The Cutting Edge

We had a reader send us a request for more posts/information on the how to of editing. How do you edit? That's a really big question. The answer is simple and complicated all at the same time.

Editing in film or video is sequencing images or clips into a timeline. Choosing to place one moving clip after another in a certain order. In the end, editing is story telling. I had an editing professor who said the editor is the person who tells the joke. Someone thinks up the joke. Someone writes it. Someone records and/or captures it. And then the editor decides how it should be told.

One of the most eye opening assignments I had in film school was to edit together a scene from raw footage of the TV show Highlander. Anyone remember that show? Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod? Anyone? It wasn't a very good show, but I'm getting way off point. Everyone in the class was given the same raw footage to work with. We all spent a couple of weeks working on our cuts. And then we watched them together. Same footage. Totally different scenes. Everyone in the class told a totally different joke.

And so... You can learn how to push the right buttons, how this software works and that software works. And you can debate the merits of Final Cut Pro vs. Avid vs. Premiere. But before you get into any of that, if you want to be an editor, you need to study and think and watch and decide how you want to tell your jokes. Anyone can learn how to cut images into a sequence, but it takes a lifetime to learn where to place those cuts in order to have the impact you want. Every frame counts. Every moment matters. Where should you cut?

There's an excellent documentary about editing called "The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing." It's a feature length documentary about the art and craft of film editing. You can order a DVD copy through Amazon. It was recently available online through Google video but it seems it's been taken down. I'll let you know if I find it somewhere. I also highly recommend Walter Murch's book "In the Blink of an Eye," also available through Amazon and other fine book stores. In the Blink of an Eye is the best book I've ever read about the philosophy or thought process that goes in to editing. Walter Murch is a long time editor for Francis Ford Coppola and edited, among other things, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. More recently, he was the editor on Cold Mountain, one of the first big budget features to be cut entirely with Final Cut Pro.

We'll post more on editing in the near future (something more hands on and practical :).