On the other hand, this is your final creative act (except for viewing the answer print), and if you want to be a perfectionist about it, it’s your film. Enjoy!
VIDEO POSTPRODUCTION
The advances in technology that I discussed in the last chapter started to make a big difference in both film and video editing about ten years ago. The AVID console—and similar digital, random access edit bays— allowed “film style” editing to be done with video. They even allowed producers and directors to transfer work print to electronic storage bins (hard drives) with the edge numbers intact. The edit then would progress in digital form on video monitors and, when a fine cut had been achieved, the AVID would kick out an edit list (EDL) that could be used in the negative cutting room. Some directors (Steven Spielberg being a prime example) wouldn’t dream of doing things this way. In fact, as of this writing, he and his editor still use the old stand-up Moviola, long gone in favor of the flatbed editing console, for most of us, about twenty years ago.
What does this mean for material shot entirely on video? It means that you can treat your video editor much the same way you treat your film editor. You can screen footage with her or him, mentioning which takes you like the best, and then leave the marked-up script and get out of the editor’s way. While this works well for the pictures in your program, the sound has to be treated a little differently. If you’re doing a drama or a high-budget documentary, you will want to do a mix later. This requires that you take all your audio tracks and transfer them to a different kind of electronic file and take them to a mix house that handles such files. While the results can be wonderful, the cost is high.
There is an exception to this “dump the product on your AVID editor” solution. That is the documentary. I know no producers or directors who come out of the shoot with their script intact. Almost without exception, you have to screen all your video footage at home or in your office and make careful notes of each shot and sound bite (“Logging.”)You then have to rewrite your script, making notes for your editor as to exactly where to find the material that you have chosen for your documentary. (To some extent this is also true in film documentaries, but screening with an editor is more common in film than it is in video.)
There are many systems for making notes. The most useful I’ve found is to go through your vis-time-coded VHS without stopping, making very quick notes (like “Okay”, “no good,” “terrific”) on your log opposite a sound bite and noting the time code.
Next, I repeat the screening, stopping to make more select notes. I then transfer the best shots and sound bites to two lists, one titled “Select sound bites,” the other, “Select B-roll and cutaways.” (See chapter 12.) Finally, I write my new script, adding notes and time codes to it.
TIME
How long does all this take, this video editing with its logs, its strange codes, and its computerized workings, and this complex film editing with new techniques to conquer? This is a good question, and a comparison between film and video editing might be useful.
In video, first. You will want to take a few days or a week between the end of the shoot and the logging phase, even if you’re using an associate director to do it for you, because duplicate tapes (with time code) have to be made, and you have to get the life back in your legs, back, and eyes before you sit down and screen for hours each day. Then, unless you’re very slow, you should be able to log a normal forty-tape production in five days (eight twenty-minute tapes a day will be reasonably all you can take, but it’s feasible).
Next, re-screening and note-taking will take not much more than another week, perhaps only four days. Then, making your code markings on your script should take only a few days for the first draft, provided your logs and your notes are good. Final screening, with careful annotation, is another four or five days. So far, a total of seventeen to eighteen days, or less than three weeks, if you work weekends.
Now, events progress much as they do with drama editing, or with film editing: the editor gets your annotated script, your logs of “selects,” and adds her own sensitivity and creativity to the project. Because documentaries require special knowledge of the subject matter, you or the producer may spend a little more time in the edit room, identifying which microscope shot (for instance) to use, or who the cast of characters is, but you will also want to give the editor plenty of freedom. From end of shoot to end of edit, you can get it done, and done well, with forty days, or six to seven weeks.
In film, it is almost certain that a similar production will take half again as long, and I’ve seen films that took easily fourteen weeks. The rough cut or assemble stage may be achieved almost twice as quickly as video (I’ve seen them done within a few days), but the rest of the work takes an unbelievable amount of time if you expect the editor to work carefully and to turn out the proper sound effects and music edit—and you want the laboratory to do its job. In video, because “lab” work is done by the computer while you edit, that takes a very short time. In film, however, the end of the edit signals a sound mix—two days—and a laborious lab process that can take two weeks to get the print right (see chapter 10). But what takes the most time is the careful editing of version after version, with painful attention to details; of frame-by-frame editing, with a variety of sound effects tracks, opticals, negative matching, and so on.
Of course, we’ve all seen editors who worked fifteen or eighteen hours a day (or even more), cramming all their expertise into four weeks and turning out a credible film. And in TV, an episode can be edited to script in a formula fashion, within the same time period: four weeks.
Whether you’re working in film or video, there are a few surprises in store for you if you’ve kept an open mind. The first is that the project may end up looking and sounding different from what you had planned. A character may go. A scene may go. It may not be his film; it may be hers. While you were preparing and shooting this did not become apparent, but now that you’re finished, it is painfully (or pleasantly) so. Your film editor may have been responsible for getting you to shift some scenes around (though it could be your producer, too, or even you). Scenes may be cut together without some of the shots you planned. Dialogue may disappear, only to reappear in strange places. You will probably resist some of this kind of cutting, only to discover that lines you thought were imperative aren’t. (A viewer who had never seen the film before tells you that it’s obvious the main character is about to leave home, and you don’t need the line “I’m getting out of here.”)
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While the editing process is going on, you will no doubt be startled by some of the suggestions that are made. For example, you believe that you can’t cut from a shot of someone looking right to left (that is, at the left side of camera) to someone else looking right to left and expect the two to appear as if they are talking to each other (the principle of “staying on the same side of the imaginary line”). Then, in the midst of cutting, an editor will make such a cut and, miracle of miracles, it works. The film La Nuit de Varennes exemplifies one such situation.
In a coach, traveling along in the middle of the dusty French countryside, are three passengers (Drawing 1). We see a two-shot of the countess, who is on the left, and the writer (Drawing 2). We now cut to a two-shot of the countess and the priest (Drawing 3). She is now on the right (because she is sitting between the two of them). This is not supposed to work, because it means that she will “jump” from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen and it will be distracting. The right way to do the scene (says the “director’s handbook”) is to use a three-shot of the passengers, then individual shots of each and use the two-shots only if “bridged” by one of those other shots. Or, pan from one two-shot to another (Drawing 4).
The cut described above isn’t supposed to work, but it does. Why does it work? Probably because the editor chose just the right moment to make the cut, when the eyes of the audience were on the prie
st and not the countess; or when the sentence that the writer was saying was so cogent that we just didn’t pay attention to that so-called wrong cut. And so it goes. The rules go out the window. And thank God for that, for rules are made to be learned and then broken in the arts of film and video. “Anything goes,” as long as it makes the film better, and most likely it will be during the editing process that much of the rule breaking occurs. The editor Ralph Rosenblum tells of putting stock footage into a film that was designed for original material. But using stock footage is only one of the original tricks that may improve a film; there are others. Slowing footage down (via “step printing”) or speeding it up. Changing the color. Printing something in high contrast. Reversing a shot in the “optical house” or on an AVID. (He was looking right to left; make him look left to right by reversing the image.) Using subliminal shots. Eliminating scenes. Interrupting a scene with another scene, then returning once, twice, or three times to the original. Doing retakes. (This usually horrifies the producer, of course, though some producers often see the need for retakes before directors do. Retakes, in limited numbers and under limited circumstances, are the best of all worlds: you’ve seen the film in rough cut and can tailor the retake precisely to the shot you need.) Redubbing the voice to make it more mysterious, more sexy, more sinister. Adding images that weren’t shot, by retouching the negative (which is expensive and difficult) or intercutting new footage or using animation or stills or superimposing light flashes or . . . on and on. The opportunities in editing are numerous—but more so in film, I’m afraid, than in video (though the line between them in postproduction is becoming more and more blurred, as digital magic takes over). And it’s all terribly expensive!
The technical mastery and tricks, however, that an editor can bring are not nearly as important as the intellectual ones. For whether you are using film or video, the basic notion of the edit remains: to create from the footage you have shot a version that satisfies your original vision or, if that vision has changed, the new one. In order to accomplish this goal, you must use your editor’s mind. It is not surprising that the original word, “cutter,” was dropped, since the work a film editor does is much more complex than cutting, work that is often similar to the work an editor in the publishing industry can do for a written work. Ideas, images, feelings, and symbols are what films and video are about, and a smart, emotionally keen editor can contribute immeasurably to what you have begun.
Now it is time for you to know your laboratory and what it can do.
11
The Print and the Film Laboratory
This is a brief chapter, but one well worth reading even if you aren’t— at present—responsible for seeing film into and out of the lab. Too many times a director thinks that the film is finished when the “mix” has taken place and the editing has been completed, when in fact there are a number of things to do yet that can very well determine how good the film is going to look. Let’s start at the point when the film was first sent to the lab for dailies.
What kind of film was it? “Fine-grain” (that is, without noticeable grain) because you were willing to sacrifice film “speed” for smooth, creamy texture? Or did you want the picture “fast” (that is, sensitive to light) without caring about texture. (Think Traffic, for the difference between the two. The scenes in Mexico are shot with very grainy film, a lot of hand-held action, to make them seem like they’re documentary or news footage. The other scenes are much creamier, shot on a fine-grain film and using a tripod or dolly.) Film stock is changing every day with new, sensitive, not too grainy films, but the general rule is “fast film, lots of grain; low speed, grainless.” You must also choose between “indoor” and “daylight” film. The former assumes you will use lights (tungsten or quartz) with a color temperature of about 3,200° Kelvin, a reddish light; the latter assumes lamps of 5,600° Kelvin, a blue light. If you use indoor film outside, you have to continually filter it with red filters; if you use outdoor film indoors, your filters are blue. Don’t switch films once you start, but do make a careful estimate of whether you’ll be spending more time shooting outdoors or indoors. To complicate matters (this is a technical chapter, after all), you can, of course, shoot outdoor film indoors with HMI lamps, because they are made to put out a light about the same color temperature as the sun: 5,600° Kelvin.
Let’s assume you want to use a fairly low-grain, “slow” film, for the beauty of the color and for lots of differential between shades of gray. This is something you and your D.P. discussed before shooting. It will increase, by the way, the number of lighting instruments you need, and a variety of other technical variables, but it will also mean you can go for subtle colors and lighting effects and expect to see them on the film when you’re through.
The film goes out for its first processing. Because it is negative, it will be run through the lab and developed first, then a print will be made. The print will be what is called a “one-light” or “untimed” print. This means that the variety of colored lights or filters that are controlled by a computer and that change the way the print is exposed, scene by scene, will be limited to a small, set number (an estimate of the average exposure needed to print the film and not changed scene by scene. Thus, your dailies will come back looking as good as the “timer” (a person, not a machine) at the lab can make them with a one-light instruction. The practical effect of this will be that you may find a favorite scene that was supposed to be subdued looking reddish and too light, but you will know that can all be changed when the film is eventually timed the way it’s supposed to be-for a final print. (By the way, if you have a low-budget production, there’s no reason you have to get a color work print of every scene or every roll of film. It’s generally done, but it’s much less expensive to get a black-and-white print made. If you’re nervous about the color quality, because you used secondhand film or for some other reason, print one roll in color to assuage your fears.)
The work print is yours to use, to cut up, to mar, to turn upside down, because you know, barring any terrible event, that the negative is safely ensconced in the lab’s vault (a small charge is made yearly for storage unless you use the lab for prints or other work, but it’s well worth keeping it there, not in your house). If, for any reason, you need a reprint of a scene or a shot, you can have it done from that negative, overnight.
You will have sent the film and the synched-up sound out for “edge numbers,” little figures printed on both sound and picture at set intervals so that the film and sound track can be resynched if it is ever cut up and the editor can’t get it back. This is a mandatory precaution.
The next step, in terms of the laboratory, doesn’t come until you have finished editing. At that time, in order to make the completed print, a “negative editor” will have to be hired. Not strictly a lab’s job (though the editor can often be hired through a lab), negative editing requires a skilled eye, a firm hand, and pristine circumstances (similar to a surgeon’s table). Matching the original numbers from the negative to those on the print (not the same edge numbers you put on; these are manufactured with the film) the negative editor splices together the negative that has been in the vault, taking care to avoid scratching it or embedding hairs or dust in it.
After splicing, with leader, into A & B rolls16 (for 16mm) or with opticals cut in (for 35mm), the film is “timed.” Using a video reader that takes the negative and reverses it into a “positive” image, the lab technician decides exactly how many “lights” a scene needs to match skin tones or other visual touchstones. These numbers are put into a computer which makes a punch tape that accompanies the film as it goes through the lab processes. The film, with its punch tape, is then sent to the optical printer, which literally makes a copy of each frame onto “color positive” stock, thus yielding a “print.” You then view the print, after waiting a number of days and being very nervous.
TIME OUT
There is a split in the industry these days. Many television productions (and sma
ll-budget films, too) will opt to have their scenes printed extremely well the first time around, and transferred to digital (e.g., AVID) format. They will then be edited entirely on a random-access piece of equipment and then, through the use of computers, an edit list (EDL, in filmland jargon) will be printed out and (using a complex computer program ) matched to the negative for laboratory processing. For films that will be shown on the big screen in a movie theatre, the usual lab process then ensues. But for television it is becoming common not to end up with a film print, but to do a “digital cut” (more jargon) from the AVID onto videotape, making it unnecessary to do anything (save for the mix) outside of the edit room. This doesn’t work for large-size film formats (such as 70mm) or where extremely complicated frame-by-frame corrective work is required, but much of the special effects work these days is digital, and that fits very well with the AVID or similar edit machine.
Another digitally-inspired innovation is making headway: Motion picture distributors and theaters have been experimenting with the transfer of the huge, heavy rolls of 35 and 70mm film to digital disks which can be projected via digital projection onto a movie screen. Some think that this means, eventually, all movies will be shown electronically. Some videotape projection is now being used in theaters, but those who want widespread distribution of video programming (or “films” shot on DV video) are more likely to have their video transferred digitally to film, which can be projected onto movie screens anywhere in the world, while the new disk method is in very few theatres. The benefit to the latter: audio is digital, making for fine sound quality. Mind you, most colleges, schools, community centers and even festivals won’t have the money for this for some time to come, but it is most likely the wave of the future.
Directing for Film and Television Page 20