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CHAPTER 13 EDITING missing the ball hard cuts to a wide shot of the goalie hanging up his uniform, and so on. Dissolves, Fades, and Wipes Using a dissolve to transition between scenes can add a feeling of smoothness, and serve to slow down the pacing of your story. Dissolves usually imply a pe- riod of “reflection” or “introspection” and give the audience a moment to chew on what has just transpired. Dissolves can also indicate the start of a dream se- quence or flashback. Fades and wipes are looking pretty out of date these days, but you never know when a fresh eye can make something old look new. The Austin Powers films employed a liberal use of wipes for comic effect, and the hard cuts to black between scenes in Stranger Than Paradise added a modern feel to a cen- tury-old technique. Establishing Shots Carefully placed establishing shots announce that a new scene is about to start, help orient the audience, and serve to set the location. Without estab- lishing shots, the audience can feel “lost.” Often the establishing shot is built into the first shot of the scene—a crane shot that starts high overhead and ends in a close-up on the main character, a slow reveal that pans across a series of objects on a desk and ends on the main character talking on the phone, and so on. If the director didn’t shoot a good establishing shot, then you’ll have to find something to “cheat,” such as the last few seconds of a wide shot after the cast has cleared frame. You don’t need an establishing shot for every single scene in the film, just whenever a significant change in location takes place. Spending more or less time on your establishing shots is an easy way to change the pacing of your project. A long establishing shot with supporting cut-aways will slow things down and give your audience time to “settle in.” To speed things up you can use a short establishing shot, or economize by combining an establishing shot with a split-audio voiceover. For example, cut to a wide crane-shot of a riverboat while playing audio of your main character saying something like, “The way your mother was driving, I never thought we’d get here.” This simple split edit serves to establish the location of your new scene, identify which characters are participating, and provide a little ex- position about what they have just done. 303 Clearing Frame and Natural “Wipes” An easy way to create a smooth transition between two scenes is to cut out of a shot as the actor clears the frame and cut into the next shot as the actor frame in another location. This method can become repetitive very quickly if it is overused. When a large object passes through the frame, such as a passing car, a person in the foreground, and so on, it can be used as a natural “wipe,” to eas- ily transition to the next scene. In Rope, Alfred Hitchcock concealed his few edits in the film by hiding them under natural wipes. SOLVING TECHNICAL PROBLEMS Every film has a set of unique technical challenges that often fail to become ev- ident until the editing process actually begins. Here are some of the most com- mon technical issues that get resolved in the editing room. Missing Elements The problem you will face most frequently when editing is not having enough material. Whether it’s because an actor’s mic recorded static, the pick-ups don’t match the original performance, or there just aren’t enough cutaways to allow you to edit the scene the way you want. Most of these sorts of problems require the sort of on-your-feet, creative thinking that good editors are known for— restructuring the scene so that the bad mic or the pick-ups aren’t necessary, or finding an inventive way to recut the scene using jump cuts to make up for the lack of cutaways. Working with Temporary Elements It’s rare to end up with a film that has every single element you need when you start editing. Whether it’s music, pick-ups, or special effects shots, if you don’t have all your materials, you’ll need some temporary elements in order to cre- ate a solid rough cut. Creating a temporary score is a necessity to help “sell” your rough cut, but be sure it’s a score that is representative of what you’ll be able to use in the final edit. If you are missing shots because they haven’t been shot yet, you can use a placeholder such as a title that describes the missing shot. If you have lots of ef- fects shots and composites, you can use low-resolution proxies imported from your effects software (more about effects in Chapters 15, 16, and 17), or you can create a temporary effects shot or composite in your NLE to use until you DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 304 CHAPTER 13 EDITING get the real thing. Managing lots of temp footage, proxies, and other elements can be an organizational nightmare if you let it get out of control. Be sure to develop some sort of naming convention to indicate what’s temporary and what’s final. Working with Low-Res Footage If you’re planning to eventually conform your project in an on-line session, you’ll be using low-res footage to create your rough cuts. Be aware that some low-res codecs save space by only compressing one of the two fields in a frame of video. Single-field resolutions are fine for rough cuts, but remember that you’re only seeing half of your footage. If there’s a drop-out or other problem in the second field, you may not become aware of it until you do the full-res- olution on-line edit. Also, if you edit up to the last frame of a shot, you have no way of knowing what the other field contains—the end of that shot or the head of the next shot or a field of unstable video. Play it safe by not using the first and last frames of a shot unless your video is uncompressed. Another way codecs save space is by compressing the video into a smaller screen size or by cutting the frame rate. You should probably avoid the latter at all costs—if your codec drops every third or fourth frame, it limits where you can make an edit. Some low-res codecs, such as the DV format low-res codec offered in ProMax’ DV Toolkit, do not support sync audio. You’ll have to wait until you recapture a high-res version to do anything beyond the most rudimentary sound editing. All of these compression techniques make it harder to see your image clearly and you may find some ugly surprises waiting for you when you see your footage at full resolution. Working with Widescreen Footage Widescreen projects offer an additional set of technical challenges for the edi- tor. If you’ve got a full-resolution, native 16:9 video, the resulting 1080i high- definition files will be at least six times larger than an NTSC file of the same length. You should probably work with low-resolution footage to create your rough cuts, and on-line after you’ve locked picture. True HD NLEs cost around $100,000. If you have footage shot using the 16:9 feature of your camera, you’ll have to make sure that your hardware and software can display widescreen images. When a DV camera records in 16:9 mode, it notates this on the tape by set- ting a special 16:9 flag that is stored alongside each frame. To see the true 305 widescreen image when editing, two things must happen. First, your DV codec must recognize and support the 16:9 flag. If it doesn’t, it won’t be able to tell your editing software that you are editing widescreen footage. Depend- ing on how your software works, you could end up losing the widescreen info. Second, your NLE must interpret the flag and stretch the video to its cor- rect width. If it doesn’t do this, you can still output 16:9 footage (assuming your codec supports it), but you’ll have to look at 4:3 squished footage while editing. Though it’s possible to edit this way, several months of staring at squished footage can grow tiresome. 3:2 Pulldown We explained the basics of 3:2 pulldown in Chapter 4, but editing film origi- nal material that has been transferred to video presents some special technical issues. Remember that when you’re editing video, you’re editing in a 30 fps en- vironment. But film only has 24 frames per second. Through the 3:2 pull- down process, extra frames have been added. If you’re going back to film, you need to be sure every cut you make will fall on a film frame. If it falls on one of the 3:2 pulldown, “made up” frames, then the negative cutter won’t be able to make your edit. This means you can only make a film edit on every fifth frame of video (see Figure 4.4). Software designed to work with film, like Lightworks, Avid Film Composer, and Filmlogic, use a reverse telecine process to make sure that all your edits occur in the right places. High-end products, like those by Quan- tel, do heavy calculating get rid of the every fifth frame of video/fourth frame of film limitation. But if you’re using a lower-end system, you’ll need to do this frame bookkeeping yourself—a chore we do not recommend. If your project has telecine transfers from film but you do not intend to go back to film, you’ll have to deal with an entirely different problem. When film is transferred to video, in addition to the 3:2 pulldown process, it is also slowed down by .1% in order to achieve the 29.97 frame rate of NTSC video. If you have synched audio transferred with your film to videotape, the audio will also be slowed down .1%, but if you have your film transferred to video without sound and capture the sound separately, you’ll have to slow it down by .1% in order for it to sync up with your telecined film. Fixing audio problems is covered in Chapter 14. DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 306 CHAPTER 13 EDITING Now that you’ve got a decent rough cut, it’s time to take a harsher look at it: Is it working? Does the story work, does the dialogue make sense, does it flow naturally, does it convey the desired mood? Fine-cutting is when you will try to make the story and presentation work. Usually at this point there’s an important editing cliche to remember: the cutting room floor. If your film isn’t working, you may need to cut it down. Maybe it’s that montage sequence that you love but which comes out of nowhere and destroys the natural build of a love story between the main char- acters. Or maybe it’s part of a secondary storyline that just doesn’t fit anymore. Whether it’s a scene, a shot, or just a line or two of dialogue, cutting out the things that don’t work can do wonders for your film. Woody Allen routinely makes drastic changes between his rough cuts and his fine cuts, often rewriting and reshooting half of the movie! This is true for films including Interiors, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Sep- tember, and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Such massive re-working is often ne- cessitated because Allen relies on very long master shots. If one line of a 5-minute scene is wrong, no amount of editing can save it. In the case of Sep- tember, several actors were no longer available and were replaced (Sam Shep- herd with Sam Watterston, and Maureen O’Sullivan with Elaine Stritch). After Allen saw the rough cut of Crimes and Misdemeanors, he threw out a third of the original story, rewrote it from scratch, and started reshooting. In the process, Mia Farrow’s character changed from a geriatric social worker to a television producer, the documentary that Woody Allen’s character was shoot- ing changed from a film about retired vaudeville performers to a film about Allen’s TV-producing brother-in-law, and a character played by Sean Young was cut completely. Though not everyone has the luxury to reshoot as thoroughly as Woody Allen, it’s important to recognize that even a director as skilled and experienced as he still has to feel his way through a project, and make massive changes to reach his goal. EDITING FOR STYLE The editing of feature films today has been strongly influenced by music videos, documentaries, and commercials. Fast cutting, visual effects and jump cuts are the hallmark of “cool.” Movies that fit this model include Trainspot- ting, The Matrix, and Run Lola Run. But there’s also a countertrend in inde- Fine-Cutting 307 pendent cinema that involves a no-frills style and lots of long shots where the action plays out with very little manipulation, such as the French documentary film Trop Tot, Trop Tard (Too Early, Too Late), or recent movies by Olivier As- sayas ( Irma Vep, Late August, Early September). Also popular is the handheld look borrowed from cinema verité and reality television, as seen in The Cele- bration . The choice is up to you, but a strong editing style can save an other- wise weak film. DURATION Though it may sound trivial, one of the biggest jobs in editing is arriving at the proper duration for the project. Some projects have built-in durations: com- mercials are usually 10, 30, or 60 seconds long, and TV shows are 28 minutes or 52 minutes. Trailers vary from short commercial spots to several minutes long (don’t make the mistake of boring viewers with a trailer that tells the whole story). Press kits usually include the full-length trailer(s) from the film, the 30- or 60-second teaser trailer(s), possibly a longer scene or featurette, and some selected takes, such as I.D. shots for each key cast member. If your project doesn’t fit neatly into a predetermined slot, it may by more challenging to arrive at the right duration. If you’re editing a short film, keep in mind that it’s rare for festivals to accept shorts that are longer than 10 min- utes. The average length of the old Warner Brothers cartoons was six minutes, and most people seem to expect a short film to be about that length. If yours is a feature film, it will have to be at least 80 minutes long to qualify in most festivals. It used to be that a typical feature film was 90 minutes long, but lately, “serious” films tend to be at least 120 minutes and can often be as long as 180 minutes. Remember, your story should dictate the duration of your film, not an arbitrary number that is the trend of the day. THE BIG PICTURE Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky aptly described filmmaking as “sculpting in time,” and the longer your film, the more complex the “sculpture.” As you try to get a final cut, here are some things to look at in terms of the structure of your film as a whole: • Rhythm and pacing If you start with a high-energy action scene and try to keep up that level of energy until the end, you’ll probably fail. Action DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 308 CHAPTER 13 EDITING seems more intense when it follows a period of calm, and calmness seems more profound when it follows intense action or emotion. Good rhythm and pacing allow intensity to build over time, creating suspense and engaging the audience in the story. • Set-ups and pay-offs Earlier, we talked about the concepts of set-ups and pay-offs within a scene or sequence of scenes. But in a long film, there are also lots of set-ups that occur in the early part of the film and don’t pay off until much later on. Make sure all the set-ups that play out over time are paid off later on. • Emotion Emotion is built into the script and the actors’ performances, but editing plays a role as well. If scenes aren’t allowed to develop or build, the emotion, whether happy, funny, angry, sad, etc., will fall flat. When you look at the film as a whole, make sure all the emotional beats that you intended are there. • Compressing and expanding time How long is the period of time cov- ered in your story—a day, two weeks, five years? Does the structure of the film seem appropriate for the film’s length? Would it benefit from re- arranging the order and playing with the time frame? Last, but not least, you need to lock picture. Locking picture means that you have finished editing for story and will not make any further changes to the content of the film. You may still have some outstanding effects shots that need to be dropped in, but you won’t be making any changes that affect the duration. Once picture is locked, it’s time to take a more serious pass at edit- ing the sound. Locking Picture 309 [...]... select a digital audio application, you’ll want to consider many of the same questions introduced earlier In addition, look for the following: • Can the app open a QuickTime movie? Many audio editors let you open a QuickTime movie and perform edits directly onto their audio tracks In addition, being able to watch your video while editing your audio makes many audio processes much simpler 3 17 DIGITAL FILMMAKING. .. Companies like Sound Ideas provide vast, detailed collections of high-quality pre-recorded sounds These can be essential tools for adding effects and ambience to your audio tracks (See 321 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 322 www.dvhandbook.com/audio.) If you’re editing in a studio or post-production facility, they may have a sound effects library you can use Foley is the process of recording special ambient effects... the relevant portions of the sound track and copy and paste them to a new track Remember not to cut, or you’ll throw the remaining audio out of sync Remember also 325 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 326 F IGURE Checkerboarded dialog editing 14 .7 that you’ll be copying stereo information—two tracks—for each actor When you’ve copied all of your data into the appropriate tracks, you can delete your original... adjusting bass and treble, then you’re already familiar with a very simple form of equalizing (or eq) An equalizer lets you control the loudness of different parts of the sound spectrum, called 3 27 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 328 frequencies For example, if you want to add some resonance to a voice, you might choose to use an EQ adjustment to boost the bass frequencies in the sound In a sense, an equalizer... With some simple EQ adjustments, you can easily simulate the sound of a voice coming through a telephone 329 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 330 F IGURE or sound coming from a radio or car stereo 14.10 S PECIAL F ILTERS As with video, audio editing has been greatly changed by the advent of digital editing tools There are a number of specialized applications and plug-ins that can help you fix any number... easier to identify any problems with your audio, and will make for a shorter (and possibly less-expensive) mixing session when you create your final output 335 CHAPTER 15 Color Correction 3 37 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 338 I N T HIS C HAPTER • • • • • To Compress, or Not to Conpress Color Correction Tutorial: Correcting White Balance Put a Clamp on It! Correcting Color for Film M ost of the editing... this sound effect? These types of augmented sounds can add a tremendous amount of drama to a scene, and they’re a great way to help the audience along through a quieter, dialog-free scene 313 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 314 Finally, good sound editing can often be used to “dress” a set to make it more believable If you cut to a shot like the one shown in Figure 3.3 and throw in echoing ambient sounds... production sound editing needs, though typically at a smaller scale Though you can get away with performing all of your edits in software, you may want special hardware to augment the process 319 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 320 Moving Your Audio Obviously, if you’re going to edit your audio outside of your NLE, you’ll need to move your audio If you need to perform a quick fix on a short, isolated piece... means that your audio plays at variable speeds as you drag your mouse through the clip Ideally, you want an audio scrubber that slows the audio down F IGURE 14.1 Waveform editing in Premiere 315 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 316 when scrubbing, just like you’d hear if you played an analog tape at slow speed, as opposed to a scrubber that plays sampled bits at normal speed (the way a CD player does when you... follow for these processes Instead, follow your ear It’s the best judge of what sounds good To improve and blend in a sound effect, remember that you have all of the following to work with: 331 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 332 • Levels Make sure the level of the sound matches the intensity of what’s on the screen A small handgun shouldn’t sound like a cannon, after all • EQ and effects You can use EQ to . many audio processes much simpler. Dedicated Sound Editing Apps 3 17 A simple click-removing plug-in. FIGURE 14.3 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 318 Ulead Media Studio Pro provides robust audio editing. (more about effects in Chapters 15, 16, and 17) , or you can create a temporary effects shot or composite in your NLE to use until you DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 304 CHAPTER 13 EDITING get the real. scene and try to keep up that level of energy until the end, you’ll probably fail. Action DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 308 CHAPTER 13 EDITING seems more intense when it follows a period of calm, and