Editing is one of those things where, if it’s doing its job right, you won’t even notice it at all.
Jeremy Bowtell, our guest lecturer this week, explained that editing is a process of manipulating an audience in a desired direction. That is, an artist or author must have a particular outcome in mind when editing their work, and the edit must in some way work towards that outcome. But if an audience feels manipulated, or a work is attempting to achieve a certain result too conspicuously, it can backfire and have the opposite effect (or, perhaps worse, no effect at all). An editor has to walk a fine line.
Walter Murch had what he termed the “rule of six”, a list of priorities that should be considered before any edit is made:
- Emotion – does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling?
- Story – does the cut advance the story?
- Rhythm – does the cut occur at a moment that is rhythmically interesting or “right”?
- Eye trace
- Two-dimensional space
- Three-dimensional space
The idea is that higher points are more important to the result than lower ones, and in the event of a conflict an editor should choose to make an edit that favours emotion over the story, for example. (The lecture only discussed the first three points.)
We were shown a small scene from Martin Scorsese’s Casino (edited by Thelma Schoonmaker), in which editing is used in service of emotion, story and rhythm.
Bowtell mentioned that the editing in this scene, which is mostly wordless, works to demonstrate the genesis of a love story between Robert De Niro’s character and Sharon Stone’s character. As we cut between shots of the two actors, slowly zooming in on De Niro’s eyes as he’s transfixed by her every move, and her gaze fixes back on him and she walks off the gaming floor, the film allows us to feel the chemistry between these two characters without them ever speaking to one another. (This is an example of closure, where the audience “fills in” something implied but not explicitly stated or shown in a work.)
But having seen Casino many times, watching this scene closely afforded me a new way of reading it. Later in the film De Niro starts to act abusively towards Stone, as if he owns her – he disapproves of her independence and free spirit, he’s jealous of her relationship with James Woods’ character, etc. – and this fundamental power imbalance is evident right from the very beginning (the editing services the emotion of the scene).
De Niro watching her over the security camera now feels like he’s looking down on her as a God-like figure, able to take whatever he likes and make it his own. And when he makes his way down to the gaming floor and the shot alternates between close-ups of the two actors, I noticed that as Stone walks out of the room it doesn’t cut back to De Niro. The rhythm of the editing changes, and the audience is placed in De Niro’s point of view as he watches her with lust and desire, without breaking his gaze. Like a predator stalking prey.
So what first looks like the genesis of a love story is actually something much different and more sinister – and this subtle difference is communicated entirely through editing.
This scene is a wonderful example of the power of editing to shift an audience’s response in a particular direction, and I look forward to re-watching other Scorsese/Schoonmaker collaborations for more now that I’ve learned a little about the mechanics behind editing.