What do you do when someone buttonholes you with “My son wants to get into editing. Can you help? How hard can editing be?” This new, short animated video, So You’re An Editor, describes what editors do and provides some ammunition.  Consisting of static, talking heads done in nauseating Necco wafer pastels, it involves a union TV editor but applies to all editors.

Warning: Video includes a short rant on the virtues of Avid, guaranteed to po Final Cut Pro users.

admin Editing and life, Editor’s role, Humor, Television

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

Ah yes, the pita (pain in the ass) factor can be high when you work with green screen shots.

admin Humor, 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

By a reader’s request, I am launching a series of posts on comedy editing starting next week. To begin, here is a trio of comic videos on editing that both teach and entertain. And the editing? Well, you be the judge.

1)    Reader Jeff Underwood of Mission Media in San Diego crosses an exercise video with a rundown of FCP best practices.

2)    A valley girl/editor/dreamgirl tells you how to de-saturate and re-saturate the color on your FCO video and makes you want to see her video.

3)    This is a terrific, contemporary take on as the frustrated editor Albert Brooks played in Modern Romance. (See Joy post on December 15.) It proves that editing -- like any profession -- is not joyful when you have a non-appreciative boob for a boss.

admin Editor’s role, Humor, Sound and music editing, Technical and process

This couple clearly has an epic love affair with movies and some sharp editing skills. I couldn’t resist their funny ode to filmmaking genres. Happy Valentine’s Day!

admin Humor

My interview didn’t make it into Sunday’s broadcast. As a result, they gave me my own show at

After Wednesday, the podcast will be archived and available on the Blog Radio site or its main site:

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

Two weeks ago Jamey DuVall, producer and co-host of Blog Talk Radio,
interviewed me on a host of editing topics: the editor and the director, the editor and the producer, the editor’s contributions to films, editing trends, the role of digital editing, my two books and more.

Today the podcast will broadcast at 3 p.m. PST. It will be available through Wednesday here:

After Wednesday, the podcast will be archived and available on the Blog Radio site or its main site:

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

In Creationists, his 2006 essay collection, novelist Doctorow distinguishes between “… writers who make their language visible, who draw attention to it in the act of writing and don’t let us forget it… from those magicians of the real who write to make their language invisible, like lit stage scrims that pass us through to the scene behind, so that we see the life they are rendering as if no language is producing it.”

He could be writing about filmmaking.

Some filmmakers simply tell a tale and use editing, camera and sound to portray it as artfully as possible. The editing remains mostly invisible in their hands as we become absorbed in story, place and characters. Directors Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, and James Cameron fit this description.  Other directors -- Quentin Tarantino, Jean Luc Godard (and others in the 1950s French New Wave) Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Mel Brooks, and Brian De Palma jump to mind -- make us aware that they’re filming and comment on the conventions of editing and filmmaking.

Examples

Sergei Eisenstein, the revered founding father of editing and filmmaking, shot and edited the famous Odessa steps scene in The Battleship Potemkin, 1925.

In The Untouchables, 1987, De Palma pays homage to the famous scene.

With the help of OJ Simpson and George Kennedy, Leslie Nielson spoofs it the opening grab ‘em scene of Naked Gun 33 1/3 (starts at 24″).

As you go about your holiday viewing, check out which movies comment on the art of filmmaking and notice how editing figures in this.

admin Editing practices, History/research, Humor

I’ve blogged about sound effects a few times but haven’t written about Foley. Created by a Foley artist (a.k.a. Foley walker or Foley dancer) on a Foley stage during post production, Foley is sound effects recorded in sync with specific actions on the screen the picture runs on the screen.

For an extensive article on the history of Foley and the state-of-the-art today, read this piece from the Editors Guild Magazine.

Do you have any Foley fables? Feel free to send your experiences and tips to Joy.

Hollywood of Yore, Foley men of Lore

Foley was invented by Jack Foley, a Universal Studios employee, in the 1930s. It was an exclusively male profession for years; Hollywood lore has that men in heels foleyed Marilyn Monroe and other femme fatales.

Foley effects are edited into the picture by the Foley editor, a member of the sound effects team. Here’s a funny bit about Foley from A Modern Romance, (1981), where Albert Brooks play an editor caught between his dim-witted director and the old salts on the sound mixing team.

admin History/research, Humor, Sound and music editing