These tips are gathered from experience and study, but as anything in life, are up for debate. If you have any comments/suggestions leave them below or if you would like to write a guest post with an E.T. you have, email me at: jeremywanek@gmail.com.

If you want future editing tips sent to you by email, subscribe to my blog!

 

Editing Tip 001: The script is not written in stone

When you’re working on a narrative feature the script is very important — it’s a vital roadmap that keeps you on track and gives you a clear direction to go in. However, following it to a “T” will probably not create the best movie. Words on a script do not come across the same as visuals on a screen.

I began editing my first feature film, “Into the Void, ” (Which will hopefully be released later this year) by simply starting with scene 001 and following along with the script. By the time I had all the scenes put together, the movie was 160 minutes long. The script was only about 90 pages, and even though it was dense in some areas, I didn’t expect a movie of this length. The Director yelled out (on Facebook), “We have an epic!”

Realizing that there was still a lot of fluff in the cut, I began making my second cut by going through and cutting the “fat” — removing unnecessary pauses, finding better takes, eliminating lines of dialogue, etc… After many sets of revisions, the movie was down to 120 minutes. I felt pretty good about it at the time, but it still felt “off”.

Now I realize that it was awful. There were too many subplots, the scenes and sequences weren’t meshing together, there was a ton of unnecessary dialogue or that did too much “telling”, and most importantly, there were scenes that didn’t add any real value to the story.

I followed the script though — how could I have drifted so far off course?

It’s kind of like a movie that is adapted from a novel. If you were to include everything from the novel in the movie, the movie would be crazy long and include way too many different story elements that are not essential. They are totally different mediums. I think it’s a great starting place to begin editing the movie based on the script. After that initial cut though, there is still a serious amount of work to do that can take the story above and beyond the script.

Here is a list of some of those things:

• Remove scenes (Just because they work in the script, or were at least expected to, doesn’t mean they will work in the movie)
• Re-arrange scenes, and sequences of scenes, to get the most emotional impact
• Cut dialogue (Dialogue can sometimes get too wordy or might not sound like something the character would say or be feeling at a given moment)
• New scenes or dialogue may need to be added to fill gaps in story
• Your movie shouldn’t be 160 minutes unless it truly is an epic… 90 minutes is a good target for most movies I think.

I’m happy to report that “Into the Void” is now at 90 minutes and is extremely close to a final cut. This was accomplished by using the tips above and many more that I will continue to share every week.

Editing Tip 002: Match cuts may cut out continuity errors, but they may also kill all the emotion.

I think, especially when Editors are first learning the craft, there is a tendency to focus on continuity and matched action. It’s not that you shouldn’t put focus on matched action, but it’s down the list a ways from what really tells a great story.

Walter Murch’s Rule of Six:

1. Emotion

2. Story

3. Rhythm

4. Eye-trace

5. Two-dimensional plane of screen

6. Three-dimensional space of action

These 6 things are what makes a cut work. While you should try to accomplish all of the 6 criteria on each cut, it’s definitely not always possible. If you can’t do all of them, start sacrificing from the bottom of the list. You should never cut the emotion out of the scene to make the actions match better. If the continuity is off in a cut but the emotion is right, most people won’t notice a thing because they will be engaged by the impact of the story. IMDb lists loads of continuity errors in nearly every movie.  The fact is, every movie has them. If they didn’t the story would be confusing. Without cutting at the proper time for emotional impact the audience may not understand the scenes subtext.

“I never cut for matches, I cut for impact.”

— Sam O’Steen

Further Reading: In the Blink of an Eye (Murch’s Rule of 6), The Eye is Quicker (Ch. 3).

Editing Tip 003: Raising Questions and Delaying Answers

Raising questions that are not immediately answered is a great way to keep your audience engaged in your story.

When I was finalizing the cut on my latest feature (“Into the Void” – happy to announce the cut is now locked!), there was a scene that ended with the Heroin asking if his captor would return him. The scene was originally shot with a response from the captor where he tells the Heroin exactly what’s on his mind. He didn’t give a simple “yes” or “no” response, it was a little ambiguous, but I thought the ending of the scene could be strengthened. I decided to cut out the captor’s response altogether and just have him stare back at the Heroin. This makes the audience ask, “Well, is he going to return him?” It made the scene a lot more powerful!

These tips are gathered from experience and study, but as anything in life, are up for debate. If you have any comments/suggestions leave them below or if you would like to write a guest post with an E.T. you have, email me at: jeremywanek@gmail.com.

If you want future editing tips sent to you by email, subscribe to my blog!