Cutting away

A public utility message about letting an edit arrive in its own time. As related to the beat film fenomenon as she is evolving.

Generally, unless there is some pre-imposed (and therefore unsatisfactory) structure to work from/against, the editing process tends to go something like this.
Was I there? Do I have any pre-conceived notions of what the filmmakers were trying to do? Can I and should I be swayed by their original pre-film intentions? Or those emotive moments from the shoot that might in fact look crappy on film, but call you to include them (don’t listen).
It’s hard but I think each stage of filming must owe no loyalty to the previous phases. The script above all is not sacrosanct, and you inevitably end up filming other things than the script. That’s the whole point. Or we wouldn’t go to the movies, we’d read screenplays.
Or is it quote my film unquote, in which case, what was I after? Did I get it? What else did I get? And what now?
What we should be doing is letting go of anything from an earlier stage which didn’t work, or didn’t come off. I am even tempted to say, we should not allow ourselves to shoot anything we ‘forgot’ or simply did not film for whatever reason. (the dog ate the spare battery)
Whichever case, you find yourself with a couple of DV tapes in your hands. Now what?
Log them, which means WATCH THEM. No great attention need be paid, but I do think you need to actually watch and listen to the footage, open mindedly. This means that as the video goes onto the computer, the images go into your brain. This takes up a lot of disc space, be warned.
Next, I watch again, maybe the next day, and pull out the bits in order, whichever I remember and whichever appeal. These go onto a provisional timeline.
Then, I juggle them around, cut some together, see links between other sections and mentally file a few images as ‘musts’.
At about this point, weird things begin to happen. First, I get all despairing as nothing hangs together, nothing flows and the only obvious correspondences seem to be reminiscent of dull BBC documentaries where every level goes in the same direction. Story rears its dim head again. What does this mean? Who are these people? Where are the beginning, middle and end?
These are not serious questions.
Always, this plateau of despair comes right before the film begins to gel. And it is a plateau. It can last for weeks or even months. The film is boring. It disgusts me. I invent other, more exciting things to do.

Eventually, I try something. Might be what I call a ‘trick’ (i.e. something which always works, like tweaking the colour response, or adding a nice slow motion shot, putting in a title or adding a guide track piece of music) or it might be an epiphany from usually another piece of work, or music… put it in. Reorder some sequences. Remove a big narrative chunk, and suddenly, somewhere (it is sudden, it happens and you see it all at once) a couple of sequences fit. The rest don’t of course, but you’re not depressed about them anymore. Maybe shift that last but overwhelmingly ‘final’ sequence of shots to the start? Or reverse a cause and effect sequence. Or remove the cause altogether.
There’s an exhilaration in cutting away, in trimming (oh, look I’ve got a 33 second masterpiece!). Then, you give the whole film a close pass, taking out frames here and there, maybe flopping a shot to keep the eye engaged. Removing one or two shots – even a favourite. (kill your darlings)
Now there’s something to look at. I call this stage the rough cut. Before any magic intervenes, you’re just mechanically sifting, thinking things through with the eyes. Which is why I always seem to imagine an extra stage to filmmaking than most textbooks use. Film – edit 1 (watch & select, then eliminate) – edit 2 (order and build) – show

In reality the two edit phases can run many times in a loop. Build, destroy, re-build, re-destroy, etc.
It’s a happy time locked up with the stale coffee and pop-tarts.
But it never fails to amaze me that this magic does occur, and unless it occurs, you don’t have a film.

So, right now I’m not even at the rough cut stage on Peter’s ‘Herzog’ film, so it’s maybe an interesting perspective to see how it evolves emotionally? Let’s see, from time to time over the next weeks.