My publisher, MWP (Michael Wiese Productions), is launching an online school with 12 online classes beginning September 6^th.

Goals of school

• To help people become better filmmakers.
• To empower storytellers and filmmakers to
  inspire millions and evolve a better world.

Classes
My fellow MWP authors and I will be teaching everything from writing to pitching your script, from pre-production to post-production, from funding to marketing and distribution.

Click here to view the MWP Film School website. There you will meet each of the teachers and learn about the class they’re presenting.

Right now MWP is offering a $10 discount on all classes.

My editing class
I will be presenting “Inglourious Editors: State of Editors and Editing Today.”
The 2.5 hour course will look at the editor’s role in movies, reality shows, docs, and comedies, today. There will be a special focus on editing practices comparing traditional, Hollywood-style editing and modern, MTV-style editing.

Class attendees will receive a free handout charting the difference between the styles, based on a new section from my upcoming book; the second edition of Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video, due out in 2012.

Date: Thursday, October 13, 2011.

Time: 6:00 – 8:30 p.m. PST.

Course: Inglourious Editors: State of Editors and Editing Today.

Click here to learn more about the class.

admin Announcements, Editing & screenwriting, Editing practices, Editor’s role

As I’ve mentioned, I am updating my first book, Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video for a 2012 – exact pub date, TBD by Michael Wiese Productions, my publisher. Presently, I am in the thick of the two chapters on sound and music editing. In them, I discuss the details of designing, editing, and mixing sound and music.

I also look at how sound and music affect the story on any type of show, a subject I warm up to endlessly. I love hearing sound and music editors and composers philosophize about what they do. So I came up with the chart below, which translates story to its sound and music equivalents. What do you think? I always like to hear from you with your insights and ideas.

Translating story to sound and music

admin Editing & screenwriting, Sound & music editing

MovieMaker magazine, professes to be “The World’s Best-Selling Independent Movie Magazine.” So when the editor solicited me for an article for their Fall edition in exchange for ad space about my latest book (Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and Movie Lover Must Know), I accepted her proposition. I wrote and titled this extensive piece weeks before the untimely death of Sally Menke (see September 28 post), so it serves as a further tribute to her as the editor of Inglourious Basterds and all of Tarantino’s films.

Here’s a pdf of the article.

If you want to read a hard copy of the article, the new issue will be on newsstands this week.

Special offer

If you’d like to subscribe to MovieMaker, its editor, Jennifer Woods, has offered a special rate of $8.95 for one year for www.joyoffilmediting readers.
To subscribe, click on: https://www.moviemaker.com/subscribe/joy

Excerpt of article

Here’s the beginning of the article:

Inglourious Editors: A View into the Cutting Room

Whatever part(s) you play on a film – writer, director, actor, cinematographer, hair stylist, etc. – your work winds up in the cutting room in the hands of the editor. Since the editor takes your work – the raw material = the footage – and makes it into the product the audience will see, it’s important to know how editors think and why they make the choices they do. This article will unlock the door to the cutting room and look at a few of the ways that editors approach the footage.

What an editor sees

Editing, which it is often compared to sculpting, involves deciding what to put in and what to leave out in creating the piece. “Left on the cutting room floor” is a well known cutting cliché. How does an editor judge which shots and frames to omit and which to put in?

Immersed by a myriad of shots on a digital monitor, an editor addresses a lot of elements simultaneously: lighting, continuity, story, pace, emotion, shot angle, shot type, sound, and more. A huge factor driving the “in or out” decision is a question that’s never far from the editor’s consciousness: How much does the audience need to know? Viewers are savvy; they can get what’s going on in a second or two. Here are a few types of cuts that illustrate how quickly an audience takes in information: (see full article for more).

admin Editing & screenwriting, Editing practices, Editor’s role

The Script Journal invited me to blog on their site. The requester prefaced the post with a personal note since her father was an editor. So here’s the latest iteration of my article on writing for editing:  http://www.scriptshark.com/script-journal?detail/C17/how-to-keep-editing-in-mind-when-writing

And here’s a link to the journal:http://scriptshark.com/cms/newsletters/october-1-october-31

Enjoy!

admin Editing & screenwriting, Editor’s role

Sally Menke, famed for editing all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, died yesterday on a hike near the Hollywood sign, apparently due to the record breaking heat. Touchingly, the search team that discovered her body found that her dog stayed with her. As a hiker prone to heat exhaustion and ignoring it myself, I am paying heed to the nature of her death and hope you will too. And I wish to pay tribute to her.

I have quoted Menke before and by way of saluting her accomplishments, have gathered a few quotes and videos that honor her.

Quotes

“…I do feel there’s an internal rhythm in every person which is reflected in your work. Somehow a painting looks like its painter. There’s an innate response to footage that I feel is very much mine. Sometimes it’s not at all what Quentin or another director wants, so I change it. I approach the footage in a detailed way, looking at mannerisms as much as I listen to the dialogue- what their body is saying.”

“I don’t do match cuts really. That’s a ridiculous thing to say - I do. But we always explore how we can propel a scene, and that’s including dialogue, without doing match cuts. Because the audience is really willing to accept a lot of discontinuity.”

“I’ve learnt so much from every film and every director - a new perspective, a greater appreciation of the art.”

“We [Tarantino and I] muse over everything for a long time. Nothing is simply connected for the sake of connecting.”

All quotes and photo from “Cutting For Quentin, An Interview with Sally Menke” by Garrett Gilchrist.

Video tributes

In The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing the unequalled doc on Hollywood editing, Tarantino and Menke talk about their collaboration. Start watching at six minutes in. Tarantino really lets loose.

I can’t think of too many directors that have gone as far out of their way to appreciate their female editor than Quentin Tarantino. This has got to be a huge loss for him. Here he talks about how they write the film together during editing.

How many editors get recognized on set, let alone beyond anywhere else? Here’s a light hearted tribute to her from the director, cast and crew of Inglourious Basterds, her last Tarantino movie.

So long Sally and condolences to your family, friends, and film community.

admin Editing & life, Editing & screenwriting, Editing practices, Editor’s role

I reread a couple of books from my childhood in the past few months. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, 1961, illustrated by cartoonist Jules Feiffer is a sly, humorous book for both children and adults that’s rife with wordplay, number play, and artfully disguised life lessons.

It’s the quintessential road trip /life journey fable: Milo, the depressed 10-year-old main character, hooks up with a literal watch dog and they meet a lot of earnestly quirky, delightfully named characters and have various experiences in a welter of different lands.

For always remember, that while it is wrong to use too few, [words] it often far worse to use too many. Faintly Macabre, page 68.

In Dictionopolis Milo encounters Faintly Macabre, a Which, in a dungeon. She relates her history: For years she was in charge of choosing which words to use on which occasions. She became exasperated at people’s carelessness with words and grew stingier and more restrictive about which words, if any could be used. Eventually, no one could say anything and she received a life sentence (my word play – a hat tip to Juster). As a result, the Which explains to Milo,”…today people use as many as words as they can and think themselves very wise for doing so.”

It’s easy to apply the Which’s words to screenwriting: Avoid using too much dialogue when a look will do – film is a visual art and audiences grasp meaning swiftly from a short glance or glimpse.

It’s also easy to apply the Which’s words to editing: Too many unmotivated cuts  - cuts put in for the sake of cutting – make a scene “cutty” and worse, they sap the life and meaning from the scene. MTV falls into this trap all too often – visuals are cut in to cover the music and the song’s impact diminishes with every subsequent phrase.

FIVE REASONS NOT TO CUT

It’s much more important to learn what not to cut. That’s the hardest thing for any young editor starting out; it was for me.

Tom Rolf, A.C.E., Taxi Driver, The Executioner’s Song, New York, New York, and Jacob’s Ladder among many others

1) You think you should

Never cut arbitrarily. Remember: motivation, motivation, motivation. So what affect does an unmotivated, unwarranted cut have? It bogs the show down, particularly if there are a lot of unnecessary shots edited in. This can put the show off kilter and distract, annoy, or possibly lose the audience.

2) You think you shouldn’t — the shot’s sooooo beautiful!

Don’t stick with a shot due to its stunning scenery or camera work. When the locale has been established, the moment made, the information conveyed, it’s time to move on.

Yours truly worked on a TV show where the plot centered on a teenage boy learning to drive. The opening shot of the show, a master shot, included a long pan of a junkyard from which I cut out at an appropriate place. The director, for his cut, insisted I stay on the shot until it panned past an upturned wheel. To him this symbolized the whole show: the kid and his first set of wheels. Nice concept but I got it from the director, not the footage. The producers didn’t get it either. The wheel went out and we all explained why to the director.

3) The shot took the crew a whole day on their bellies to get. It’s expensive. It took months of negotiating and planning. It must go in.

No way. This is what you’re paid for: to be detached from the location shoot or a spectacular performance and to tell the story in the most polished, well paced fashion possible. You don’t want to drag the audience down with shots that say, show, or do nothing for the story or subject. In Film Editing Nuts and Bolt, editor-author Film Guy puts it bluntly; “Basically the audience could care less what you had to through to bring off a scene.” The effect of cutting in unneeded footage drains the vitality from your film and the patience of your audience.

4) The director printed the shot, it must be used

Nothing doing. Again, if the shot slows the story down or doesn’t add crucial information that could be gained more smoothly and engagingly, leave it out. However if the director asked to see the shot cut in, unless you two have a long-standing relationship, you probably should cut it in. It’s often better to try and make a cut work and let the director see that it doesn’t, than to merely say it doesn’t work. Yes, a picture, even a miscut, unnecessary one, can be worth a thousand words. And your job.

5) You’re the editor. You’re supposed to make cuts

You don’t get paid by the cut. You get paid to shape the material into the most moving, breathtaking show possible. If a scene plays in the master, leave it. Too many edits can be the sign of a novice editor and look cutty. “If in doubt, leave it out” should be your mantra.

So when and why should you make a cut? I’ll talk about the five reasons to make a cut in my next post.

admin Editing & screenwriting, Editing practices, Editor’s role

The Story Department, a Sydney, Australia based website founded by OZZYWOOD Films producer and Story Analyst Karel Segers, requested my article on screenwriting for editing. They improved my article with a few astute edits and illustrations. Here’s the lead paragraph:

The humbling truth is that the film is made in the editing room.

David Mamet introducing the nominations for editing during the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony.

The screenwriter is the first step in the film making process and the editor, the last. How do you write a script that’ll produce an edit-ready film?

Editors are often called the last re-writers of the show. Another way to put this is that the editor is the architect of the show. Our blueprint is the script (or outline on a nonfiction show). Our building materials are the footage: long shots, wide shots, medium shots, close ups, over-the shoulders, inserts, raking shots, reverses, master shots, and two-shots. From these we design the show with sound, dialogue, music, and the placement and duration of the shots. Just as a bridge transports travelers from bank to bank with good design and construction, so good editing conveys viewers from the beginning of the show to the end by giving them what they need to see, hear, and experience along the way to get there.

To read the complete article, go to: http://thestorydepartment.com.au/screenwriting-for-editing/

admin Editing & screenwriting, Editor’s role

The Writers Store e-Zine just published my article, “Writing for Editing”. To read the full article go to the November issue and page down to the second article.

Here’s an excerpt:

Editor’s role

The buck stops with the editor.

Dede Allen, A.C.E. Edited Dog Day Afternoon, The Breakfast Club, Reds, Henry & June and many others.

Editors are often called the last re-writers of the show. Another way to put this is that the editor is the architect of the show. Our blueprint is the script (or outline on a nonfiction show). Our building materials are the footage: long shots, wide shots, medium shots, close ups, over-the shoulders, inserts, raking shots, reverses, master shots, and two-shots. From these we design the show with sound, dialogue, music, and the placement and duration of the shots. Just as a bridge transports travelers from bank to bank with good design and construction, so good editing conveys viewers from the beginning of the show to the end by giving them what they need to see, hear, and experience along the way to get there.

Truism

There’s the picture that’s written, the picture that’s shot and the picture’s that’s edited.

So why not write for editing?

How do I do this, you ask. Here are a few suggestions:

Write visually

Editors write not in words but with images and sound. So mentally run your script in your head. This will also help sell your script and guide the director in shooting it.

Make sure your story is strong and clear

I remember working on an MOW where the lead editor and I took the project but found the story murky as written. The producer and well-known director loved the script and the story and were awed by all the research that the writer had done on the subject. During shooting, they realized the story wasn’t making sense or paying off. They called the writer, asking for some re-writes. The writer was affronted. The calls became increasingly unproductive and antagonistic. During post, the writer loved the show as shot and edited but it made no sense to anyone else. Some VO was added, there were extra screenings, and editing ran two weeks over but the movie was not saved. And the writer substituted a familiar roman a clef for their actual name in the credits.

To read more, go to the November issue of the Writer’s Store E-Zine.

admin Editing & screenwriting