Writing for Film, Filming for Writing: Editing, or ‘What does this button do?’

I should preface this post by confessing that I’m not a fantastic editor. There, I’ve said it. Editing fascinates me, it really does. It’s absolutely integral to film, it’s fluid and complex and watching a great editor is like watching a great sculptor work – finding the art in the lump of clay. I’m not great at it, though. I’ve never spent enough time with a single editing program to fully wrap my head around it, and every time I learn how to do it, it’s like having to start again.

                They probably know what they’re doing.

Having said all that, I really enjoyed working on our short class exercises in the edit suites. For one thing, I got to use Premiere for the first time, and even though I still don’t understand most of it, I’m planning on immersing myself in the world of tutorial videos. However, I managed to get a fair bit of insight out of the act of editing itself.

Our script was a two page, two character, one location, dialogue heavy scene. It’s literally just two people talking to each other over a table. When I looked at the unedited lump of footage, I couldn’t imagine how I’d manage to turn it into an interesting scene. It was incredible how quickly, through editing, I began to see exactly how the scene could turn out. There were so many possibilities. For instance, it was an awkward date between two people, so by letting the shots run on after each character’s dialogue, there would be a moment of uncomfortable silence that lent the scene that cringe-worthy comedy that’s all the rage. However, by cutting each shot in fairly quickly, it gave the scene a much faster pace, faster even than was recorded by the actors (I was one of the actors, I can claim this) intended on the day. So while I knew that editing can completely change the feel and flow of a film, it was something else to actually see that in action.

Also, I found I had a lot of fun mixing and matching different sort of shots. In one scene, I used POV shots, mid-shots, over the shoulders, even a pan up from the character’s feet. It looks stupid, obviously, there’s no continuity or reason for it, but it was fun to play around with the software and look at why some shots work and some don’t. Looking forward to getting back into it!