Sam Kauffmann shares five quick film editing tips: when to cut, continuity, eye trace, screen direction and more, to make every cut add energy.
Everyone agrees that a cut brings energy to any film or video. By changing the angle of view, or cutting to a new location you are participating in the essences of filmmaking. Without editing, movies are no more than recorded plays. If you go to a theater to see a play, you buy your ticket, take your seat and everything happens from that one vantage point—your seat. No matter what the action—a marriage proposal, a drug overdose, or the death of a beloved prince—you see it from the same distance and angle.
But what if you could change seats? If you could move to any seat in the theater to better see what is going on? You might go to the front row to see the lovers kiss; you might move up to the balcony to see the sweep of a swordfight. But if the lead actor staggers and falls, you might race back to the front row to hear his dying words and see the expression on his face.
As the editor it’s your job to give the audience the best seat in the house. Whatever the action, you pick the shot that gives the audience the best vantage point to see and hear what’s going on. Establishing shot, long shot, medium shot, close-up, over-the shoulder shot, reaction shot, master shot—these all describe what the camera is seeing. Don’t worry about the names or following some half-baked rule about cutting from one to the other. Instead, look at the choices and decide where the audience would want to be in order to view that action. Once you’ve picked the best seat, then cut to the next shot as soon as you feel the audience wants to change to a better seat.
Most narrative films and dramatic television shows are shot using one camera. With all the lights, technicians and sound equipment on a set or location, a second camera is useless because it would film the crew and equipment. So, instead of shooting with multiple cameras, the camera is moved, the crew and equipment are placed out of frame, and the action is repeated. The problem with this method is there are often continuity problems. The actor holds the cup in his left hand in the long shot, but the cup is in his right hand in the medium shot. You want to cut from one shot to the other, but that cup is making it hard. Perhaps the problem isn’t as blatant as a cup in the wrong hand. More often it’s the position of an arm, or the position of someone’s head that changes on the cut. But, no matter what the problem, how do you, the editor, make this cut when it’s so blatantly awkward?
There are a couple of tricks. First, find a bit of movement and cut on it. Make the cut when the actor is sitting down or gesturing with her arm. Then you’ll be cutting on the action, rather than before or after the action. This will hide, or at least obscure, the continuity problem.
Eye-trace is another important concept. The bigger the screen, the more our eyes Figure 1 Screen L-R are attracted to different parts of that screen. Where do we look when we watch a film or a TV show?
- We look at the eyes and mouth of the person talking.
- We look at the part of the frame where there is movement and not where things remain still.
- We look at bright areas before dark ones.
Pay attention to where your eye goes as you watch a shot. Ask yourself, “What am I looking at when I cut to the next shot?” Examine your eye-trace. If your eye is on the far right of the frame, and when you cut, there’s not much there, your eyes search the frame to find something of interest. Your eyes move around the frame to find a face, or movement, or brightness. If your eyes have to search the frame after you cut, that’s not a smooth cut. So use this to your advantage. There are two approaches: 1. Whenever you want to make the action seem continuous and to hide any continuity mismatches, cut so that the viewer’s eyes move the least. To achieve this, place the cursor on the part of the frame where your eyes are fixed just before the cut, and see if you can cut to a shot that keeps the eyes on or near that same spot.
2. If you want to make a dramatic cut—one that grabs the audience—cut so that the viewer’s eyes move the most. Place the cursor on the spot where your eyes are fixed and then cut to a shot that forces the viewer’s eyes to jump to another area of the screen. Often good directors and their editors use screen direction to help tell a story. In Oliver Stone’s Oscar winning film, Platoon, edited by Claire Simpson, there is a climatic scene in which Willem Dafoe’s character is murdered by Tom Berenger’s character. This cold-blooded killing is wonderfully telegraphed by the screen direction of the two characters. Dafoe is running from the left of the screen to the right (Left-to-Right) to battle Viet Cong soldiers, and for a while Berenger moves from screen Left-to-Right, as if he too is going to battle the enemy. But, suddenly he turns and begins moving from the right of the screen to the left (Right-to-Left), towards Dafoe, setting up the final confrontation.
Unfortunately, most directors and editors get hopelessly lost when dealing with screen direction, and the result is a lot of confusion for the audience.
Look at Figure 1, so we get a better understanding of screen direction. Kate is on the left-hand side of the frame looking to the right. Another way to say that is she’s looking from screen left to screen right is Left-to-Right or L-R. And in Figure 2, Tim is looking screen Right-to-Left, or R-L.
Make sure you understand what I mean when I say someone is looking L-R, like Kate, and R-L, like Tim.
Figure 2 Screen R-L Figure 5 Michele L-R Figure 6 Peter R-L Now the way Kate and Tim are looking makes sense. They are talking to each other and thus facing each other. The screen direction is correct. But often, when new editors cut shots taken from various angles, they end up making it look as though one of the characters has turned around and is looking at the same direction as the person they are talking to. Examine Figures 3 and 4. Kate is looking L-R and so is Tim. This is wrong and confuses the audience.
I realize this is an easy one. Everyone can see it’s wrong, so let’s examine a different scene that has more choices and examine what happens.
In Figure 5 and 6, we have Michele, looking Left-to-Right (L-R), talking to Peter, who is looking Right-to-Left (R-L). This is correct. They are looking at each other as they speak. But now, let’s see what happens.
Michele has to leave the room, so she turns to exit toward screen right as we see in Figure 7. Now, when we cut to Peter, watching her leave, we have a screen direction problem. We are cutting from Michele, looking from Left-to-Right, to Peter, who is also looking Left-to-Right. It’s more subtle than the previous examples but confusing just the same. Believe me, it looks even worse on screen.
This sort of cut is also called crossing-the-line or breaking the 180-degree rule. But that’s the language of camera operators and directors. For editors, it’s called a problem, and our job is to fix it.
Figure 7 Both Michele and Peter are looking Left-to-Right (L-R). Figure 3 Screen L-R Figure 4 Screen L-R Don’t cut Michele here. Whichever editing software you’re using, get into Trim Mode and jump the trim rollers onto Michele’s side and extend her so she walks further to the right, cutting her just before she crosses in front of Peter—you are adding frames to Michele. Now place the rollers on Peter’s side, and trim frames, cutting her from this angle until she is just about to walk in front of Peter. We’ll now start this shot just as she crosses in front of him. The screen direction problem is much less noticeable.
Pacing is crucial to effective editing; yet it is perhaps the hardest skill to write about or to teach. But here goes. Let’s start with a conversation between two people. The content of their conversation, together with the actor’s delivery, determines the pacing. A talk between friends or an amiable exchange between people, where each person is listening to the other, would be slower paced and involve more pauses. Instead of cutting as soon as one person stops, you might want to let the dialog breathe by putting in a pause before one of them talks; we can see them thinking or reacting, rather than delivering lines. An argument, where two people aren’t listening to each other, would be faster paced. You would have more cuts with few if any pauses between lines. At times one person might cut in before the other person finishes.
Reaction shots and L-cuts are important components of any conversation. You don’t want to always stay on Kate until she finishes her lines, and then cut to Tim, while he says all his lines—always on camera. It’s often better to start that way, so the audience learns who is talking and gets a handle on their voices. Once the audience “gets it,” you can depart from the talking head and spice things up with reaction shots.
If Tim says something hurtful, or ironic, or funny, we want to see how Kate responds. True, the length of the cutaway depends in part on the reaction, but you’d tend to want the reaction to be a bit longer during a normal conversation than during an argument or fight. Use the length and frequency of reaction shots to speed up or slow down the pace.
Keep it Short
This is the most important tip of all. Too often filmmakers crafting their first projects think that longer is better. Yet festival judges, film curators and busy agents greatly prefer short and tight. Fight to get your projects as short as possible. Be ruthless in cutting away non-essential material. Be willing to cut out every shot that doesn’t carry its weight. Sam Kauffmann has directed documentaries, narrative films, television commercials, and has many credits as a cinematographer as well. He is a book author, and teaches film production and digital editing at Boston University. His latest film, Massacre at Murambi, recently screened at the Big Muddy Film Festival. The film is five minutes and ten seconds long. www.samkauffmann.com
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