The Technique of Film and Video Editing

History, Theory, and Practice

Ken Dancyger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351810449
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This updated sixth edition of The Technique of Film and Video Editing provides a detailed, precise look at the artistic and aesthetic principles and practices of editing for both picture and sound. Ken Dancyger puts into context the storytelling choices an editor will have to make against a background of theory, history, and practice across a range of genres, including action, comedy, drama, documentary and experimental forms, featuring analysis of dozens of classic and contemporary films.

This new sixth edition includes new chapters on the influence of other media on the editing form, on the importance of surprise in editing, on the contributions of Robert Altman to the art of editing and on the experimental documentary. This edition also includes expanded coverage in technology, creative sound, point of view, and the long take. New case studies explore Whiplash (2014), Room (2015), Lincoln (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Beaches of Agnès (2008), American Sniper (2014), Son of Saul (2015), The Revenant (2015), and many more.

Introduction to the Sixth Edition

The sixth edition represents the largest number of new chapters and supplements to existing chapters to date. I also welcome the return of four chapters on sound which had previously been exiled from the fourth edition to online only. The return is valuable, given the innovative use of sound in the work of directors such as Lenny Abrahamson and Damien Chazelle. I’ve expanded the earlier chapter on technological innovations with a section on cell-phone cinema. According to Steven Soderbergh who shot his most recent film using a cell phone, this technology will be the future of filmmaking. I’ve also added sections on the long take and point of view to the chapter “The Appropriation of Style: Limitation and Innovation.” The startling use of long takes and point of view in László Nemes’ Son of Saul, set in 1944 Auschwitz, brings a powerful visual to the nightmare of its main character.

New chapters include a chapter on the experimental documentary. This is long overdue as filmmakers such as Agnès Varda and Lynn Sachs expand the range and intention of the documentary.

A new chapter on the influence of other arts such as painting, the play, and the photograph illustrates a directional shift from the popular arts that influenced film in its earliest period. Films such as Jobs and Incendies, the first based on a biography, the second upon a play, capture the crossover between these forms of storytelling. Both films are consequently quite different from the source material.

Another new chapter, following the model of the chapter on Alfred Hitchcock, takes up the work of a very different director—Robert Altman. If Hitchcock works primarily in a single genre, the thriller, Altman moves about. When he does work with established genres—the Western, the war film, the detective genre—he is transgressive in undermining their major motifs. His treatment verges on satiric. Not surprisingly, the satire is the genre he most readily embraces. Nashville, The Player, and Short Cuts are each satires on dimensions of American culture and society. Editing choices contribute mightily in supporting the satiric tone Altman creates in these films.

Finally, there is a chapter on editing for surprise. Surprise as an editing strategy is used to raise tension and consequently audience involvement either within a particular scene or in the narrative in a more general sense. Surprise is important across genres but is particularly important in the thriller, action-adventure, science fiction, and horror films. Who can forget the triumph of the Robot over the human scientist in Ex Machina? The sniper scene that opens American Sniper concludes after the flashback of the main character’s early life. The focus on his reluctance to execute shows the use of surprise here to reveal character.

Another example of surprise takes place at the ending of Todd Haynes’ Carol. Here the main character commits to her relationship with Carol after considerable personal hesitation as well as the social attitudes of her peer group, professional journalists, about homosexual love. Here the surprise is the main character’s strength to declare herself rather than succumb to the social mores of the fifties.

Other examples of the use of surprise in editing are the fate of Saul in Son of Saul, the police and gangster pursuit of the main character in the thriller Tell No One, and the fate of two siblings who lose their parents in the melodrama Daniel.

Introduction

It has been more than half a century since Karel Reisz, working with a British Film Academy committee, wrote The Technique of Film Editing. Much has happened in those 65 years. Television is pervasive in its presence and its influence, and cinema, no longer in decline because of television, is more influential than ever. The videocassette recorder (VCR) made movies, old and new, accessible, available, and ripe for rediscovery by another generation. The director is king, and film is more international than ever.

In 1953, Reisz could not foresee these changes, but he did demonstrate that the process of film editing is a seminal factor in the craft of filmmaking and in the evolution of film as an art form. If anything, the technological changes and creative high points of the past 65 years have only deepened that notion.

Reisz’s strategic decision to sidestep the theoretical debate on the role of editing in the art of film allowed him to explore creative achievements in different film genres. By doing so, he provided the professional and the student with a vital guide to the creative options that editing offers. One of the key reasons for the success of Reisz’s book is that it was written from the filmmaker’s point of view. In this sense, the book was conceptual rather than technical. Just as it validated a career choice for Reisz (within 10 years, he became an important director), the book affirmed the key creative role of the director, a view that would soon be articulated in France and 10 years later in North America. It is a widely held view today. The book, which was updated in 1968 by Gavin Millar (now also a director), remains as widely read today as it was when first published.

It was my goal to write a book that is, in spirit, related to the Reisz–Millar classic but that is also up to date with regard to films and film ideas. I also refer to the technical achievements in film, video, and sound that have expanded the character of modern films and film ideas. This update illustrates how the creative repertoire for filmmakers has broadened in the past 65 years.

Point of View

A book on film and video editing can be written from a number of points of view. The most literal point of view is, of course, that of the film editor, but even this option isn’t as straightforward as it appears. When the Shooting Stops . . ., by Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen, is perhaps the most comprehensive approach to the topic by a film editor. The book is part autobiography, part editing history, and part aesthetic statement. Other editing books by film editors are strictly technical; they discuss cutting-room procedure, the language of the cutting room, or the mechanics of offline editing.

With the growth of high-technology editing options, the variety of technical editing books will certainly grow as well.

This book is intended to be practical, in the sense that editing an action sequence requires an appreciation of which filmic elements are necessary to make that sequence effective. Also needed is a knowledge of the evolution of editing, so that the editor can make the most effective choices under the circumstances. This is the goal of the book: to be practical, to be concerned about aesthetic choices, but not to be overly absorbed with the mechanics of film editing. In this sense, the book is written from the same perspective as Reisz’s book—that of the film director. It is my hope, however, that the book will be useful to more than just directors. I have enormous admiration for editors; indeed, I agree with Ralph Rosenblum, who suggests that if editors had a different temperament and more confidence, they would be directors. I also agree with his implication that editing is one of the best possible types of training for future directors.

One final point: By adopting the director’s point of view, I imply, as Reisz did, that editing is central in the creative evolution of film. This perspective allows me to examine the history of the theory and the practice of film editing.

Terms

In books about editing, many terms take on a variety of meanings. Technique, art, and craft are the most obvious. I use these terms in the following sense.

Technique, or the technical aspect of editing, is the physical joining of two disparate pieces of film. When joined, those two pieces of film become a sequence that has a particular meaning.

The craft of film editing is the joining of two pieces of film together to yield a meaning that is not apparent from one or the other shot. The meaning that arises from the two shots might be a continuity of a walk (exit right for shot one and enter left for shot two), or the meaning might be an explanation or an exclamation. The viewer’s interpretation is clarified by the editor practicing her craft.

What about the art? I am indebted to Karel Reisz for his simple but elegant explanation. The art of editing occurs when the combination of two or more shots takes meaning to the next level—excitement, insight, shock, or the epiphany of discovery.

Technique, craft, and art are equally useful and appropriate terms whether they are applied to visual material on film or videotape, or are used to describe a visual or a sound edit or sequence. These terms are used by different writers to characterize editing. I have tried to be precise and to concentrate on the artistic evolution of editing. In the chapters on types of sequences—action, dialog, comedy, documentary—I am as concerned with the craft as with the art. Further, although the book concentrates on visual editing, the art of sound editing is highlighted as much as possible.

Because film was for its first 30 years primarily a silent medium, the editing innovations of D. W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, and V. I. Pudovkin were visual. When sound was added, it was a technical novelty rather than a creative addition. Not until the work of Basil Wright, Alberto Cavalcanti, Rouben Mamoulian, and Orson Welles did sound editing suggest its creative possibilities. However, the medium continued to be identified with its visual character—films were, after all, called “motion pictures.” In reality, though, each dimension and each technology added its own artistic contribution to the medium. That attitude and its implications are a basic assumption of this book.

The Role of Experimental and Documentary Films

Although the early innovations in film occurred in mainstream commercial movies, many innovations also took place in experimental and documentary films. The early work of Luis Buñuel, the middle period of Humphrey Jennings, the cinéma vérité work of Unit B of the National Film Board of Canada, and the free associations of Clement Perron and Arthur Lipsett (also at the National Film Board) contributed immeasurably to the art of editing.

These innovations in editing visuals and sound took place more freely in experimental and documentary filmmaking than in the commercial cinema. Experimental film, for example, was not produced under the scrutiny of commercial consideration. Documentary film, as long as it loosely fulfilled a didactic agenda, continued to be funded by governments and corporations.

Because profit played a less central role for the experimental and documentary films, creative innovation was the result. Those innovations were quickly recognized and absorbed by mainstream filmmaking. The experimental film and the documentary have played an important role in the story of the evolution of editing as an art; consequently, they have an important place in this book.

The Role of Technology

Film has always been the most technology-intensive of the popular arts. Recording an image and playing it back requires cameras, lights, projectors, and chemicals to develop the film. Sound recording has always relied on technology. So, too, has editing. Editors needed tape, a splicer, and eventually a motorized process to view what they had spliced together. Moviolas, Steenbecks, and sophisticated sound consoles have replaced the more basic equipment, and editroids, when they become more cost effective, may replace Steenbecks. The list of technological changes is long and, with the high technology of television and video, it is growing rapidly. Today, motion pictures are often recorded on film but edited on video. This gives the editor more sophisticated choices.

Whether technological choice makes for a better film or television show is easily answered. The career of Stanley Kubrick, from Paths of Glory (1957) to Full Metal Jacket (1987), is telling. Kubrick always took advantage of the existing technology but, beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), he began to challenge convention and to make technology a central subject of each of his films. He proved that technology and creativity were not mutually exclusive. Technology in and of itself need not be used creatively, but, in the right hands, it can be. Technology plays a critical role in shaping film, but it is only a tool in the human hands of the artists who ply their ideas in this medium.

The Role of the Editor

It is an overstatement for any one person involved in filmmaking to claim that his or her role is the exclusive source of creativity in the filmmaking process. Filmmaking requires collaboration; it

requires the skills of an army of people. When filmmaking works best, each contribution adds to the totality of our experience of the film. The corollary, of course, is that any deficit in performance can be ruinous to the film. To put the roles into perspective, it’s easiest to think of each role as creative and of particular roles as more decisive—for example, the producer, the writer, the director, the cinematographer, the actors, and the editor. Sound people, gaffers, art designers, costumers, and special effects people all contribute, but the front-line roles are so pervasive in their influence that they are the key roles.

The editor comes into the process once production has begun, making a rough assembly of shots while the film is in production. In this way, adjustments or additional shots can be undertaken during the production phase. If a needed shot must be pursued once the crew has been dispersed and the set has been dismantled, the cost will be much greater.

The editor’s primary role, however, takes place in the postproduction phase. Once production has been completed, sound and music are added during this phase, as are special effects. Aside from shortening the film, the editor must find a rhythm for the film; working closely with the director and sometimes the producer, the editor presents options, points out areas of confusion, and identifies redundant scenes. The winnowing process is an intuitive search for clarity and dynamism. The film must speak to as wide an audience as possible.

The degree of freedom that the editor has depends on the relationship with the director and the producer. Particular directors are very interested in editing; others are more concerned with performance and leave more to the editor. The power relationship between editor and director or ed...