Bit by bit: cutting it together
// May 16th, 2010 // Blog
I was under the erroneous impression that the bulk of our work on the Airport Security video was done when we finished shooting. Anyone who’s done any significant video editing is laughing at what I just wrote.
In theory, shooting digital makes things easier. The data goes on to a hard drive; there’s no film stock to budget or worry about, no processing and conversion costs. You can shoot fast and cheap and fill up as much storage space as you’ve got with tasty, juicy performance work. The downside of all of this is that it’s really easy to shoot too much — extra takes, extra camera setups, extra coverage — and the more raw material you capture on the front end, the more work you create on the back end.
The shortest scenario we shot — which clocks in at just under four minutes in its final version (without credits) — came to the editing room in the form of more than an hour’s worth of footage, spanning 10 internal “sub-scenes”, covering as few as two and as many as seven camera angles per sub-scene, with a grand total of 51 takes. Using a little quick math, and assuming every shot was perfect, this gave the editor (and who are we kidding — by editor I mean me) more than 6 000 possible versions of the end product.
Thankfully, some material was not perfect. Jumping back and forth in a script on-set discombobulates actors and crew, no matter how prepared everyone is. So lines get screwed up, movements get screwed up, arms and heads are in different places from take to take; off-camera noises happen, boom mikes appear in shots (though not nearly as often as the shadows of boom mikes), and unwanted camera movements add unnecessary drama. Accounting for all of those kinds of issues, we can blessedly knock off a few thousand permutations.
Then there are the frustrations that come from matching footage together. A sequence of brilliant takes can be ruined by one shot that doesn’t match, for whatever reason. Usually it’s continuity-based: switching from one camera angle to another reveals dialogue that doesn’t quite overlap right, or an out-of-place arm, or a mismatched movement in the background. On several occasions I spent hours trying to make a sequence work, only to have to abandon it altogether and build something else using a different series of takes. This is probably the most frustrating part of the editing process: even when all of the parts seem brilliant, the sum of the parts can be fatally flawed.
Ultimately, there is the realization that, like in all forms of art, perfection is nearly impossible. Patrick and I stared at the rough cuts of our scenes, and made note of every jarring cut or continuity error we could find. In many, many cases it was ultimately impossible to create a completely error-free sequence. During the weeks in which I was overwhelmed by the editing work, I became obsessed with all of these errors and was determined to correct them. At the same time, though, I was watching other peoples’ films and television shows with a different set of eyes, and began to spot constant, small continuity errors in everything. Eventually I came to the realization that I was just trying too hard. The devil really is in the details, but the truth is that if the storytelling is even minimally effective, most people don’t notice the details. (Now I suppose you’ll want to watch all the videos again, just to look for the mistakes we intentionally left behind. Go ahead. Some of them are pretty funny.)
As in all things, it’s great to have a road map. The script is the guideline, but the editor really does create the performance. As an actor, I hear this constantly; as an editor, I now know it inherently. Ultimately, it was unnerving lesson of all. In the editing room, I can create pace and timing; I can shape the emotional arc of the scene; I can add or eliminate action. Almost every aspect of the actor’s performance is under the editor’s control — even elements of non-performance. On at least three occasions, I used shots of actors waiting for “action” to be called in order to flesh out sequences that needed some space.
The amount of material you can’t use in the end product is disheartening. The options open to you, based on the material you can use, are infinite. And over the course of six weeks of editing and tweaking and re-editing and refining, it all finally came together. And so I have just a handful of recommendations for myself on the next big editing project:
- on the set, don’t shoot every possible bit of everything just because you have disk space to fill.
- make detailed notes on every take, as you log your footage, so you know what you have. Make note of your favorite takes, but make note of favorite bits of takes, as well. Make note of “bad” takes, too, but don’t delete ANYTHING because you never know when a few seconds of footage from a “bad” take can solve a serious editing problem.
- back up all of your data. Twice.
- take frequent breaks while editing. It is very easy to lose perspective and get boxed in by your work if you stare at it too closely. I had to stop when I started to feel frustrated. Occasionally I had to step away from the editing suite for a full day or more.
- take your time. Unless you can’t.
I found editing work to be extremely enjoyable, most of the time. And I recommend an editing project of some kind to almost any actor, just to help teach you things you shouldn’t do in front of a camera.
