More Q&A!

(Rough cut currently clocking at 33:19. Just finished scenes "Z" and "AA". About 35% done.)

Q: Josh, I like that blog post where you talked about how to organize files and prepare for editing, because nothing excites me like learning about the nuts and bolts of film editing. You should do another post about how to make a rough cut!

A: ...That's not a question.
But I'll do what you say anyways, because I like those educational posts too. This is easily the biggest thing I've ever edited, and my first time using Final Cut, so I'm learning all this as I go.

So I've got all this footage. I have video files, and each file is one take. Because of the camera I used, each video file is tied to an audio file that has that video's ambient-mic captured sound. I also have audio files with the lapel-captured dialogue, but those won't make it into the rough cut. Right now, I just want to see what shots I want to use, and in what order.

Lets say that I want to start my film with a 20-second clip of my main character, Alexis, waking up and geting out of bed. (Very original). I have these options: A001MA1 (Master shot, take 1), A002MA2 (Master shot, take 2), and A003CLAL1 (Close up on Alexis, take 1). I watch all three. I decide the close-up is too short to be my first shot, and the first master doesn't feel that natural. (Later, Chelsea will tell me that she's "terrible at acting like she's asleep", which frankly seems like the easiest acting in the world. Certainly easier than acting like you're dead, even. She must have her reasons.) Anyways, Master Two is a brilliant waking-up performance from Chelsea. So I mark an In-Point (usually right after I clap for Action), and an Out-Point (she gets out of bed), and drag the marked clip into the Timeline (a big gray number-line that starts at 0.) The clip turns into a big rectangle on the Timeline, starting at 0:00 and ending at 0:20, telling me where and how long the shot is.

What shot is next? A005-A007 are all, lets say, shots of Alexis getting out of bed, then slipping on a pair of sandals. (What an exciting movie!) I like A007 best, so I drag that on the Timeline starting at 0:20 and ending at 0:30.

But wait a second. Now, the movie is: Alexis wakes up, Alexis gets out of bed, Alexis gets out of bed from a different angle, Alexis puts on sandals. Whoops. I have to choose the In and Out points carefully on each take, to make sure the story is one uninterrupted flow. How do I do that? I have four tools that sound like a Bar Mitzvah DJ is yelling at me on the dance floor: Roll, Ripple, Slip and Slide.

ROLL: The bit between two shots on the Timeline is called an "edit point", To roll, I click on the edit point, and drag it left or right to make one take end earlier and the other start earlier, or vice versa. Like, if I have two shots of the same scene, but one is wide and another is close, and I want to start wide and end close, rolling helps me decide when I'm going to switch from one shot to the other.

RIPPLE: Like one sided rolling, this just lets me start or end one clip earlier or later. I can ripple my editing point and make my second clip start later, to get rid of the redundant getting-up bit.

Now it's time for clip 3. I have a two minute take of Alexis brushing her teeth, but i don't want to use the whole thing. I'm not Romanian, I'm not going to punish the audience with unnecessary long shots of nothing happening. So I pick 1:15-1:20 and make it clip 3 in the timeline. But if I later decide a different brushing-teeth moment was more exciting, I can...

SLIP: I know I want "brushing teeth" to be 0:30-0:35 of the movie. So I grab the clip, and slip it left or right, keeping the start and end points on the timeline the same, but changing what part of the take I'm using.

Finally, if I'm making a morning montage of Alexis brushing her teeth, gargling, brushing her hair and putting in contacts (Why am I not making this movie, this is gold!), I might think to myself "I want gargling to start at 1:20 instead of 1:10, but I still want it to be between teeth brushing and hair brushing". So I can

SLIDE the gargling clip back and forth, and the space before and after will automatically fill in with bits of the takes already before and after it in the timeline.

This is all more complicated than it sounds; once you know the tools, it's really intuitive. So it's just: OK, what action or line of dialogue comes next? Look at all the takes, pick one, drop it in the timeline, and roll, ripple, slip and slide until it flows naturally from the previous clip. Then go to the next action.

Over and over.

Until you've covered the whole story somewhere around 90:00.

It's a long process, but also fun. Because this is storytelling too. Pace and timing in storytelling is everything, and this is how you control it. You move in and out points by half-seconds until every joke is perfect, and every pause sounds natural. And then later, on the second pass, you put in music and SFX, you color-correct, then you do it all again. But most of the work is on the first pass.

Next time on the blog: less wonky, more funny, hopefully.

Listening to: From Here We Go Sublime, The Field (Also a triumph of editing, BTW. This used to be a Lionel Richie song.)

From Here We Go Sublime - The ...

A Night Of HCR and FCP

It's a historic night! Health Care Reform is about to pass, probably, which is amazing; this is the biggest thing Congress has done in my lifetime. I might tune in to CSPAN to see the final vote, but mostly I'm celebrating by editing.

I am 20 minutes into the rough cut, which means I'm a little past Act I in screenplay-speak, and I can get an idea of the basic shape and flow of the movie. What's weird is I feel like I'm watching Nick and Chelsea perform for the first time here. When I was in the room with them, directing them, I could only sense what they were doing, where they were emotionally, and try to push them one way or another. But on camera, I'm seeing some awesome, subtle, funny, powerful bits of acting which I didn't register the first time around.

I got more coverage on some scenes than others, and you can really tell in the editing process, because editing with lots of options is so much easier. Some scenes I'm fudging with camera trickery a little bit to keep the flow going. That's been my Prime Directive while editing; don't let anything jar the viewer out of the movie. Keep him/her focused and in the magic circle. Some scenes I'll have to get another shot or two. But I'm happy with my shot composition and thrilled by the acting, so I know I've got the raw material for a great movie here.

I'm getting a sense of my editing style, too. Not a lot of fades, a lot of master shots, judicious use of music. I'm taking a cue from the Coen Brothers, too, in choosing what acting takes to use. The philosophy: picking the most interesting, attention grabbing moments creates the most interesting screen performance, and can complement a naturalistic story as easily as overwhelm it. Better than picking the flattest moments in an attempt at verisimilitude and getting some mumblecore BS.

A year ago, I could only watch other movies and wonder what a movie I made would look like, what my style would be. Now I know. Pretty cool.

Projected deadline for a finished rough cut; April 30. After that, reshoots, dubbing, rights and polish.

Listening To: Liquid Liquid, Optimo. (Cowbell.)

Optimo - Liquid Liquid

It begins...

Audio files have been chopped and labeled. MP4s have been converted to HDVs. Files have been loaded into Final Cut. Here's what it looks like.

Now, it gets fun. I'm putting my rough cut together from scene A to scene SSS in order. I'm a strong believer in intuition in storytelling, and I think going straight through the footage from beginning to end will help me get the flow of the story intuitively as I edit. I would have shot the movie in order to if I had the resources, for the same reason. Instead, I have to spend a lot of time between scenes on set reminding the actors what day it's supposed to be and what just happened in story time. Sometimes I'll forget, and I wrote the damn thing. Pretty embarrassing.
All I've edited so far are the opening credits, and I'm even excited about that. They aren't even flashy credits or anything, I just think it's a cool walk-in to the world of the movie.
Hell, why undersell it? Guys, you are going to LOVE these credits! In fact, I'll make a stand right now; opening credits of the YEAR! You will be BLOWN AWAY!
Next up; editing the first scene with people in it.

Listening to: Sleater-Kinney, One Beat (The greatest all-girl band OF ALL TIME! Jeez, I'm done with the caps abuse, I promise.)

One Beat - Sleater-Kinney

Saturday Night's All Right (For Editing)

I'm still stuck on the boring part of editing. I've pledged to myself that I will move on to the good part by March 15, so I'm working through my Saturday night. WOOH, PARTY! And now I'm blogging so I can take a break. Christ audio prep is tedious. But listening to the tape and some of the between scenes chatter is fun. (I can hear what actors say about me when I leave the room, heehee.) And I'm over the halfway hump, and getting a big chunk done this weekend. I'm only taking a break to edit a video for my radio job in which I pretend to get a blow job from a snake. And the Oscarcast.

I watched the Hurt Locker recently, and was pretty un-blown away. Partly because every Iraq War movie I see from now on will have to live up to the impossible standard of Generation Kill, and HL doesn't. Partly there's not much of a narrative and so no real stakes, just free floating anxiety. Partly all the thematic, "war is hell" stuff between the action setpieces was really shaky. Partly the dialogue and bullshitting between the soldiers was sadly flat (once again, GK rules here.) It's not a terrible film, and it's very well crafted, but I don't get the Oscar hype, and I'm especially sad to see such a small film potentially beat out something as sweeping as Avatar. (Or as thought-provoking as A Serious Man, my favorite film of last year. Goddamn the Coen brothers, I could keep making movies until I'm 80 and never be as good as they are.)

My open Logic window is staring at me, telling me to get back to work. Until next time.

Listening to: One Hundred Years, The Cure. (An old coworker of mine claimed The Smiths rock and The Cure sucks, and he's %100 wrong.)

One Hundred Years (Remastered ...