Directors Tell the Story
Page 25
Even though your DGA creative rights contract offers you the opportunity to be notified of the date, time, and place of every postproduction operation, and in good faith allowed to be present and consulted, the next time you see your episode after delivering your cut will most likely be on the air. You will probably be on to your next episode and this episode will be completed and delivered under the competent hands of the postproduction supervisor. Feel free to take advantage of your creative rights, but know that directors—unless they are also producers on the show—don’t usually participate in the next steps of postproduction, so your presence and/or participation might be a surprise.
It has been Mary Lou’s and Bethany’s experience that it doesn’t generally take more than two days to assemble their cut for story and time, probably because they have been blessed with talented editors. You may want to watch your cut one last time with the editor or at home on a DVD copy before you consider it finished and ready to be turned over to the producers.
Some people say shows are “made in the cutting room.” It is true that the editing of a film has a huge impact on its ultimate presentation and audience response. An editor can make good film great. But the editor can’t make bad film good. (One exception, historically, is Elmo Williams’s cut of 1952’s High Noon. Producer Stanley Kramer and director Fred Zinnemann authorized Williams to make an experimental version, cutting the film to echo real time. That experimental cut became the final cut of a classic film.) It is the director’s responsibility to deliver the film that tells the story, and a good editor will be your partner in turning your raw footage into the polished jewel that is its full potential. When you hire an editor, look for someone who shares your sensibilities—a person who understands your vision and will bring his prodigious talents to the editing room to turn what you envisioned into something even better than you anticipated. As director Peter Weir said, “The fine line is getting from them [the editors] what you haven’t thought of yourself, and at the same time needing them to accept that you will make the decision in the end. You don’t want a rubber stamp at all. In casting these parts, as it were, you want somebody who can say, OK, let’s dig deeper into what your point of view is, see if we can go further with this. When that sort of collaboration emerges, it’s wonderful.”1
AN OPPORTUNITY WORTH TAKING
We want to end this chapter with a piece of advice. We think there is an enormous amount you can learn by watching an editor work. When you watch pieces of film (or another media) put together, you begin to understand the building blocks of visual storytelling. You should take advantage of this viewing. It doesn’t have to be a show you directed. In fact, we recommend otherwise. What would be helpful is if you got a chance to watch something being edited that you also watched being shot so that you know the footage the editor received. Either way, you can see how he assembles what he eventually shows the director. Notice the choices he makes and the things he tries. This kind of experience is invaluable. If you do get the opportunity to watch an editor, be respectful and don’t talk during the process; just watch. Make a list of questions you might like to ask and make your inquiries at lunch. There is a formula that says editing time expands by one hour for every individual who is in the room. Don’t be the person who makes the editor’s job longer. Rather, be the director who will be a better director for having taken advantage of an editor’s generosity and be considerate enough to value the gift you’ve been given.
Insider Info
What is the Editor’s Creative Role in Helping the Director to Create a Finished Product?
The editor’s job is to collaboratively strengthen, enhance, and hone the director’s vision in order to bring the most effective version of the story to screen. Creatively speaking, this is done in a variety of ways—that in turn change throughout the duration of the project. Often, it can become a love/hate relationship because we fluctuate between being your best friend and the stern cold voice of objectivity.
Although many would say creativity is the most important aspect of any job in the industry, for editing, creativity is tied with objectivity. Both are vital. Think of us as the friend who tells you, “Yes, you look fat in those jeans.” We love you but if need be will protect you … from yourself.
During preproduction, the editor talks with the director often to “try to get into the director’s head” as much as possible. The more an editor understands the director’s vision and intent, the closer that editor’s cut will be to that vision. However, during the editor cut process, the editor also has an obligation to explore alternate, accidental, and previously unthought-of possibilities the footage may present.
As the production process continues and (in the case of television and when the studio has final cut) the director moves on, the editor often becomes the last defender and champion of the director’s original vision. Mainstream network television is not terribly interested in making art—they’re playing a numbers game: the more people they can get to watch, the more ads they can sell. This reality can result in horrible lowest-common-denominator story decisions (such as “Let’s put in more voiceover so people who are just tuning in will know who everyone is,” and “Does it have to be so sad? I know she dies, but can you make it happier? We don’t want people sad”).
At the end of the day, it is the editor and the executive producers who must try to bridge this gap, and when push comes to shove, it is usually only the editor left trying to salvage as much “art” as possible while making the bean counters happy. Many who don’t understand the process blame editors for “cutting everything out” without ever understanding how hard we fight to just to keep what’s left in.
What Makes a “Good” Director in the Room and a “Bad” Director in the Room?
Trust: we’re both on the same team. Don’t treat me like the enemy. I’m not trying to destroy your movie and maybe—just maybe—I know what the hell I’m talking about, too.
Patience: some things take time. You standing at my shoulder watching me work will not get it done any faster.
Collaboration/open mind: just because it wasn’t your idea doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Take a chance and watch where new things lead—you might be pleasantly surprised. If not, we can always put it back.
NEVER, EVER SNAP YOUR FINGERS! We’re not dogs.
If you’re a writer/director, don’t bring the script into the cutting room. That time has passed, and holding it in your lap while reviewing the cut will only make you see your preconceptions rather than your movie’s reality. Remember that the audience will not have a script. They will not know that we lifted two lines and swapped the order of an argument. They will only know if it “feels right” and if your words get in the way of that “feeling,” let ’em go or no one will stick around to hear anything else you have to say. Contrary to what you may think, people do not follow dialog, they follow story, drama, and emotion. Learn the difference.
Let me be clear, though: a well-written script is the cornerstone of any good movie. And 99 percent of movie problems are script problems that are never solved. But in the end, a movie is as much the script as we are our DNA. Our genetic codes dictate who we will be, but not who we will really be. They create our bones, hair color, and eye color, but not our loves, how we laugh, and the pauses between our sentences. To constantly compare a person’s life to their DNA is to lament a concert pianist for only being 5’2” when they should’ve been 6’ tall—not only have you missed the whole damn point, but quite honestly, if you had never pointed it out, no one ever would have known. Don’t do this to your movie.
What Do You Wish More Directors Understood About Editing?
The term “fix it in post” is a lie. Things are never fixed in post—they’re just made to suck less. You want something fixed—fix it during production or better yet on the page. Again, 99.999999 percent of a show’s problems (aside from budget issues) are script problems. Your two young lovers will not be fixed into an Oscarwinning heart-breaking duo
if they still have to say crap lines and work through poorly plotted arcs.
Akin to “fixing” in post—“figuring it out” in post is also a no-no. Have a plan. Make sure your vision is as precise and well laid out as it can be. Know how you’re getting in, when you’re close, here’s a cutaway, the end is a pullback, and how you transition out before you shoot. See the cut movie in your head. Remember that my job is to collaboratively bring your vision to screen—if you don’t have a vision, it’s not my job to give you one. Your vision should be so apparent that when I open a bin, I shouldn’t even need the script—I should just be able to follow the angles and the takes and cut the movie you see in your mind’s eye. So when I open a bin and see three hours of footage for six lines of dialog shot from every conceivable angle, my respect for you as a storyteller goes right out the window.
Editing is the nexus of creativity for any movie or show—the place where all the pieces come together and the story comes to life. And although the process can be arduous and insanely repetitive, the result is worth it. To hone an actor’s performance. To carve a storyline. To piece together moments from here and from there—that look, with this response; juxtapose that shot, with this music—to weave all those moments together and create a reality that makes an audience member lean forward and gasp or cry or laugh. To make an audience believe: it’s a wonderful rush.
Tirsa Hackshaw
Editor
Drop Dead Diva, Dirty Sexy Money, Dirt
Vocabulary
A side
add to
air
alts
angle
B side
bins
bumps
card
chyron
cleared
complementary shots
complete
cues (music)
cutting pattern
editor’s assembly
fill
getting the scissors in
hard drive
head
incomplete
jump cut
lifted
lip-sync
loop groups
massage the cut
nonlinear editing
methods (NLEs)
over the cut
prelapping
pulling up
punch (visual)
rhythm
rock into coverage
room tone
running time
script supervisor’s
notes
straight cut in
tail
temp tracks
tighten
trim
walla
1. Rafferty, Terrence, “Uncommon Man,” DGA Quarterly, Summer 2010, pp. 30–37.
Chapter 15
Working with the Post Supervisor
There is a tremendous amount of work that continues after you hand in your director’s cut and before the final version gets delivered to the network for airing. Knowing what happens may not make you a significantly better director, but we think you should have a working knowledge of the sequence and respect for the skilled people who do it. We mentioned in the previous chapter that you have creative rights. But practically speaking, you will see that television postproduction is really the producer’s domain and most producers exercise their control over all of it.
The network that is spending the money is not just buying a one-time product; it is buying a sustainable product that will hopefully last many years on the air.
It is said that theatre is the medium in which actors have the most control, film is the medium in which directors have the most control, and television is the medium in which writers have the most control. To elaborate: after opening night, a play is in the hands of the actors who do a fresh performance every night. The director’s job is done and the bulk of the producing job is also finished once the show is mounted (except running the show, which is left in the hands of the production and company managers). A director stays involved with the decisions about a film (with the exception of distribution and marketing) until the picture is locked and stays involved until it opens. Writers supervise a television show from beginning to end. Why? A writer creates a show, pitches it to a network, and proves that his idea has legs to last many seasons. The network that is spending the money is not just buying a one-time product; it is buying a sustainable product that will hopefully last many years on the air.
The viability of the continued success of that product depends on a series of new stories every season. A writer is responsible for generating that product; therefore, he garners the title Executive Producer and will certainly always be known as the creator of the show. That is usually only the beginning of his responsibilities. If that writer is also the showrunner, which is often the case, he is responsible for every aspect of the show, beginning with finding writers to write, actors to act, directors to direct, and a line producer to be in charge of production.
That showrunner also delegates. The person who reports to the showrunner for postproduction is the post supervisor or postproduction supervisor. The title is an apt one. There are a lot of different people involved in completing an episode. Lots of things happen simultaneously; others occur in a strict sequential order. The postproduction supervisor coordinates and supervises it all, much as the director does during production. This supervisor contributes similarly by making choices and applying her creative vision to the various processes of post, as well as leading each postproduction department on a journey toward one goal. The postproduction supervisor may have earned a more advanced title (associate producer or coproducer) based on her years of experience, but for our purposes here, she will just be referred to as the postproduction supervisor. Or you could call her the lifesaver, because production deficiencies are often obscured by brilliant work in postproduction.
OFFLINE VIDEO
Post is divided into two categories for video editing: offline and online. All of the cuts (editor’s assembly, director’s cut, producer’s cut, studio cut, and network cut) are part of the offline process until the picture is locked. These cuts have been made from “copies,” not the original master you shot. The online part of editing is actually quite fast. It involves taking the computerized list of all the final editing instructions, called an EDL (edit decision list) and using your original footage to create a VAM (video assembled master). So the offline process can take weeks to accomplish, and is really the preparation for the online process, which is the creation of the master of the episode that has made it through prep, shoot, and postproduction.
Once the VAM is created, copies of it go to the following departments and individuals: visual effects, the composer, the music editor, the sound editor, closed captioning, and the network promotion department. This VAM has a rough audio component that serves as a template for all the final sounds that will be mixed into the show. At this point, the postproduction supervisor may make changes to the temp audio track.
The online part of editing is actually quite fast. It involves taking the computerized list of all the final editing instructions, called an EDL (edit decision list) and using your original footage to create a VAM (video assembled master).
The VFX still have to be created. If you discussed them during preproduction, the preliminary work was begun then. Remember that SPFX are done during production, but VFX are created artificially and added in post. An example of a VFX is CGI, which uses three-dimensional computer graphics to create images such as a crowd in an arena. CGI animation at its most sophisticated can create a three-dimensional world where the Na’vi of Avatar live. It costs less than hiring and costuming thousands of extras and has possibilities that are continually being explored. However, the old-fashioned way of building miniatures to create large or different environments still works, and works well, especially in the sense of making the scene look “real” and not like something out of a video game.
Directors always get a single card and it is nearly always list
ed last in the up-front credits (the ones at the beginning of a show).
After the VFX are added, the VAM needs to be color corrected. Even though many cameras have color correction filters and the DPs have carefully lit every scene, the light is never exactly the same; therefore, the image recorded from take to take never matches exactly. A computer artist (sometimes referred to as a colorist) with a great eye for matching color (sometimes with the DP present) makes sure that the red wine in the glass is always the same red or—even more noticeable—that the color of an actor’s skin always consistent. He may also enhance color balances for creative reasons. Once color corrected, it is called a CTM (color timed master). Suzanne Welke, Mary Lou’s postproduction supervisor on Girlfriends, defined it like this: “A CTM is the same as the VAM, only pretty.”
Now the episode is ready for titles or credits: the text that is placed on top of the picture or a black screen (as The Closer does) and includes those important words “Directed by.” The people who create the text must do their job perfectly. People hate when their name is spelled incorrectly or their title mislabeled. It’s why every newspaper in the country prints corrections. It is why people who work in television and motion picture have contracts that spell out what text will appear on the screen, how big it will be, in what order, and sometimes for what duration of time. It is also negotiated whether your name appears alone (single card) or simultaneously as someone else (shared card) on the same screen. Directors always get a single card, and it is nearly always listed last in the up-front credits (the ones at the beginning of a show). If, for example, your story begins with a visual montage, you may want to shoot extra footage to allow for credits to finish before the dialog begins.