This week we had guest lecturer Dean Richard Allen for a session looking specifically editing for GENRE, in the case, SUSPENSE. We looked at many examples of the multiple ways that Hitchcock employed editing techniques to heightened various kinds of suspense.
Lecture 10 will explore a few more forms of filmmaking and editing many of you will encounter: Trailers & Short films. We will look at some examples in class and discuss some of the particular techniques that you can use to tackle these formats.
We will do an initial talk about Genre in preparation for the final assignment, and watch as segment of The Cutting Edge.
Short filmmaking is all about getting to the point and making everything count. Short films, like features, are also often most effective when the story is told visually — SHOW don’t TELL.
Often shorts are considered under 15 minutes (this is the cut off for festivals like Sundance, Cannes) but can be also considered under 50 minutes.
To get a handle on how to cut short films, its good to watch lots of them. Here are a few sites with more short films and a few very well executed shorts.
“In 2012, Zeitlin’s debut feature Beasts of the Southern Wild swept the festival circuit, winning top prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals before ultimately picking up four Oscar nominations. Funding for the film wouldn’t have been possible, however, had Zeitlin not won an award at South by Southwest in 2008 with the premiere of his precursor short, Glory at Sea.” 16 Films that launched the careers of famous directors
The library has short film collections of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, both worth checking out. Also check out the whole collection Paris, Je t’aime.
Anderson’s original 1994 black and white version of Bottle Rocket has likely done more to launch its director’s career than any other short film ever.
Mixing and re-mixing, referencing and re-making are fundamental to aspects of innovation in film-making. Video Mashups are one way to do this. Editing is a key tool for taking something old and transforming it into something new.
Check out this documentary RiP! A Remix Manifesto about what it’s all about:
SCM’s own IP Yuk-Yuk did this mashup in 2006: “PSYCHO(S) is a live remix of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO and Gus Van Sant’s remake in 1998. Running on custom software that edits the films in real-time, PSYCHO(S) juxtaposes and condenses the two films that were made almost 40 years apart into a hypnotic stream of mirror images. The images and sounds, drifting in and out of sync, create a perpetual state of cinematic déjà vu that haunts and confuses both the original and its double. PSYCHO(S) recycles the original narratives, forming new poetic associations in an endless cycle of parallel edits.”
Click on this link to see PSYCHO(S)
Try re-editing the famous shower scene in Psycho in Psycho Studio
Or check out this interesting YouTube remix by Eduardo Navas of 30 Radiohead Lotus Flower video samples.
‘Drive’ 2011 Trailer Mash Up
‘Drive’ Original Trailer
The Shining as a comedy
Willy Wonka as a horror
Breaking Bad as a Romantic Comedy
Taxi Driver
Psycho
The Shining
300
Spider-Man (banned after 9/11)
Eyes Wide Shut
The Godfather Part III
Strange Days (teaser trailer)
Fight Club
The Matrix
The Piano
Chungking Express
This week we focus on the use of Sound & Music in Editing. Sound editing, music and mixing are key components of the art of editing.
In this session we will learn about diegetic and non-diegetic sound; recording sound (mic placements, POV, room tone, thumbprint recording); mixing sound (what you can and can’t solve in the mix); elements of sound editing; stages of sound production and post production; working between picture and sound edit in advanced editing, and more.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Birth of Sound of Film. Scene on June 9, 1922, in lecture room 100 of the Physics laboratory, when Professor Joseph T. Tykociner gave the world’s first public demonstration of sound-on-film movies. His work caused the old system of “pictures on film, sound on phonograph discs,” to be discarded. Tykociner is behind the desk, looking at the horn microphone. Beside him is the first sound-picture camera. At far right of the table is the first sound-picture projector. Headphones hanging from the table or a loudspeaker were used to hear the sound. Credit: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.
We learned the basic techniques to stitch 360 video on AUTOPANO VIDEO
Chapter 2 “The Early Sound Film” The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice.
http://www.filmsound.org/links.htm
This is a video discussing in depth the Sound Design in STAR WARS EPISODE II.
WALTER MURCH talking about Soundscapes with Composer Charles Amirkhanian and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause.
If you ever question Walter Murch’s talent, listen to his incredible sound design in the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now
This week’s lecture will be split into three parts:
The flip side of making editing invisible: Discontinuity. Discontinuous editing is the deliberate or accidental violation of the rules of continuity. Discontinuity has many interesting effects that can heighten the feeling of a scene. Typical approaches like jump-cuts, which once seemed very aggressive and shocking, are now very much part of film language. We will look at a few examples
Check out the other music video examples on the MUSIC VIDEO page, and add your favourites.
We will spend most of this week’s class looking at the work you created for Assignment #2.
Learning how to critique editing will be part of the focus this week. What are you looking for when critiquing the edit? How can we learn to spot errors in continuity, pace, rhythm and other elements we have learned about thus far? What is the difference between constructive criticism and non-constructive criticism?
To learn the art of criticism we will practice on the Major Lazer music video which was shot in Jamaica by SoMe and produced by Iconoclast.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Alain Renais
“Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad(L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.”
http://www.criterion.com/films/1517-last-year-at-marienbad
Jump Cuts in Snatch, Old-boy & The Ring
The Cutting Edge: The Rules in Editing French and American New Wave
Jump Cuts in Sergei Eisenstein & Georges Méliès
The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) – almost made entirely of jump cuts
Pierrot Le Fou & Breathless by Jean-Luc Goddard, examples of discontinuity editing and jump cuts with the French New Wave
The Dick Cavett Show – Jean-Luc Godard
The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice.
Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin (2006) Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.
This week we have guest Jason Tobin for a session on looking at the relationship between acting and editing.
What techniques can help emphasize the feeling of a scene? Sometimes it is as important to see the reaction, or to linger on a shot. Editing is about pace, rhythm and emotion — this class will get us to think about how you make sure you capture this when shooting. In this session we look at some of the considerations around shooting for the edit, ways that different directors approach it, and we will also watch professional actors perform a scene in a few different ways, thinking about approaches to getting the coverage we would need in the editing room.
In the last few weeks we looked at scene construction and in this week’s in-class workshop will look at how directing, shooting and acting interact with the art of editing.
The class will be split in two parts: the first half will be an acting workshop, to help students understand the dynamics of scene construction from the other side of the lens. The second half of the class we will do scene breakdowns of a few different films, and Jason will show you live the options for shooting and for editing a scene.
For more short scripts: Acting Scenes Database
We worked on interpreting a scene from Kramer vs. Kramer and then watched the award-winning actors on screen as they played it.
Thelma Schoonmaker talks about editing improv in Raging Bull
Considering Dede Allen: The Editor as Revolutionary
SCRIPT FROM SCENE WE DID IN CLASS: Kramer Vs. Kramer scene
This week we focus on Rhythm, Pace and Emotion in editing.
We also focus on the work and teachings of editor Walter Murch.
Murch has worked on some incredible award winning films. He edited sound on American Graffiti (1973) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), won his first Academy Award nomination for The Conversation (1974), won his first Oscar for Apocalypse Now (1979), and won an unprecedented double Oscar for sound and film editing for his work on The English Patient (1996). Murch’s editing Oscar was the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film (using the Avid system), and he is the only person ever to win Oscars for both sound mixing and film editing.
Selection from: Walter Murch, 1995, In the Blink of an Eye: A perspective on Film Editing. Silman-James Press.
Chapter 29 “The Picture Edit and Pace” The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice.
Ondaatje, Michael, 2004, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, Knopf.
The Conversation, (1974) Francis Ford Coppola
Excerpts from: The Hole, (1998) Tsai Ming-Liang, Raising Arizona (1987) Coen Brothers, The Conformist (1971) Bertolucci, In the Mood For Love (2000) Wong Kar-Wai, The Godfather II (1974) Francis Ford Coppola, Requiem for a Dream, (2000) Darren Aronofsky
Comic and action pacing in Raising Arizona (1987) Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Fast emotive editing in Requiem for a Dream (2000) Darren Aronofsky
The complex and subtle pacing of the assassination sequence in The Conformist.
Mood and variation of pacing in Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000). This is a documentary on the film.
Much speaks about transitions and the role of transitions in editing.
“At the basic level, a transition is simply the process of changing from some state A to another state, B. What we should examine carefully is the degree of change, and our awareness of it. Change is happening all the time, though we are not always conscious of it. But without change there is no perception. This is somewhat of a paradox”
An incredible resource of articles, chapters, audio interviews and other material with Walter Murch.
This week editor Boban Chaldovich gave us a hands on workshop on using Final Cut Pro X for editing short videos.
For more about Boban Chaldovich, check out his website: http://bobanchaldovich.com/
For more of the tutorials and resources he suggested, look at the DIY tab on this site. He specifically mentioned a good course on lynda.com
In Assignment #2, your task is to interpret, or reinterpret, a scene.
Basic scene construction, action continuity, graphic editing, construction of time and space should be applied and practiced in this exercise.
In this assignment you will again shoot footage in groups based on a short script that I will provide in class.
We will also have the chance to shoot some live scenes with our guest Actor Jason Tobin on March 2.
The scene includes 2-3 characters, and for the shoot you will need to film the entire sequence a number of times to include:
This will give the group a bank of footage to work with. Remember to shoot with the 180 degree line, eyeline matching, and other techniques we have learned.
Footage can be shot at SCM. There is not need to do an elaborate production, but rehearsal will help the quality of the shooting and give more options for editing.
If there is a problem with your footage, it is possible to use existing scene of film rushes that will be available in the Common Share folder.
Final assignments is an interpretation of the scene.
Remember — get to the heart of the scene and use some of the various editing techniques we have discussed thus far.
It’s not enough to just follow the timeline of the event as you think it should happen — Create tension in the scene, choose the best takes, give it pace and rhythm, and use your editing skills to make the material shine.
DUE Date: March 8, 2016
GRADE: 20%
Listen to Roger Ebert discuss approaches to editing the Bank Robbers scene.
This week we will look at a few different elements of editing that are a part of the tradition of storytelling. Editing devices convey meaning, as does time, rhythm and the construction of point of view.
“When to Cut” is as important as “When Not to Cut”. We will look at examples in class from a number of films.
In the second half of class, we also review and critique some of your work from Assignment #1.
bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators“, in Black Looks: Race and Representations, Boston: South End Press, 115-31, 1992
Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975
Christopher Llewellyn Reed, 2012, Chapter 2: “To Cut or Not To Cut” Film Editing Theory and Practice, Dulles, VA: David Pallai.
Also interesting:
OUTING THE REBELS: REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK HOMOSEXUALS IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH CINEMA, Luke Richardson, 2013
Andrei Tarkovsky. Chapter III “Imprinted Time” in Sculpting in Time: Tarkovsky the Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses his Art, 1989
Reshela DuPuis, Power and Pleasure in Campion’s Piano, 1996
The Piano, 1993, Jane Campion
Excerpts from: Happiness (1999) Solondz, Rear Window (1954) Hitchcock, The Sacrifice (1989) Tarkovsky
We will go through the key terms of coverage. Know how to shoot well and cover a scene so you can edit well.
Intro to “Happiness” by Todd Solondz (1998) shows 6 shots in the scene (2shot, OTS on Joy, OTS on Andy, CU Joy, CU Andy, Insert ashtray)
“Cinematic codes create a gaze, a world and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire.” (Laura Mulvey 1975:16)
Rear Window (1954) Hitchcock
She’s Gotta Have it (1986) Spike Lee
Eyeline Matching in Rear Window
Eyeline Matching in Star Wars
The Sacrifice (1989) Andrei Tarkovsky
Directed By, a documentary on Tarkovsky with excerpts from his book “Sculpting in Time”
A Message to Young People from Andrei Tarkovsky
This week we look at how time is constructed through different kinds of editing: Parallel Editing, Temporal Ellipsis and Temporal Expansion.
Click below for a few links to films we watched & discussed this week.
READINGS
In this way of storytelling through editing, two different pieces actions are presented in fragments cutting from one to another, implying simultaneous time. Also sometimes called Cross-Cutting.
A few classic examples are below.
Strangers on a Train (1951), Hitchcock
The Godfather (1972)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Elliptical Editing refers to omitting or cutting out part of an event to imply time has passed. This is an easy way to make an event take less screen time than it does in reality. Often dissolves are used to signify going forward in time, or flashbacks. Also Swish Pans and wipes are used to signify a series of events.
Sometimes flashbacks can be done in straight cuts. Look at this stunning example from Oldboy.
This is the opposite of Elliptical editing. In this case the editing stretches out time. This is often used in action sequences. Eisenstein used expansion in several films through overlapping editing. “In October Eisenstein overlaps several shots of rising bridges in order to stress the significance of the moment.” (Bordwell 260)
Taxi Driver (1976)
In the final scene of Taxi Driver there is a mix of slow motion, long takes and freeze frames to emphasise the drama of the situation.
What about holding onto a moment, without cutting? TSAI Ming-Liang is one of the contemporary masters of holding shots for even upwards of 10 minutes. Many editors talk about how holding a shot can be as important as cutting, and the importance of using intuition or as Dede Allen says ‘cutting with the gut’.
TSAI comes from earlier approaches such as HOU and OZU who used formal fixed cameras and long takes to create atmosphere and time.
Stray Dogs (2013), Tsai Ming-Liang
Interview with Tsai Ming-Liang & Lee Kang-Sheng
The Birds (1963) Fire Scene
The Art of Editing SM2002 