene is ending

well to end the scene
in a close up of a character

doing an action
and then to link it to the next shot,

that was something that was something
somewhat modern for this time, 1962.

And I think what Ancoats did with that cut
was something that was

that was that to this day is something
that that filmmakers aspire to.

And it's something that still seems
modern and exciting today.

A movie I think is fun to look at is

George Cukor is a star is born from 1954.

There's great use of Cinemascope
in the wide frame.

And bear in mind,
this is a very early use of Cinemascope.

But even still,

there's an expertize in the mise en scene.

There's an expertize in the framing
that that is

is almost shocking from that time period.

But there's also
a very modern use of editing.

And there's a scene early on where
where Norman Maine,

played by James Mason, is is backstage.

And he's giving interviews with reporters
and he's drunk.

And in that section, there is

there is a sequence of shots that show

all the action that's going on backstage,

showgirls
sort of posing for photographers.

And there's a flurry of cuts
of flashbulbs.

These insert
close ups of these flashbulbs.

And that's something very exciting to see
because it reminds you of certain

cut sequences that Martin Scorsese
and Thelma Schoonmaker would do years

later in some of their movies
like Raging Bull and The King of Comedy

and even Casino.

These close up flashbulbs
and the way that they're there to

kind of grab your attention.

They're they're meant
to be kind of an assault.

They're meant to be kind of overt
and in-your-face,

that sort of style which which I so
closely associated with Martin Scorsese.

You can see that that that that
some of those elements and some of those

pieces are are present in other movies

and that maybe
maybe he was inspired by that.

I mean, certainly I, I like to find this
connective tissue between these movies

from different time periods.

Another movie

that is very exciting to me
as an editor is Sam Peckinpah

of The Wild Bunch, edited by Lou Lombardo.

In that film, there's a fantastic scene,

fantastically edited scene,
which is the famous ending,

which is a big shootout between soldiers
and our four main protagonists.

It's bloody, it's violent.

And the editing style differs
from a lot of what we've seen before.

It differs
from how the dialog scenes are cut.

And it differs.

To kind of create a certain

type of emotion and to create
a certain type of experience.

The way it's cut together,
the way slow motion is used, slow

motion of bullets hitting
uniforms and blood's spraying out the way

the way bodies fall in slow motion
and the way they're intercut and

and the way the way action is
cut back and forth.

It is very dance like.

It's almost like a bloody ballet.

So editing in that scene is used to create

a certain type of cinematic experience,

and that's something

that is very different

from the scenes that preceded it,
which, which are more dialog scenes,

which are more traditionally cut,
where the cutting is invisible.

This is is supposed to be noticeable.

The cutting is supposed to be overt.

And again, it's it's
all to kind of put you inside that action,

to put you inside this
this almost, again, this bloody ballet.

And those sequences, I

think, when I was first learning
about editing were very exciting to me.

Those, those

I didn't know how they were accomplished,
but they made me really think about.

Think about editing.

Kramer versus

Kramer, edited by Jerry Greenberg

has a lot of elegant.

Cutting in it.

There is a great emphasis on performance.

I think Jerry Greenberg is
is is so brilliant at cutting performance.

But of course, he's also very brilliant
at doing

action related scenes and scenes

where you feel like you are

you are in the room or in that event

or in the moment, there's a great scene
and it's the French toast scene.

And and,
you know, the way that scene is edited

with with the use of insert
shots of of French toast

being dipped in milk
and and going in the frying pan,

the way those insert shots
are interspersed with

with these wider
performance moments is just

fantastic.

It it there are little moments

these little inserts create tension

because we don't we don't know if

we, as viewers are afraid
that the French toast is going to burn

or that some
some disaster is going to happen.

And the way we cut back and forth
between those things

creates a rhythm and creates creates
kind of anxiousness in a way.

And and the way that it's edited

actually climaxes and crescendos
to a point where Dustin

Hoffman's character shouts out and yells,
and I think he says, Damn her.

And that gets to the subtext of the scene.

And and what the scene is really about
is, is

how Dustin Hoffman's
character is is trying to be a father,

but he has certain
and he feels some inadequacies.

And he blames the boy's mother for that.

And that is not something that is above
board during the scene.

It's all kind of a subtext,
but it comes out at the end when the scene

kind of crescendos and it's the editing
that really creates that crescendo.

We're having a great time.
I don't remember the last time I.

I ever had such a good time
that you're making so full of coffee.

It's too much coffee. No, no, no.

I like it
strong. And Mommy always makes it two week

high fashion orange juice.

Orange juice, right?

Right.

One OJ coming up for the kid.

Thaddeus Browning is 45 year

old father of.