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First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors

University of California Press

Many people cannot define what film editors are or do. This is understandable, for editors have never been celebrities. When editing awards are distributed, very few outside the inner circle of editors remember who won. Even very distinguished editors are seldom mentioned in a film's publicity campaign; they remain in the shadow of the "big names" involved in its production. Reviewers and the informed public often associate editing with flashy scenes—screeching car chases, fierce battles, demon-possessed furniture flying around the room. Obviously, a lot is happening in these scenes, and someone had to put all the little film pieces together. Some people, though, still think such scenes, like everything else in a movie, were "shot that way."

The film industry and audiences in some ways have become incredibly sophisticated in the last three or four decades. Simplistic views of editing, however, have not changed much. Only practitioners of the craft, and those in the industry, audience, and classroom who understand the full filmmaking process, have begun to appreciate the complex nature of editing. Editing involves not merely a theoretical consideration of the effect of one shot upon another, or a linear rendition of a script, or a mechanical measurement of frames. It is all that and much more—rhythm, instinct, emotion, psychology, art—and it draws from the total talent of one person, the editor, who collaborates with the director to create a cumulative sensory event.

For starters, editors organize minutiae, intensify subtleties, heighten emotions, and blend countless elements of image and sound to create a film. Unlike film directors, however, editors are not accustomed to explaining their work to an inquisitive outsider. They often respond to requests for interviews with hesitation, a momentary loss for words, surprise that someone is even asking who they are and what they do. But once involved in an interview, like other creative people behind the screen,

editors become articulate expounders of their complex art. The twenty-three editors in this book spoke of their profession with ease, animation, and (fittingly) attention to detail. They drew examples from their films and experiences to illustrate major points about what editing is and does. A number of common threads were soon apparent, and the process of editing—often considered mysterious, intuitive, magical, invisible—became defined and comprehensible. For any student of filmmaking, whether as practitioner or analyst, these interviews will throw light on the most critical process of the art.

The image of the editor as a solitary figure in a dark cutting room is a decades-old legacy. Only recently has the importance of the editor begun to be acknowledged by the industry and the public. One major recognition, for example, has been the prominent display of the editor's name in media advertisements, although the name's position or even inclusion in the list is not always consistent. According to recent studies of early film history, the first "editors" were, in fact, projectionists who were asked to splice a couple of single-shot pieces of film together to make up a longer program. Not surprisingly, the physical splicing skill required of editors led to their early reputation as mere mechanics.

The person of the editor may not have been publicly esteemed during the first three or four decades of film, but the process of editing gained professional importance once the concept of narrative structure arose. From the "primitive" one- and two-reelers of Georges Méliès and Edwin S. Porter, to the greatly refined features of D. W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, and Buster Keaton, editing became the means to manipulate time and point of view through intercutting, and to intensify emotions through inserts and optical devices. No longer were films presented as stage-like shots simply tacked on to each other. The silent cinema was a showcase for the image , and the pictures (plus, of course, a variable number of title cards) flowed as a result of how shots interacted with those preceding and following. Lighting, cinematography, scripting (including titling), acting, and direction were executed with the editing process in mind, for in the cutting room the film would come together. Shots were composed specifically for the sake of editorial continuity.

In the silent 1920s, the critical analyses of V. I. Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein elevated editing into a theory and an art form. Juxtaposition was the key principle; "montage" became synonymous with editing throughout Europe, though Hollywood reserved the term for quick-cut, dissolve-laden special sequences. Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and October , Abel Gance's Napoleon , and the silent German expressionist films, among many others, not only demonstrated the breathtaking ef-

fect of a rapid-fire accumulation of shots (what has evolved into "flash" cutting—a staple of car chases, shoot-outs, television commercials, and MTV). These films also presented simple juxtapositions of emotive images to evoke mood, create subtext and complex abstractions, and pose significant connections where none seemed to exist. Editing, particularly as discussed by Eisenstein, became an intellectual stimulation, the embellishment of a simple narrative with visual richness. Throughout the 1920s, as motion pictures evolved from flickering visions to elaborate narratives, it became clear that the power to enhance every potential of the visual ultimately lay in editing.

Once sound entered film at the end of the 1920s, filmmakers were obligated to combine a greater number of elements in the editing process: dialogue, music, and sound effects. They were more likely to follow the script, a structure that did not always exist or was not rigidly adhered to in silent films. Editing became locked into preserving the flow of dialogue as recorded during production. Only after the novelty of sound had worn off could the use of words, music, and sound effects to enhance the visual become the enterprise of the editor. Overlapping dialogue, manipulating volume, using subliminal sounds and silence, and cutting action-reaction shots to dialogue were among the new considerations faced in the editing process.

The burgeoning studio system swelled with specialists and departments for each facet of moviemaking in Hollywood's Golden Age, and editing was no exception. In the major studio machine, editors were subdivided into A and B editors (for A and B feature films), with assistants, apprentices, and separate departments for sound, music, and montage sequences. With a prolific production rate (for example, MGM made fifty-two pictures a year), projects were assigned to whichever editors and directors were available on a rotation basis. The studios run by the producers (Thalberg, Mayer, Cohn, Warner, Zanuck, Fox et al.) provided their employees (big-name or otherwise) with job security. Editors, for instance, would receive steady paychecks whether or not they worked continuously, as long as they were on payroll. Certain directors and editors were able to work together on successive projects and thus developed a kind of "buddy system" in which the film would be cut by someone who understood the director's vision.

A few editors also exerted great influence on...