The Editor's Role in Film Making

Abstract

Film editing is the process of selecting shots, arranging and modifying them in order to clarify and refine their form and content. It is concerned with the construction of a sequence of images and sounds of flowing continuity carried out by selecting the particular shot, trimming or expanding it to a certain length, and determining the order in which the shots will appear and the kind of transition between them. Often called cutting, film editing may be described as the art of composing with scissors. When his work is complete, the editor has cut down his material to between a quarter and a tenth of its original length. The editorial process is an integral and important part of film production, and should be anticipated in writing the script or scenario. Editing is a stage-by-stage affair. In the course of a film's production, it begins as soon as the scenes have been recorded on film, the film has been processed in the laboratory, and the editor's copy of the camera original has been received. This work material (dailies, rushes or footage) consists of several takes, or repeat shots from the same camera position of each scene (the ones known to be unsatisfactory having, for the sake of economy, been eliminated at the laboratory stage and not printed). The first stage of editing is the examining and cataloguing of picture and sound track footage. Dialogue and narration, recorded on separate strips of magnetic tape, are prepared by the picture editor. (Music and effects tracks are usually dealt with by sound editors.) The best takes are selected and joined in the order called for by the script to make a rough assembly. Subsequent refinements, in conjunction with the tracks, lead to a rough cut, then to a fine cut of the finished workprint, which shows the final continuity of the scenes, and the type of transition between scenes in terms of optical effects (fades, dissolves, wipes, etc.). The manual operations of editing call for a high degree of precision so that the finished workprint and the several sound tracks are in perfect synchronization, that is, that corresponding sound and picture occur at exactly the same moment. There are various synchronous relations of track and picture, e.g., the simultaneous relation of speech sounds to lip movements, called lip-sync, or between an offscreen sound and a player's reaction to it. Tracks and pacture are said to be in sync when the desired relation has been established. Film editing is a strange mixture of technique and art. It lacks the satisfying directness of fine arts and literary creation. Refractorily, it yields its rewards only