While no one is quite sure how Oscar came to stand for the annual motion picture award and statue, Emmy’s lineage is clear. She was named after a camera. Actually “she” was almost a “he.” Syd Cassyd, founder of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS), proposed Ike after the iconoscope but since there was a standing president by that name, this idea was quickly abandoned.
The statue started out as Immy, named after an early image orthicon camera. Immy was changed to Emmy after the statue was designed, to be a more clearly female name.
How did the design evolve?
In 1948, after rejecting 46 design proposals votes, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) members agreed on a design created by engineer Louis McManus who modeled the statue on his wife. In keeping with the times, Emmy holds out an atom, representing science and sports wings, representing art.

Here’s a video (editing is slap-dash) on how the 4¾ lbs statuettes that winners receive, are made today:

admin Awards, History/research, Television

“It’s not a mystery. It’s pretty blatant,” says Carlos de Jesus, director of NYU’s Future Filmmakers Workshop. “The film industry has been dominated, especially at the upper echelons, by white males.”

The statistics for minorities are grimmer than for women: I couldn’t find any online. If you know of any sources, please let me know. Here are a couple of articles that I did find. However they’re not even from the last year:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/visibleman/2008/08/minorities_get_little_respect_1.html

http://diverseeducation.com/article/7441/flocking-to-film-school-minorities-and-the-film-industry.html

http://www.newenglandfilm.com/news/archives/99january/womeninfilm.htm

This article tackles TV and video games with the same dismal results:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/ethnics_and_minorities/minorities_entertainment.cfm

But let’s get the latest statistics and hopefully see some improvement!

admin History/research, Jobs

Here are the depressing, er, challenging statistics for 2009:

Box Office
Stats from Motion Picture Association of America

• 113 million female moviegoers bought 55% of the tickets.
• 104 million men bought 45% of the tickets.

Behind the Scenes
Stats from Center for the Study of Women in TV and Film, San Diego State U

Women

• directed 7% of the top 250 grossing films.
• wrote 8% of the top 250 grossing films.
• comprised
  • 17% of all executive producers
  • 23% of all producers
  • 18% of all editors
  • 2% of all cinematographers

Womencentric Films
Stats from Box Office Mojo

• 2 of the top 10 grossing films
• 9 of the top 50 grossing films (two of these are animated – The Princess and the Frog, Coraline);
• 18 of the top 100 grossing films;
• 26 of the top 150 grossing films

Relationship between women behind the scenes and on-screen
Stats from -Boxed In: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in the 2003-04 Prime-time Season, by Martha Lauzen

• Women working behind the scenes influenced the number of on-screen women. When a program had no female creators, females accounted for 40% of all characters. However, when a program employed at least one woman creator, females comprised 45% of all characters.

More statistics at http://womenandhollywood.com/statistics-on-women-and-hollywood/

Help!

Woman Make Movies exists to overcome these harsh realities. The site has resources as well as statistics to help empower women to be filmmakers and make their movies.

admin History/research, Jobs

Every year, as part of the run-up to the Emmy awards, various production companies and TV channels hold screenings at the TV Academy in NoHo (North Hollywood) of what they consider their most award-contending work.

Last week I went to see IFC’s contender in the Emmy awards, category, Monty Python Almost the Truth: The Lawyer’s Cut. It’s a 90-minute cut down version of IFC’s six hour documentary series celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the comedy troupe that stands on its own.

After the screening LA Times movie critic and Oscarologist (this Hollywood term makes me laugh derisively) Peter Hammond led a panel discussion.

Present: Pythons Eric Idle and Terry Jones, and two of the series’ three directors: Bill Jones (yes, son of Terry) and Ben Timlett.

Missing: Pythons John Cleese, Graham Chapman (deceased in 1989), Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam.

L to R: Pete Hammond, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Bill Jones, & Ben Tillet

Photo by Craig T. Miller

Fathers’ and sons’ expectations

Bill Jones prevailed upon the group, presumably starting with his father, to sit through in-depth interviews that lasted up to three hours. So this will be THE definitive series on the group. It peers into the Pythons’ childhoods and how their fathers influenced them.

Jones fils, who edited the series, when asked about he dealt with the volume of footage, commented, “You work your way through. You select stories.”

Part 2: My observations about the panel and the Pythons’ take on comedy and the possibility of a Python reunion.

admin History/research, Humor, Television

Thom Andersen, a film critic and film theory and history professor at CalArts, created an iconoclastic video chock full of clips from Hollywood flicks depicting LA interspersed with footage of the real city. Deriving its title from a gay male porn film, Los Angeles Plays Itself takes a devilish look at the way Hollywood portrays his city and mine -- the City of Angels.

I saw the 169 minute film when it first came out in 2003. Over dinner with a producer-friend last week, it came up again so I revisited it in clips online. Shortly a clip, but first some more introductory info.

Andersen divides his movie, which won several festival wards as well as the LA Film Critics Association Independent/Experimental Film and Video in 2004  into three parts: “The City as Background,” “The City as Character,” and “The City as Subject.”

The film is narrated by Encke King, a former student of Andersen’s. King has the deadpan voice of someone who’s spent years walking bleak city streets at night -- something impossible in LA due to the ubiquitous freeways chopping up the grid. It’s the perfect tone for a film which indirectly pays homage to LaLa Land movies as it pierces the veil of how Hollywood sees its surrounding city.

In this clip from Part 1, Andersen examines how Hollywood belittles its own outstanding mid-century modern architecture by showing clips along with footage of the actual buildings:

I highly recommend this film to all Los Angelenos, film students, and movie lovers. Warning: It is exhaustive. Best to ingest it in two viewings. In limited release due to rights issues, I found it available on DVD from Netflix.

Here’s another snippet -- the Bradbury building in downtown LA -- in movies made from 1943 to 1995.

admin History/research, Joy goes to the movies

To my generation of editors, Dede Allen was a revered editor par excellence, a queen of the cutting room. She worked endlessly and tirelessly to breathe in the essence of the film’s meaning and make sure it got to screen with the exact number of frames exactly placed -- not one more, not one less. She brought a fresh eye, fresh techniques and a new style to American film editing, starting with The Hustler and Bonnie and Clyde.

Cutting her teeth in commercials, Allen incorporated this experience once she hit the big time world of features. Allen broke continuity, pre-lapped sound when starting scenes, freely mixed slo-mo and reg-mo shots. She was known for working her assistants hard, giving them her knowledge and encouraging them to take wing, elevating a great new generation of editors.

One cannot possibly sum up the career or life of such a remarkable pioneer in one blog post so I will merely “show some selects,” to use editor parlance, and say, “Thank you Dede.”

In interviews Allen was always insightful and reflective about that state of editing including approaches to the footage, the effect of MTV and digital systems, cutting room relationships, studio politics, etc. Here are a few of her comments:

The buck stops in the cutting room.

I start every picture thinking that I’ll fail, that I’ll never be able to do it, that I’ll forget how to cut. I won’t know how to do it, I’ll let it down… I still bite my finger nails.

Editing is like writing with shots. And writers are people who change their ideas all the time. Ideas evolve. They’re not bound by a formula.

If you have a great deal of coverage, you really can’t just go plowing through the whole thing, you’d never remember all of it… I make massive notes which I have if I need them, but I memorize the material so thoroughly that I seldom even look at my notes.

I wonder if we’re raising enough people in a generation who are able to sit and look at a scene play out without getting bored if it doesn’t change every two seconds. We talk an awful lot about cutting; we talk very little about not lousing something up by cutting just to make it move faster. I’m afraid that’s the very thing I helped promulgate. . . . It may come to haunt us, because attention spans are short.

Lastly, here’s the scene’s she’s arguably most famous for. She always gives credit to Jerry Greenberg, her assistant, who actually cut it -- with her watchful eye.

Notes:

1. Don’t know why this is out of sync at the beginning when Warren Beatty is talking.

2. This could be retitled “The Two Bites of Eve” as they both take big bites of the apple.

Allen’s films (date and director in parenthesis).

• The Hustler (1961 -- Rossen)
• America, America (1963 -- Kazan)
• Bonnie & Clyde (1967 -- Penn)
• Rachel, Rachel (1968 -- Newman)
• Alice’s Restaurant (1969 -- Penn)
• Little Big Man (1970 -- Penn)
• Serpico (1973 -- Lumet)
• Dog Day Afternoon (1975 -- Lumet)
• Night Moves (1975 -- Penn)
• The Missouri Breaks (1976 -- Penn)
• Reds (1981 -- Beatty)
• The Breakfast Club (1985 -- Hughes)
• Henry & June (1990 -- Kaufman)
• The Addams Family (1991 -- Sonnenfeld)
• Wonder Boys (2000 -- Hanson)
• Have Dreams, Will Travel(2007 -- Isaacs)

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research

I have signed on to re-write my first book, Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video. This is a major re-write as there’s a lot that’s new since the first editing came out: Luts, render farms, and the final demise of editing on film, to name a few. The post process has gotten more complex than ever as there are four formats to finish on and so many ways – workflow variations – to take to get there.

So I am calling on the experts – YOU – for help. From time to time in this blog, I will throw out some questions and ask for your experience and input. To begin, I have created a couple of tables (see below) to get people started down the postproduction path.

Please give me your feedback:

• What formats or info needs to be added to each table? Changed?
• What other recommendations do you have?

Keep in mind that Cut by Cut is aimed at students, independent filmmakers, and professionals wanting to understand how the post-production process works.

For your review: Updated book material

Determining your Finishing Format

To decide which format your project will finish on, ask yourself: Where will the audience view my show?

To answer this question, look at Table 1.1. It outlines the five scenarios for where an audience could view your show. Read the scenarios to find out which one fits your project and note the finishing format. You may pick more than one scenario; for instance your audience may see your show in a movie theatre and then on TV. This means your project could have three finishing formats: tape, file, or film.

Table 1.1

Determine your Finishing Format

Now that you know your show’s general finishing format(s) – film, tape, file, or disk – it’s time to familiarize yourself with the specific formats you’ll be dealing with, Table 1.2 identifies the formats used for shooting, editing, and finishing. We will add and explain more parameters such as frame rate, resolution, and codecs as they come into play.

Table 1.2

Film and video formats:

How shows are shot, input into digital editing system, and finished

GIVEAWAY: If you would like to help more, I will send a free copy of the current book to the first three people that agree to read it and give me feedback. You will be listed in the acknowledgments and I may check in with you from time to time during the writing of the book.

Email me at: info@gaelchandler.com. Let me know your expertise and experiences  in postproduction and the types of projects you work on so I can direct the appropriate questions your way.

admin Editing practices, History/research, Technical and process, Television

My previous post talked about the history and the cons of the MTV effect on modern editing; today I’ll continue the history and look at the pros and where we are now.

Look what they done to my cuts, Ma

They’ve multiplied them and sped them up; they’re backed by green screen, racked with titillating effects and tracking multiple stories and all while pulsing to the beat, beat, beat. While a lot of MTV runs as mindless background visuals lacking story to be peered at when your companions or sports running on the TV above the bar fail to engage you, the effect of MTV filmmaking has changed the landscape on the silver screen and computer as well as TV screen. I deplore this Muzak-type use of video as much as electronic billboards and all annoying, anti-environment promotions.

Roots are showing

MTV didn’t spring out of nowhere in the 1980s. It germinated from 1950s French new Wave filmmaking style, 1960s music culture, movies like Help, Easy Rider, and Flashdance, the TV series Miami Vice, and the “break out from the clutter” world of commercials. As movies evolved from theatres to TV screens in bars and computers screens at home and everywhere, the modern style grew in cuts and effects.

Writer Debra Kaufman asks: “Video Spawned the Editing Star: What Hath MTV Wrought?” in her 2005 Editor’s Guild Magazine article.

Doug Ibold, A.C.E. responds that MTV has had “a huge impact on how people treat the storytelling process. If anyone doubts that, just look at how many episodic TV shows now end the episode with a dramatic song rather than the score. And observe how a very important part of a feature film release is to have a soundtrack to go with it. In most cases, it’ll include songs from the movie that are included, not the score.”

What are the new, MTV-influenced editing values? Here are the main ones:

• In your face editing: Audience aware of cuts and that they’re watching a show.
• Faster paced with short shot durations in every type of scene.
• Non linear structure frequently. Often takes effort to follow timeline due to asynchronous events.
• Multiple plotlines, commonly.
• Music drives story or songs vital to show and may end show.
• Continuity – whatever! Often observed but not THE WAY.
• Jump cuts embraced.
• Crazy-free use of visual effects. Audience aware of all types of dazzling wipes and other transitions.

Brief resolution

“That [MTV] revolution pushed us into an evolution that’s still going on. When MTV appeared, it seeped into mass consciousness and now is part of everyday life–like Starbucks.”
Mark Goldblatt, A.C.E., in Video Spawned the Editing Star: What Hath MTV Wrought?

Modern editing makes the viewer much more aware of the cuts and pacing. I appreciate seeing how different scenes and characters breathe in different rhythms – like music with its staccatos, allegros and rests – and like life with its times of stress, tranquility, and convergence.

I don’t appreciate the mindless cuts and effects that idle, diminish, or chop up the story. I love to relax into a B & W 1930s movie on TV and just let the present go.  And, I also love the stimulation of seeing where a millennium movie is going to take me in the present and into the future.

I recognize that “constant change is here to stay” as the old adage says. So I am staying tuned to what’s next.

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research, Sound and music editing, Visual FX editing

If an editor -- standing in for the viewer -- is a movie’s eyes, are those the eyes of someone suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder?

Since 1981 and the birth of MTV, filmmakers have been complaining, arguing, and embracing the effect of MTV on cutting. This week I’ll look at the pros and cons. Feel free to chime in!

Modern Editing

In “The Lost Art of Editing,” a 2006 article in The Boston Globe, writer Jessica Winter refers to the “dizzying pinball effect of hyper speed editing”, calling today’s editing “jittery” and a “chaotic, rat-tat-tat style of assembly.”

Winter reaches out to Steve Hamilton, editor of commercials, promos, and independent filmmaker Hal Hartley’s films. Hamilton explains, “There is much more pressure on an editor to try to do something noticeable, or perhaps there are more editors who’ve grown up thinking that they have to make edits that are noticeable, whereas before the goal was simply to tell the best possible story and to do so relatively invisibly. I think this mentality is leading to a mistrust of the shot.”

Or is it a mistrust of the material and the editor to bring forth the story from the material -- to sculpt the perfect the piece from its hunk of marble -- the footage?

Yesterday…All my long cuts seem so far away

“…recent American cinema has seemed so rushed and frazzled, desperate as it is to hold its ground in the losing battle between the haughty silver screen, that decrepit diva who insists on your silent attention, and the accommodating computer screen, the loyal manservant whose command is your every wish.”

Jessica Winter, from “The Lost Art of Editing“

What are the traditional values of Hollywood Style editing? Here are the main ones:

• Invisible editing: Viewer is unaware of cuts -- seeing whole show.
• Long shot durations, except for action scenes.
• Typically have linear structure and 1-2 plotlines.
• Music enhances the story. Songs sung on stage and usually backdrop to plot, not driver of plot. Producer tried to remove Somewhere over the Rainbow from Wizard of Oz.
• Continuity rules! Editors finesse footage to maintain continuity via match cuts (matching eyelines, action, angles, POVs etc.)
• Jump cuts eschewed.
• Spare use of visual effects that audience aware of: Time transition effects such as dissolves and fades most common.

Enjoy a fun, old style editing musical salute to Hollywood, made in 1980 by Forbidden Planet.

Stay tuned for Part 2, and positive reflections on the MTV effect.

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research, Humor, Sound and music editing, Television

Note: This post is a segue from the last post -- which explored cut durations, how they’ve gotten shorter since 1980, and how this timing fits our natural attention spans -- to the next post which will talk about the ramped up pace and other traits attributes of so called “modern cutting.”  Enjoy the segue!

While I prefer to focus on the positive, I know from being on the planet a few decades that a lot can be learned in life and postproduction from the not-so-hot -- the downright painful, and the tragic. So here’s a good example of bad editing.

Why is this bad editing?

The music and narration clip along but the long duration of the picture shots kill this travelogue on “Los Anguhless.” There should be more picture cuts to match the pace of the narration. Since the sound fights lagging pictures, the piece is deadly dull.  Who would want to come to LA?

No excuse #1: OK, so maybe they didn’t have enough footage to cover the narration. Get creative! Blow up shots, slow them down or speed them up, flip them, flop them, pixellate them, and alter the rhythm so that when they repeat their not so borrring.

No excuse # 2: Perhaps this was the style of the time. See #1. And gee, aren’t we glad we’re editing today because we could soup this thing up with effects and the manipulations suggested in #1 and make the available footage dance!!

No excuse #3: I would make a strong case for an additional shoot. What were they thinking not showing the oil derricks, the ocean, and the beach communities?

admin Editing practices, History/research