Film editor

From ArticleWorld

A film editor is one of the most important people in creating a finished film, putting together all the different shots of the movie together into a sequence that has both form and function, to create a story.

History

Film editing began as a very simple and tedious process of taking each film strip, selecting viable shots, cutting them, and taping them together to create a story, using a viewer such as a Steenbeck or a Moviola. The initial editing was always done on a workprint, a positive copy of the negative, in order to allow the film editor freedom in experimenting and making mistakes and changes, without causing any damage to the original print.

After the workprint was downsized to a more viable print, the workprint was then used to make a negative cutting list. Splitting the shots into A and B rolls, the negative cutter refers to this cutting list. These rolls are optically printed to create the final film print.

The process of cutting film allows for numerous changes and for putting in shots in different sequences, also known as nonlinear editing. Allowing for film strips to be placed in any order, nonlinear editing offers more opportunities for creativity and changes in story line, than the strictly linear approach of the 1970s. Prior to the advent of computer storage systems, tape transfer had to be linear and trying to make changes later on, often resulted in distortion.

Film editing has in recent years undergone tremendous changes with the development of affordable nonlinear editing systems such as Final Cut Pro, Apple computer’s offer for film and video editing in comparison to the long-standing stalwart of film, the more expensive Avid. Amateur filmmakers also enjoy using semi-professional tools such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Pinnacle Edition, and Sony Vegas.

Depending on the final product, different decisions are made for edits. Negative cutting lists are created if the final product is a traditional movie to be shown in theaters. As film editing has moved more into the world of computers and digital effects, there is a movement towards having the final product completely assembled digitally.

The Process

The film editor has the unique and challenging task of taking different shots and assembling them together to create a coherent film, an enormously creative role, since in the hands of the film editor, the film takes on a shape, acquires feeling and character. The film editor traditionally follows the screenplay for story structure. The film editor starts working while the film is in production and often alone, creating an editor’s cut. Collaborating extensively with the director, the film editor works to create the artistic direction of the movie, with both raw footage or dailies from the shoot, meetings, notes, and continual refinement.

After the shooting is completed, the director fully engages with the film editor to cut the film, making changes, adding and deleting scenes, changing the order of scenes, and if necessary, shooting particular scenes again. At this point, a director’s cut is created, a film version that is generally quite a bit shorter than the first editor’s cut and considerably different.

The next stage is the process of cuts offered by producers in the studio. The final cut is then the version that the studio eventually wants to produce, which often times, is at artistic odds with the director and editor’s cuts previously. Ideally, these would be harmonious choices that suit all three and in some cases, they are. Most frequently, however this is not the case, which has led to the development of ‘director’s cuts’ releases being added to DVDs as supplemental versions or even as entirely separate versions.

Directors that are producers at the studio have more control over the final version since they are so directly involved in the funding of the studio. Stanley Kubrick was a director and producer with a lot of control over his movies.

Editing has several styles such as montage which consists of several scenes condensed together and continuity editing or the popular style in Hollywood in which the story advances spatially, temporally and through narrative; and the intellectual montage offered by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, which is less interested in continuity and more in the portrayal of particular events and emotions to the audience.