314 The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 4E

The biggest issue with multi-cam editing is keeping the right audio in your cut. Traditionally, the best audio is linked to the “A camera.” (The “A camera” is the primary camera, the next camera is the “B camera,” and so on.) If your audio is organized this way, you can often simply use the A camera shot for audio, and it will sound great. However, some producers do not follow this convention. You may have to spend a lot of time listening to the various tracks on all the different cameras until you find the audio you need.

Fine Cutting

Now that you have a decent rough cut, it’s time to take a harsher look at it. Is it working? Does the story work? Does the dialogue make sense? Does it flow naturally? Does it convey the desired mood? Fine cutting is when you will try to make the story and presentation work.

Usually, at this point, there’s an important editing cliché to remember: the cutting room floor. If your film isn’t working, you might need to cut it down. Maybe it’s that montage sequence that you love, but comes out of nowhere and destroys the natural build of a love story between the main characters. Or maybe it’s part of a secondary storyline that just doesn’t fit anymore. Whether it’s a scene, a shot, or just a line or two of dialogue, cutting out the things that don’t work can do wonders for your film.

Woody Allen routinely makes drastic changes between his rough cuts and his fine cuts, often rewriting and reshooting half of the movie! This is true for films including Interiors, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, September, and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Such massive reworking is often necessitated because Allen relies on very long master shots. If one line of a five-minute scene is wrong, no amount of editing can save it. In the case of September, several actors were no longer available, and were replaced (Sam Shepherd with Sam Waterston and Maureen O’Sullivan with Elaine Stritch).

After Allen saw the rough cut of Crimes and Misdemeanors, he threw out a third of the original story, rewrote it from scratch, and started reshooting. In the process, Mia Farrow’s character changed from a geriatric social worker to a television producer; the documentary that Woody Allen’s character was shooting changed from a film about retired vaudeville performers to a film about Allen’s TV-producing brother-in-law; and a character played by Sean Young was cut completely.

Although not everyone has the luxury to reshoot as thoroughly as Woody Allen, it’s important to recognize that even a director as skilled and experienced as he still has to feel his way through a project and make massive changes to reach his goal.

Editing for Style

The editing of feature films today has been strongly influenced by music videos, documentaries, and commercials. Fast cutting, visual effects, and jump cuts are the hallmark of “cool.” Movies that fit this model include Trainspotting, The Matrix, and Run Lola Run. However, there’s also a counter-trend in independent cinema that involves a no-frills style and lots of long shots where the action plays out with very little manipulation, such as the French documentary film Trop Tot, Trop Tard (Too Early, Too Late), or recent movies by Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep; Late August, Early September). Also popular is the handheld look borrowed from cinema verité and reality television, as seen in Rachel Getting Married. The choice is up to you, but a strong style can save an otherwise weak film.

Duration

Although it might sound trivial, one of the biggest jobs in editing is arriving at the proper duration for the project. Some projects have built-in durations: commercials are usually 10, 30, or 60 seconds long, and network TV shows are about 21 minutes or 42 minutes long. Trailers vary from short commercial spots to several minutes long. (Don’t make the mistake of boring viewers with a trailer that tells the entire story.) Press kits usually include the fulllength trailer(s) from the film, the 30or 60-second teaser trailer(s), possibly a longer scene or featurette, and some selected takes, such as I.D. shots for each key cast member.

If your project doesn’t fit neatly into a predetermined slot, it might be more challenging to arrive at the right duration. If you’re editing a short film, keep in mind that it’s rare for festivals to accept shorts that are longer than 10 minutes. The average length of the old Warner Brothers cartoons was six minutes, and most people seem to expect a short film to be about that length. If yours is a feature film, it will have to be at least 80 minutes long to qualify in most festivals. It used to be that a typical feature film was 90 minutes long, but lately, “serious” films tend to be at least 120 minutes and can often be as long as 180 minutes.

Remember, your story should dictate the duration of your film, not an arbitrary number that is the trend of the day.

The Big Picture

Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky aptly described filmmaking as “sculpting in time,” and the longer your film, the more complex the “sculpture.” As you try to get a final cut, here are some things to look at in terms of the structure of your film as a whole.

nRhythm and pacing: If you start with a high-energy action scene and try to keep up that level of energy until the end, you’ll probably fail. Action seems more intense when it follows a period of calm, and calmness seems more profound when it follows intense action or emotion. Good rhythm and pacing allow intensity to build over time, creating suspense and engaging the audience in the story.

nSetups and payoffs: Earlier, we talked about the concepts of setups and pay-offs within a scene or sequence of scenes. However, in a long film, there are also many setups that occur in the early part of the film and don’t pay off until much later on. Make sure all the setups that play out over time are paid off later on.

nEmotion: Emotion is built into the script and the actors’ performances, but editing plays a role as well. If scenes aren’t allowed to develop or build, the emotion—whether happy, funny, angry, sad, and so forth—will fall flat. When you look at the film as a whole, make sure all the emotional beats that you intended are there.

nCompressing and expanding time: How long is the period of time covered in your story—a day, two weeks, five years? Does the structure of the film seem appropriate for the film’s length? Would it benefit from rearranging the order and playing with the timeframe?

Last, but not least, you need to lock picture. Locking picture means that you have finished editing for story and will not make any further changes to the content of the film. You might still have some outstanding effects shots that need to be dropped in, but you won’t be making any changes that affect the duration. Once picture is locked, it’s time to take a more serious look at editing the sound.