Directing for Film and Television

by Christopher Lukas

  10

  Postproduction

  You should be overjoyed. You have finished your shoot. It is “wrapped.” No more sunburned shoulders, no more producer on your back, no more having to listen to that actor you misjudged misread his lines. No more 5:00 a.m. rising, with the voice of the A.D. in your ear, “Sorry, fella, time to get up. Oh, by the way, we’re a little late, this morning. Better hurry.”

  Wrong. Your pain isn’t over, just shifted to the right about 30 degrees. In fact, you’re going to have to listen to that bad actor a little longer, and while you won’t be getting up at 5:00 in the morning, you may have altogether sleepless nights. As for the producer, he’ll be on your back just as much—maybe a little more—because, brother, you have the postproduction blues!

  Here’s the scenario. You have had a rather lovely time at the final party, drinking until late. But the next morning, aware that the production has to be finished within three months, you arrive at the editing room bright and early. The editor has been synching up the material during the shoot and has promised you a few scenes already “assembled.” You can’t wait. The last days of the shoot have given you no satisfaction. Pick-up shots, retakes, sound problems; it’s been a mess.

  Now, you figure, you can sit back and reap the rewards of your hard days’ labor. The scene the editor picked is not a crucial one, but it’s full of nuance, and you’re anxious to see if it “plays.” It doesn’t. You squirm through it all. Too many wide shots, not enough detail. The light isn’t what you remember from the dailies. Besides, even though the editor loved some of what you shot, you are now hearing that a couple of scenes can just be thrown out. How does he or she know? Where was this editor when the screen was blank? Not that something will be immediately cut out if you don’t want it cut. Not at all. There’s an unspoken rule that the first edit—the assembly—of a picture will almost always be as it was written and as it was shot. After that, it may be cut to shreds!

  For the purpose of this chapter, I’m going to assume that you have some control over your film or videotape; that is, that you have the right to supervise the cut of the film. I’m also going to separate videotape and film here, because the two media require very different technical facilities and very different relationships with your editor(s).

  FILM

  During the first few days of shooting, the editor has come around to the set or been on the phone to location to talk about wanting some “extra coverage” on a scene, by which is meant that you didn’t get all the shots he or she (or the producer) thought were necessary when you shot a particular scene—you need more close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, a pair of two-shots, and so forth. The continuity person has been giving the editor and the assistant the updated script from time to time, so they can know what has been shot, how many takes, which ones you “printed”—so there has been communication. Now, however, it’s just the two of you for a while, and you have to decide what kind of a relationship you’re going to have and how you’re going to operate. There are a number of possibilities. (1) Go away until the assembly is cut. Look at it, then let the editor make changes for the rough cut. If they’re okay, stay away again until the fine cut. (2) Sit around biting your fingernails until the assembly is done, then sit down on a daily basis with your editor, making changes until the rough cut. Ditto for the fine cut. (3) Somewhere in between the above two. Strong directors, who have good relationships and great faith in their editors, will often follow the first, whereas insecure directors or those who have hack editors will do the second. In between, of course, range many of us.

  The value of letting your editor work unfettered is that he or she may have some fairly wild ideas that need to be explored. Given the time necessary to carry them out, leaving the editing room uncluttered with directorial ego will give the editor a chance not only to explore those ideas, but to clear your mind of preconceptions. Now, this is a paradox because, earlier in the book, I suggested that preconceptions were a good thing. They are, and you couldn’t shoot a film without them. But to hold on to preconceptions just because you thought them up is foolish. If they work, fine. If not, throw them out. That means your ideas, the writer’s, the producer’s—everyone’s. A scene that worked well in a certain place during the scriptwriting stages and during shooting may belong in a different place. Or it may not be needed because the scenes on either side mesh well or because a story nuance that seemed obscure during the preproduction days seems obvious on the screen, now that the shooting’s done. This happens time and time again. You, however, who have been so close to this project for weeks, may not be able to see with any objectivity that the scene isn’t needed, or that a character is too strong or too weak, or a dozen other possibilities. Your editor, coming to the film relatively fresh (he or she did see the dailies) will be able to look at the film much more objectively. Let the editor’s mind go. Listen with an open mind yourself. See what happens. After the assembly, an editor will ask permission to rearrange. At the rough cut stage, if you don’t like what you see, it can all be put back. But the likelihood is, if you give it a chance, it will be very exciting. Of course, if you hang around, looking over the editor’s shoulder, you will give neither yourself the time to “forget” what was there, nor the editor the freedom to create something new.

  By the way, this works both ways. After having been away from the film for a while, coming back to it with refreshed eyes, you are able to see things that the editor, working on it for ten days, cannot. Now it is his or her turn to ask you to make suggestions, to see things that are wrong, out of place, overdone. Here, then, is a symbiotic relationship of wonderful dimension, one that can be quite creative. (After another period of time, of course, you both will have lost objectivity, and it’s time to call in the producer. Don’t gang up on him. Be fair. The producer may see things, with newfound objectivity, that have eluded the two of you.) I suppose this paints the relationship between editor and director as a more than perfect one. To be honest, there are times when it is no such thing. If, for instance, the editor thinks you’ve done a less than satisfactory job, he or she may not tell you but go about changing things and “saving the film” (a time-honored phrase) behind your back. Ralph Rosenblum, in his marvelous book When the Shooting Stops . . . the Cutting Begins, tells of such times—when directors haven’t the slightest idea of what to do with their film or when the footage that came in is in drastic need of changes and additions. Rosenblum was adept at finding “stock” footage and adding it to films to make them come to life. And since I’m being honest here, this process has worked the other way as well. I’ve seen editors who couldn’t figure out what to do with a piece of footage, and I’ve had to sit there, patiently handing out ideas about how to cut the film. The tragedy of that, of course, is that sometimes you can’t see the opportunities in a film you’ve written and shot, so the film comes out second-best.

  Now that you’ve gotten through the rough cut, you begin to notice things that no amount of shifting will cure. An actor who couldn’t act his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag has been cut to shreds, but his few remaining lines make you shudder every time the scene goes by. The close shot on the lead actress during her penultimate scene is just not close enough, and a microphone shadow flickers on her eyelid. You had to abandon the tracking shot through the dining room into the kitchen because the dolly wouldn’t make it through the door (the art director goofed, or was it the carpenters?) and the resulting cuts are too static. Or maybe the thunderstorm wasn’t quite over and you can hear rumbles on your sound track (or was that maybe a distant freeway?). I could go on for hours. You’re lucky if you notice those problems now. A peculiar thing happens as you sit at the flatbed editing table: as the film gets more and more scratched, and the picture deteriorates from cutting and recutting, sound problems and picture problems begin to disappear; that is, become unnoticed. You make a subconscious assumption that problems will clear up when the print comes out of the lab. Some problems are not going to go
away. What now?

  Enter music, sound effects, the dubbing session, and the “mix”; enter dissolves, fades, wipes, “opticals,” and “timing.” Enter magic! What can be done to cover up the rumbling thunder? Sound effects of a car going by, music, or elimination of the entire dialogue by replacing it with a “dubbed” (rerecorded) sound track. What can be done about that scene that was too bright? When the print is made, “print it down,” that is, darker. What about the bad actor? Surely, you can’t “dub” him in. Actually, as Fellini did, you can replace anyone’s voice, if you have the stomach and talent for long sessions on the dubbing stage. But there are equally creative sound tricks to play with a bad actor. If the lines are needed but not crucial, try playing the dialogue over someone else’s face. Try playing it with music mixed in, or sound effects. (The scream of a monkey, perhaps?) As for fades, dissolves, and wipes, they can soften the hard edge between cuts, or create a sense of time passing, or dizzy the audience into believing that a love affair has just concluded. A lot of editors and directors hate opticals such as wipes because they seem old-fashioned, or because they want to achieve their ends with acting and cinematography, not gimmicks. Well, so do we all. But, when the chips are down during the final days of postproduction, take the easy out, if it works.

  I don’t want to give the impression that sound effects, music, opticals, and the like are used only for cosmetic or repair purposes. Some of the most creative work you will do as a director is in the postproduction period. Here, an editor will suggest a wide variety of possibilities: adding footsteps as a person leaves the room; giving a good solid “clunk” to a door that closes offscreen; a dog barking during a winter scene, giving a sense of loneliness; horses (that were never filmed) being heard clip-clopping past a house; a radio blaring in a neighboring apartment; a car going by; children’s voices playing nearby. All these can give a sense of a world that exists in three dimensions, outside and inside of the space created by your film and the sound you shot to be synchronized with it.

  The next time you see a feature film or a television film, listen carefully to the sound track. It’s a job of wizardry. There is usually a separate sound effects editor and a separate music editor, who follow the work of the film editor seriatim. They are experts at not only adding sound, but creating it.

  TIME OUT

  When I was brand-new in the industry, I remember watching with amazement as a middle-aged sound effects editor in a dubbing studio, holding some leather bridles and jingling them effectively in synch with the picture on the screen, created a horse going by. It was a piece of artistry. Later, when I thought I had lost all my boyish naivete, I watched open-mouthed as Susan Morse (Woody Allen’s editor) and her assistant sat in a closet of a recording booth and made it appear that matches were being struck, that there were footsteps on leaves, candles burning, and other things going on to bring to life a mystery film I was making. By their use of cellophane, a pencil, and their own voices, dozens of new sounds were created.

  TIME IN

  Music, too, is a compelling addition for creative purposes. When I started at MGM in the 1950s, they had a large recording studio into which a symphony orchestra could be fit, for films like the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty or Jumbo. But in a small room nearby, a veteran music editor sat and listened to recordings of old scores, which he would choose and send on to still another music editor who would cut and fit them so that they created a whole “new” score for the television films we were working on. They could do everything but shorten or lengthen notes—although today, believe it or not, there is digital equipment that can do even that.

  I am not trying to give a course in effects editing here; I am saying that a good film editor will be able to suggest a whole range of things to be done that bring to life the two-dimensional film you have been creating. Proust talked about smells and about how they brought the past back to him. Three-dimensional vision, distance cues, a sense of the world outside of the immediate movie frame are missing from the movie screen. Sound and music can re-create that sense of the three-dimensional world in a way that only those who have seen it can describe or imagine.

  THE MIX

  Nothing is so crucial to the sound of your film as the way it was originally recorded. Next in importance is “the mix,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a melding together of the various tracks that have been constructed to go with the picture. In film this will vary from a very simple single dialogue track, to the complex twelve- or fourteen-track mixes not uncommon on feature films today, involving two or three different dialogue tracks (sometimes cut in the middle of a sentence, so that part of one can be put on an “echo” filter, or changed from near to distance “perspective”), two or three different sound effects tracks, two or three music tracks (with overlapping music, to be cross-faded at crucial points), and two or three special tracks, sometimes with as few as one or two sound effects on them, or even words that need special treatment-filtering, or “EQ” (equalization—putting in highs or lows).

  In the old days, you had to synch up all the tracks and the picture (marked up with all sorts of symbols that gave the mixers warnings about what was going to happen next) and rehearse, then thread up the tracks again and rehearse again; then run through once more for a take and, if you made a mistake, you had to take everything down and thread up again. It was a long process, and the adrenaline started pumping as you got down to the end of a reel. In Hollywood in those days, because it was impossible to change things as you went along, they usually had three people doing the mixing—one on dialogue, one on music, one on sound effects. (It was a boon for the unions.) Today, thanks to advances in sound-recording technology, specifically in digital editing, one person can handle the entire mix. And now the old 16mm magnetic tracks are left out of the mix. Once they’ve been transferred to a digital medium in synch with all the other tracks, they’re put aside, and digital magic takes over. The mixer punches in and out of the sound, equalizing, backing up, jumping forward, switching from one track to the next with ease. And nothing of quality is lost in the process.

  During the mix itself, a director has to keep jacking himself up from the torpor that tends to take over as the mixer goes back, time and again, to refilter an effect or add a “loop” (a continuous track that is usually available at sound studios—or which is created by your editors—to lay in a general background of something: wind, birds, crickets, traffic, “room tone,” and so on) or to do some other technical thing that seems to be endless. Then, suddenly, the mix is on again, and your ears and eyes have to be perfectly tuned to what’s happening. It’s not easy to do, since the loudspeakers at the front of the room are especially large and give a distorted version of the mixed track, making birds seem louder than they should or a squeal of a tire too high-pitched. You will keep checking with the mixer (as if he or she was a genius), asking, “Is that too loud?” “Can we do that again, a little softer?” A good mixer will not treat you like an idiot but will reassure you if the sound is right and redo it if you have a particular need.

  Even with the introduction of digital technology, the process can go on endlessly (with the concomitant expense.) In fact, many of us make video programs these days without a mix, using only the video-edit console itself to aid us. Luckily, with more and more sophistication in those consoles, this presents a cost-saving alternative. However, if you are doing a mix, on film or on video, count on it taking time: easily two days for a one-hour documentary, a day and a half for a half-hour TV film, several days for a feature film. In the middle of a reel, you may realize that a track should have been “cut over,” that is, part of it laid onto a separate track for EQ purposes, or that there isn’t enough room tone behind a place where a cough was cut out; or you may not like the music you picked and ask that it be left empty. Some changes are simple enough to make (the cutover, for instance), but what if you hate the music? That may occasion a two- or three-hour break; you may come back tomorrow. That can be a tedious business,
too, requiring extensive retuning and re-EQing of tracks to match today’s mix.

  All of that aside, what is it that you are looking for in a mix? Here it is in a nutshell: you are trying to balance all the sounds that were originally created and all the sounds that have been added, to make the audio portion of your film as powerful, as subtle, as meaningful, as packed with emotion as you can. You are also trying to use sound to give a third dimension to your film. This requires an unbelievable amount of attention to detail. A door click is too loud or nonexistent. Footsteps sound like galoshes and have to be soft-pedaled. The music requires a cross-fade, and two of the pieces are just plain wrong and must be left out. (Surprisingly, this can be welcome. There’s such a thing as too much sound.) The birds are annoying. The crickets are too omnipresent. The wind sounds like a machine. Her voice is harsh. His is too subtle. All of this can be changed; all it takes is lots of patience and the guts to ask. Your editor, once again, will often be ahead of you, suggesting changes, making demands, taking over when you flag. Be careful not to let the mix get away from you. It’s your film and, technical problems aside, you can hear what’s right and what’s wrong and should make your own choices.

  When the mix is finished for the day, play the film back, standing or sitting in a different relationship to the speakers. If it’s a film for television, have the mixer switch the sound to the TV speakers he’s got hooked up. See if the sound is right on a three-inch speaker. If the sound is for the big screen, concentrate on whether it’s too mixed, that is, whether you have added so much extra sound that it sounds like a Robert Altman film—voices here, voices there, effects here and there—and the simplicity of your original single-track film is lost. Don’t say “Finished” until you are really finished. Also, don’t despair. That cuckoo you can hear returning every ten seconds on the bird loop won’t be noticed by everyone when it comes across Channel 5 at 9:30 at night while the neighbors are making a fuss, the garbage trucks have shown up late, and the faucet’s leaking. In other words, your perfect mix will not be noticed by 90 percent of the population, nor will your imperfect one.