ARTISTIC CONSIDERATIONS
Every modern discussion of artistic aspects of editing should begin with Sergei Eisenstein. Read his book: "Film Form, Film Sense," if you want to edit movies, you won't be sorry. Eisenstein didn't leave much to the imagination when it came to analyzing and systematizing film editing. His best efforts, however, were in working with the silent film, although he did deal with musical accompaniment. His work on sound pictures was aborted when he got carried away on the film he was directing for Upton Sinclair, an American production (Eisenstein was brought over to work in Hollywood.) The latter was producing his first picture unfortunately. When Eisenstein's shooting ratio went over 20:1, Sinclair panicked and pulled the plug. He was badly advised.
Eisenstein's reputation as a Soviet film maker didn't help either. His films were highly regarded by the communist government. His career was over after that. However, he did leave us the rudiments of what constitutes the art of editing.
Very briefly, in cutting from shot to shot you should consider the juxtaposition of the shots, relating them together as words in a sentence. A very crude example would be, just to pull one out of the air, if a shot of a man's uplifted face is followed by a shot of an eagle soaring in the sky, you may create a sort of fusion of the two expressions: "The man's soaring like an eagle." I told you it's crude.
The progression of the "line" (shape of the dark and light parts of the frame) through the movie may suggest a certain direction or feeling. If the line is always leading up and up, then there is a feeling of continued elation or progress in the theme of the story. The lines could be diagonal, flat, wavy or whatever.
The rhythm of the light to darkness as the movie progresses may suggest a certain poetic structure. Here again Eisenstein was thorough in relating specific instances in his movies that illustrated this principle, as he did with every element of "montage" his choice of word for "editing."
I'll leave you to explore some of these ideas about editing by studying the many books by Eisenstein and some about his movies by others.
The artistic considerations of editing, however, should be taken seriously by every film maker who wishes to rediscover the art of film making.
There's no doubt in my mind that the stampede to exploit movies for profit only after the use of sound came in, has seriously hampered the work of the serious film maker. There is however a glimmer of hope now that video and computers have come into the picture. The profiteers are out on a wild goose chase, what with the introduction of CD-ROMs and videodisks, in addition to the continued proliferation of the video-cassette and the VCR market.
It's very conceivable that the serious film maker will now have a respite from all the flakes that muddy the waters of film production everywhere.
The editing aspect of artistic film making has received the best chance for rejuvenation as a result of the chaos created by the electronic media "revolution."
It's like the world of film has been blown away by a "benign" nuclear explosion that has left nature and man safe in a pristine environment. And, as luck would have it, it seems that movies are still around and nobody knows how to work with the old moviola! So now you can go back to basics of editing, master them and come out with some real movies that carry substantive ideas and tell wonderful stories -- the way movies used to be, plus some!
Parallel cutting is one of the best techniques of film editing. D. W. Griffith was inventor and master of this type of story construction.
It was overused subsequently, as most great concepts are, by the makers of early silent westerns. They used to inject the typical line, "Meanwhile at the ranch," when cutting away from the horse chase. With Griffith the transitions were grand and artistic. He cut from one major theme of history to another. He'd do one sequence on ancient Babylon and relate it to another sequence from modern times, juxtaposing major themes or philosophies. What happened to that style of cutting? Who's doing it today? Is our intellectual culture so diminished now that we can't appreciate such movies?
Then ask yourself this, who at the major studios is going to do it? Do you actually know someone, did you ever hear anyone on a TV show mention a word about truly profound artistic efforts in cinema?
Perhaps no one dares to do films like that anymore because they'd be laughed at by David Letterman. And yet you have to risk that, because Letterman follows the trend of what audiences enjoy to watch. If there's no serious entertainment they prefer to laugh at everything, because the perception is that everything is laughable now. Even some of the recent "Mafia" movies are made tongue-in-cheek. That fascination with Marlon Brando in THE GODFATHER is now played for laughs. In fact Brando did a spoof of it in THE FRESHMAN himself.
Editing is an arena for new film makers. It holds the keys for artistic growth based on an understanding of the nature of film as art. Every shot of a movie is like a sentence, every frame a word and the infinite information inside the frame are the letters.
Get an old upright moviola when you finish shooting your movie and learn how to edit like an old pro. Don't listen to the bullshit about electronic mumbo jumbo!
Learn how to eyeball every frame of your movie. It's precious knowledge that's lost when you bury your images on magnetic tape or plastic discs. You don't really know what you've got, until someone displays it for you on a TV screen. You like to be at someone's mercy? All you need are your hands and eyes to look at your movie. Why put yourself at the mercy of impersonal technology?
Splice and re-splice your film as much as you want and view it on the moviola. Study every aspect of it, without worrying about how many minutes your chewing up at the video editing bay.
Every movie should be edited differently. Your techniques will be similar and constantly improving, but your film's subject matter and characteristics will be different, so you have to find a way of cutting every film in a special way. That's the fun and the creative nature of editing.
Editing movies involves a more varied and eclectic grammar than editing literature. That's why film editing is the most important aspect of film making, since it's through the editing process that a movie is finally created. It's not like giving birth to a baby that's already been formed over a period of nine months. It's more like taking vegetables and grain and cooking something wonderful that nobody else can ever do the way you can. Anybody can use the same cooking ingredients, but you've got to know how to cook.