(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.)
