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.

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Today’s post concludes my exploration of the world of 3D, answers which 3D movie I liked and why – Alice in Wonderland or The Secret of Kells, and dares to predict the future of 3D.

What editors say about 3D

Cutting 3D is a boon to editors because they get to participate more in the creating of the whole picture – its look, characters, their lines and the story – over a longer period, beginning with storyboarding in pre-production.

JC Bond, Additional Editor on Alice in Wonderland: “… you get used to the fact that you’re looking at something in stereo. And then you just cut it like a regular movie. There’s no major difference beyond that. There are minor considerations. You can do some cheats in 2D where you may cross the line, and things like that that are a bit more jarring in stereo. But from a creative standpoint, you should try to avoid those things - even in regular 2D.”

Joyce Arrastia, Monsters vs. Aliens: “For me, it’s been a revelation.  We were able to use it to emphasize key story points and a character’s emotional arc simply by adding it or lessening it.  A lot of filmmakers maybe don’t realize that 3D really is just another tool that helps you tell a more compelling story–just like the choice you make in camera composition, or using color or music or pacing to help set a tone and a style.”

Conclusion

I’ve believe that 3D, like HD is here to stay. Unlike HD, 3D is not for every movie, due to cost. But it is not a gimmick employed to make a creature leap off the screen and terrorize you. And I predict that it will be used in TV when costs are more reasonable, perhaps just for special event show or boosting up old wonders.

3D is another aid to storytelling that can further immerse you in a show and make it more of a felt experience. If the story’s good, well done 3D will enhance it. If the story’s NG, no amount of 3D or HD will help – it just gets a plain old D.

Alice in Wonderland had no magical moments for me except for her fall down into “Underland.”  Even the valiant efforts of all the actors couldn’t make me recommend the movie. Save your money and spend it on…The Secret of Kells.

“I have seen suffering in the darkness, yet I have seen beauty thrive in the most fragile of places.”

Opening line, Brendan, junior monk and main character in The Secret of Kells.

The Secret of Kells grabbed me from the first vibrant frame to the last. Its rapturous images are gorgeous in color, framing, movement and design. The rather ordinary, non-proselytizing story kept me going so that I could enjoy being in the medieval world. The movie was like being in a medieval painting crossed with a sylvan fairy tale.

In the words of director Tomm Moore, “…the medieval world is really flat with false perspective and lots of color like medieval art. That was the majority of the movie. And then for the dream sequences, we went even flatter and simpler. We tried to do something like Monty Python. And then when there was danger, we’d go into 3D like the Viking attack.”

I look forward to being transported by image and story to more imaginary worlds in future 3D shows. Bring ‘em on! 

To learn more about 3D and view the sources of these two posts, go to these links:
http://community.avid.com/blogs/buzz/archive/2010/03/05/alice-in-wonderland-s-jc-bond-answers-questions-from-the-industry-about-what-it-was-like-to-edit-tim-burton-s-3d-spin-on-the-classic-tale.aspx

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/Editing-for-3D-on-Alice-in-Wonderland

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/04/the_riffs_interview_secret_of.html

https://www.editorsguild.com/FromTheGuild.cfm?FromTheGuildid=56

https://www.editorsguild.com/Magazine.cfm?ArticleID=712

admin Editing practices, Joy goes to the movies, Technical and process, Visual FX editing

Like everyone else, I’ve viewed more 3D movies in the past few months than I’ve seen in years. Afterwards I’ve wondered two things:

1)    Is 3D a money-making fad or here to stay?

2)    How exactly is 3D edited?

One of the interesting things about being an editor is that there are so many types of projects that no one can understand them all. Animation editors don’t understand exactly what commercial editors do who don’t understand the world of documentary editing who know little about comedy editing and so on. So this blog allows me to see things and explore the editing behind them. And today I’m looking at 3D.

2D to 3D: Alice in Wonderland and The Secret of Kells

With the unbound success of Avatar in 3D, there’s been a huge clamor to boost 2D movies up to 3D. Both Alice in Wonderland and The Secret of Kells were upped to 3D, with different degrees of success. The looks of both features are drawn – literally in the case of Kells whose images are mostly hand drawn – from the periods they depict, Victorian England and 800CE Ireland respectively.

One film I loved, the other, not so much.

I had high expectations of Alice because I’d read the book, enjoyed the Disney animated version as a kid, loved the Jefferson Airplane song as a teenager (had the white light white rabbit poster) and looked forward to re-visiting it all with Tim Burton. Conversely, I was wary of Kells, due to not being a Christian, but propelled by a strong review and by having seen the actual book in Dublin. So which one did I like? Well, let’s look at how these movies are edited and then I’ll get back to you.

Editing 3D

Here’s what I’ve gleaned:

1)    3D takes longer to edit due to:

a.    Large amount of footage.

b.    VFX (Visual effects) such as green screen and computer-generated backgrounds.

c.    Technology: Usually you’re cutting in 2D and then viewing in 3D.

d.    Multiple versions: 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D.

2)    3D is costly but will come down as processes and technology evolve.

3)    Master shots are cut longer than usual so viewers can take in the action and world being created. Camera movement must be well-defined because fast paced, blurry camera moves are too much for viewers to take in.

4)    Collaboration and organization are key because there are many editors:  picture, VFX, sound, assistant editors, etc.

Here’s an editor’s eye view of 3D on Avid:

Photo credit: Editors Guild Magazine

The editor can view a stereo frame (left) or select “Over/Under” mode to see a horizontal split frame that splits each eye view.

Next post will conclude my stereo series on 3D.

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Every year IDA (International Documentary Association),  puts on DocuDays in LA, screening all nominees for documentary features and shorts. IDA times this event to the weekend of the Oscars so that all the filmmakers and their amazing subjects are in town. It’s worth a visit to LA! This year I saw two features and two shorts and was enthralled by all of them. Each is powerful in its own way and highly recommended.

Shorts

Rabbit à la Berlin, made by a band of Polish filmmakers, gives a rabbit’s eye view of the Berlin wall. The analogies between humans and hares are left for the audience to make in this grounded, pensive doc. The movie’s schnitt (German for editor) was on the panel following the film and its editing was a major subject of the discussion.  Turns out there was very little archival footage so shots of rabbit from many different countries were gathered and stitched together (with a lot of color correction) I’m sure. The producer quipped, “It was an international cast of rabbits.”

The director remarked that it was necessary to gather a lot of rabbit close-ups and reactions to tell the tale. My conclusion:  This story, as so often occurs with a documentary, came together in editing. How else to consistently put across a bunny’s POV of the decades preceding and following the wall? To get a view of the doc, here’s the trailer:

The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
This movie is about the decline of the genial, always in control, well liked ex-governor of Washington and his drive to pass an initiative granting terminal patients the right to elect doctor-assisted death. It made me cry. It also made me believe in politicians once again and the ability of filmmakers on one side of an issue to fairly present both sides.
During the panel discussion the director stated that the “Film’s intent was to open up dialogue on end-of-life issues, not to be an advocacy film.” But seeing a powerful man fight his deterioration due to Parkinson’s disease with every brain cell and muscle, humanized the issue. When Gardner was wheeled on to the stage by his daughter after the movie, he received a standing ovation. Here’s a sampling from the beginning of the film:

Oscar winner for best documentary short: Music by Prudence

Features

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
This stellar doc reflects on the war in Vietnam and the downfall of President Nixon from the angle of the act of Daniel Ellsberg and his assistant Anthony Russo. The pair worked for Rand Corporation to support the war and then turned over 7000 pages of evidence to show that each successive administration disregarded the facts, lied to the American people, and escalated the war.

Afterwards, it was touching to see septuagenarian Ellsberg, who also got a standing ovation, and his wife -- a dove on the war from the start -- holding hands and intelligently and passionately laying out the facts about the wars we’re embroiled in today. Get an idea of the movie from the trailer:

The Cove

I had already seen stills of the gruesome, bloody footage of this film about the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan on Facebook. Still, I ducked my head to avoid watching at times, but did not duck its truths about mercury build-up in dolphins and other fish which gets passed on to humans and the intelligence of these creatures.

This film, like Rabbit à la Berlin, gave voice to creatures and clearly depended on VO and editing to make it work. In the post-screening panel the director talked about the challenges of making this film which included death threats, risking arrest, going without a salary for 18 months, and not knowing if there was a film in what they were shooting.

This movie is a “must see” because it proves that docs can be entertaining and change the world and all the effort and sacrifice are worth it. Get a glimpse of it below:

Food, Inc.

This high budget doc about how our food is produced by a handful of companies who mistreat animals and humans alike to put unhealthy foods in our supermarkets is also a game change changer and a “must see.” Again, IDA put the director and producer on stage as well as Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and an expert seen in the film. Here’s the trailer to get you started:

Oscar winner for best documentary feature: The Cove. Like Man on Wire, which won in 2009, The Cove can be seen as a caper film with much reconnaissance and stealthy nighttime set up leading to daytime coup.

admin Awards, Editing practices, Editor’s role, Joy goes to the movies

I was extremely pleased that The Hurt Locker won for both picture editing and sound editing and sound mixing too. This was a picture and sound editor’s movie if there ever was one and it previously won the A.C.E. Eddie award for best feature editing. Picture editing drove the rhythm of this story about an American bomb diffusion squad in Iraq and in a way, diffusion was the movie’s metaphor – trying to mitigate the harm the war’s causing. The editing provided the tension from the film’s first frame,  and brought the excellent script, acting, and footage together. It was also the first time a husband-wife team won. Hats off to Bob Murawski and Chris Innes.

Sound editing

I will never forget the night scene in The Hurt Locker when members of the squad go up a blind alley, guns at the ready, not knowing what they’ll find. We can’t see much of anything but their grunted words and the sound effects carry us through. Thank you sound team, led by Paul  N.J. Ottosson, editors and Paul  N.J. Ottosson and Paul Beckett, mixers. Today’s LA Times reported Ottoson’s words backstage, “The most important part was to put you as a viewer into being the fourth man on the team and always being with the guy we’re with. We really [thought] about every shot in the movie instead of making something flashy and cool.”

Last thoughts

All movies nominated had excellent editing but I am glad not only that Hurt Locker took the editing Oscars but also the best picture and best director awards. In accepting her Oscar (finally a woman!) I was hoping Kathryn Bigelow would mention other women directors: Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner, Barbara Streisand, etc. But I was pleased when she said, “I think the secret to directing is collaborating,” giving credit to all who toiled along with her.

admin Awards, Editor’s role, Joy goes to the movies, Sound and music editing

Last night I enjoyed being on an Oscar panel at the Writer’s Store (a terrific store with wonderful film folks) in LA with three other writers of film books: Chris Riley The Hollywood Standard – 2nd edition, Marcie Begleiter From Word to Image 2nd edition, and Michael Hauge Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds, and moderator-writer Chris Vogler The Writer’s Journey 3rd edition.

Marcie got the discussion off to a stimulating start by talking about reading the screenplay of The Hurt Locker. The scriptwriter describes the landscape as “brown on brown.” She counted the colors mentioned in the script: white and brown dominate and green is entirely missing. I had never thought much about the color palette of a movie and what is says about the character and now will be more aware.

During my introductory remarks I talked about how the editor is the last storyteller on a movie. Chris Riley followed this up by instructing screenwriters to put character, place, and plot on the page so that producers can visualize the film and that dialogue is less important in a script or movie, though it should be well-written.

Here are the discussions that most intrigued me:

Themes of this year’s Oscar nominees

I deciphered two themes and the panel agreed:
1) Cultural diversity whether on another planet as in Avatar and Up, in another country The Hurt Locker, in the U.S. Precious, The Blind Side, and Up in the Air or in the future, District 9.

2) The fettered 1960s and how people dealt with them: An Education, A Single Man, and A Serious Man.

Themes of the future

In the face of our stuttering at home with economic woes and reform attempts and abroad as a leader, I foresaw four types of movies:

1)    Certainty: Good, old American values about winning, overcoming adversity and kicking ass like in The Blind Side, and Precious.

2)    History: Reflecting on, taking comfort in, or re-writing history a la Inglourious Basterds.

3)    Fantasy/escape – there will always be thrillers and action movies.

4)    Exploratory: Probing our world like Up in the Air. I thought this movie took an incisive look at what our modern devices, air travel, and motivational speakers can produce. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has a cell phone yet isn’t connecting with anyone, is a fanatical frequent flyer who’s going nowhere fast, and asks “What’s in your backpack?” as he’s becoming increasingly lost in his own life. And a computer is threatening to take over his high flying job of laying people off for “rightsizing” corporations.

U.S. vs. European films

Chris Volger talked about how U.S. films demand an upbeat ending and eschew tragedies. European films, on the other hand, accept tragedy and often have ambiguous endings. Michael Hauge brought statistics on box office grosses and pointed out that this year’s cinematic crop trended toward a European or international style by not yielding to simple happy endings.

Rhythm and pacing trends in movies

Also, the question of rhythm and pacing in films came up. I’ll delve into this and talk about an interesting new article from APS (Association for Psychological Science) after concluding my series on comedy editing – unless something cuts in the meantime!

admin Awards, Editor’s role, Joy goes to the movies

As I wrote in last month, a long time friend of mine, Paul Frommer, created the Na’vi language for Avatar. I finally got to spend an evening with him – the first time I’ve seen him since the movie opened on planet earth. Five of us plied him with questions so here’s some more information:

Paul Frommer by Bryce Homick

There’s a website devoted to learning the language: http://www.learnnavi.org/

Oel ngati kameie (“I see you”)

Paul has been amazed and delighted by the response to Na’vi. People from around the world have signed a petition entreating him, Karyu Pawl (Father Paul) to teach them the language. The number is over 3500 and growing daily.

You can sign the petition and/or hear his response – spoken and written in Na’vi with English subtitles – at

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For the first time since 1943, there are 10 nominations for best picture. Everything else gets five nominations. Let Joy know your thoughts on the nominees and all things Oscar, especially the editing nominees.

I will be on an Oscar panel with other film authors, so if you’re in the LA area come on over! I’d love to see you. Here’s the official announcement:

The Writer’s Store Pre-Oscar Bash and Discussion with the Authors of Michael Wiese Productions
Date: Thursday, February 25th, 6-8PM
Location: Writer’s Store, 2040 Westwood Boulevard,  Los Angeles, CA 90025
Phone:  (310) 441-5151
RSVP: http://www.storylink.com/event/2009OscarPanel

Join Screenwriters, Directors, Editors, and Indie Filmmakers for a lively discussion about the picks and pans for 2009!
Hear from Industry Insiders about their favorite movies for 2009 and learn new skills about writing, screenwriting, editing, storyboarding and more.

Panelists

Moderated by Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer’s Journey 3rd edition

Marcie Begleiter, author of From Word to Image – 2nd edition

Gael Chandler, author of Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video and
Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and Movie Love Must Know

Michael Hauge, author of Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds

Christopher Riley, author of The Hollywood Standard – 2nd edition

admin Awards, Joy goes to the movies, Sound and music editing

Here’s the conclusion to my interview of my friend Paul Frommer, the creator of the movie’s fictional language, Na’vi, and a linguist and professor of Clinical Management Communication at USC’s Marshall School of Business.

I must say, although I am a skxawng (moron) about the language – that is the one word I came away from the movie remembering – I am glad I have a little more insight into Paul’s mind and the world of linguistics.

GC: Where does the word Na’vi come from? Did Cameron conceive it?

PF: Yes, it’s his word. I made sure, though, that the apostrophe meant something–that is wasn’t just there for decoration. It indicates a glottal stop–the sharp break you hear in, for example, “uh-oh.”

GC: Does the language have gender?

PF: Only rarely. There’s a general word for he or she, po. But if you need to specify he vs. she, then he is poan and she is poe. There are a few other such examples: itan, son; ite, daughter. As you see, the -an ending is masculine, the -e ending is feminine. But as I said, only a few words have that distinction.

GC: How does Na’vi relate to Klingon?

PF: Klingon is a rough-sounding language with a complex and difficult phonology and grammar that now has a devoted base of followers. To some ears, Klingon sounds like a cross between Russian and crawfish, but the Na’vi language is far more gentle on the ear. Cameron wanted something melodious and musical, something that would sound strange and alien but smooth and appealing.

GC: What was the process for transmitting the language to the actors?
PF: I met with all seven of the Na’vi-speaking actors off-set before their scenes were shot to help them with the pronunciation, and I also supplied recordings in the form of mp3 files so that they could listen to and absorb the dialog…

…it was quite a challenge. They had to learn their lines in a language no one had ever heard before, including learning to make unusual sounds and sound combinations, and then they had to act convincingly in that language! That involved not only memorizing the sentences but mastering the stress and intonation, so that they could place emphasis in the right place. It wasn’t easy, but they did a remarkable job.

When I couldn’t be there, however, the dialog coach, Carla Meyer, took over. She didn’t know the grammar of the language but did understand the pronunciation, which was the main thing.

GC: What things did you create in Na’vi: dialogue, song, video game, lexicon and ?

PF: Yes, all of those. I translated lyrics for four songs that JC had written in English–that was fun! Gave me a chance to try my hand at Na’vi poetry.

GC: How did ADR go?

PF: There was no ADR for the Na’vi.

GC: Is there a word for editor or editing that I could possibly use?

PF: No word for edit or editor, yet.

http://www.dblondin.com/092507.html

Follow this link to an extensive, well written and in-depth article about fictional languages and sound design.

admin Joy goes to the movies, Sound and music editing

I have been hearing about this movie since 2005 from longtime friend and creator of its fictional language, Na’vi, Paul Frommer, a linguist and professor of Clinical Management Communication at USC’s Marshall School of Business.

When I first heard the news I was thrilled for Paul – how many people get to create a language – and he was just as thrilled to get the job. Since the movie’s exploded everywhere, he’s been up to his non-blue ears in interviews but happily consented to answer my questions.

Paul Frommer and his Na’vi language
Photo: James Watson,www.pratleyproject.com

Here are Paul’s answers along with the astute insights of Ben Burtt, Sound Designer on many movies including all the Star Wars flicks.

GC: How did you go about creating the Na’vi language?
PF: I didn’t quite start from zero, since [director James] Cameron had devised 30 or 40 words of his own for the original script-some character names, place names, names of animals, etc. That gave me a bit of a sense of what kinds of sounds he had in mind.

“Overall, the creation of alien languages has been the hardest task. A language, or more accurately, the sensation of language, has to satisfy the audience’s most critical faculties.”
Sound Designer Ben Burtt in Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide: Beeps, Bleats, Boskas, and Other Common Intergalactic Verbiage

PF: The next step was to develop the phonetics and phonology-the sounds that would and would not appear in the language, along with the rules for combining sounds into syllables and words and the pronunciation rules that might in certain circumstances change one sound into another. The major constraint, of course, was that although Na’vi is an alien language, it has to be spoken by human actors, and so the sounds it included had to be ones that the actors would be able to reproduce.

“Our minds are trained to recognize and process dialogue. The task, therefore, of creating a language is all the more difficult because of the strength of the audience’s perception.”
Sound Designer Ben Burtt in Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide: Beeps, Bleats, Boskas, and Other Common Intergalactic Verbiage

PF: To create some interest, I included a group of sounds not often found in western languages-”ejectives,” which are popping-like sounds that I notated as kx, px, and tx. I also needed to determine what other elements in the language would be “distinctive”-that is, would be able to differentiate words: for example, stress (the eventual answer was yes), vowel length (no) and tone (no). I presented Cameron with three different “sound palettes” or possibilities for the overall sonic impression of the language-he chose one, and we were off!

“We are all experts at identifying the nuances of intonation. Whether we understand a given language or not, we certainly process the sound fully and attribute meaning–perhaps inaccurate–to the emotional and informational content of the speech.”

Sound Designer Ben Burtt in Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide: Beeps, Bleats, Boskas, and Other Common Intergalactic Verbiage

PF: The next step was to decide on the morphology and syntax. For those, I was on my own. Since this was an alien language spoken on another world, I wanted to include structures and processes that were relatively rare in human languages but that could be acquired by humans, since according to the plot of the movie, a number of humans had learned to speak the language. The verbal morphology, for example, is achieved exclusively through infixes, which are less common than prefixes and suffixes. And the nouns have a system of case marking, known as a tripartite system, that’s possible but quite rare in human languages.

Stay tuned for the next post which explores where the word Na’vi comes from, what the process was for training the actors, and how the language compares to Klingon.

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