Mary: You might want to pick up an old filmmaking book that covers the different processes on physical editing of photochemical film. E.g. Lenny Lipton’s “Independent Filmmaking”.
A. There are two methods of putting the cut pieces of film together: 1) glue splices and 2) tape splices. • Both forms of splice are easily visible, the tape will have little bubbles on the frames on either side of the cut. The glue splice makes a noticable lap joint on one side of the cut. B. There are two broad categories of workflow: 1) Cutting the camera original of reversal stock directly. This would be how most 8mm and Super8 ‘amatuer’ films were made. It’s also how “Meshes of the Afternoon was put together (you can see the laps of the glue splices). 2) Striking a ‘workprint’ copy, editing that (typically with tape splices), then ‘conforming’ the original into 'A and B rolls’ There are two rolls, each running the length of the finished fedit, but with only half of the shots: The A roll would have the originbal footage of all the odd shots, and black leader corresponding to the even shots, the B roll vice versa. These rolls are assembled with glue splices, the lap of each splice going over into the black leader, so no actual exposed frames become fogged by the glue. Then you send the rolls off to the lab, with instructions, and they marry them into a single print with invisible splices. • Conforming negative film stock is a tricky business that requires an ultra-clean environment, so few filmmakers do that themszelves. Thus, for most ‘traditional’ 16mm film work, the only creative editing is done with/on a workprint. C. There are two basic tools for film editing, 1) An edit bench with hand rewinds and a simple viewer. This is all you need to cut a silent film (or one with a not-precisely synced ‘wild’ soundtrack) 2) a ‘flatbed’ editing table (Steenbeck and Moviola being the most common makes) that motorizes the shuttling of film, and keeps the film in sync with one or more audio tracks recorded on mag stock (perforated film covered with magnetic particles like audio tape instead of film emulsion). A flatbed is more or less necessary to edit films with sync sound, whether lip-sync or just precise sync for added music, sfx, narration… > the hypothesis that film can be compared to fabric and editing to stitching. Hmm. From the standpoint of what motion picture editing is conceptually, there’s really no analogy. But then. conceptualy, editing is editing, no matter how it’s done. OTOH, the actual physical work may be comoparable in some ways, and it would make sense that this physical process inflects the conceptual work in some ways. That’s certainly been suggested by folks who have edited both by actually cutting film and doing it all by computer. [There’s also typically a difference between film original and video original: since video is cheaper to shoot you tend to wind up with a lot more footage, more repeated takes, and that can be both a blessing and a curse…] Some ways the conceptual (and physical) prosesses are different: 1) The whole point of editing workprint is you can try an edit, see how it works, then change your mind… at any point. That is, after you’re ‘finished’ you can go back and change the trim on the first cut you made. I don’t think of stitching as temporary. Workprint is always edited with tape splices, so you can pull the splices apart to change them. [You save your trims in case you want to put a few frames back in]. 2) I imagine stitching is usually done more or less linearly: you start with one piece, add another and another -- the work grows and gets larger as you go. Film editing, especially narrative work, OTOH, is typically a process of subtraction. a) The editor first cuts all the discrete shots from the original — camera start to camera stop — and hangs them in a bin. b) Then they’re spliced into one long reel — called an assembly — in the rough order you expect they’ll appear, with multiple possibly-usable takes one after the other: S1T1, S1T2, S1T3, S2T1, STT2, S3T1 etc. c) From then on, it’s mainly subtraction: choosing which takes to discard, deciding to disacrd whole shots or sequences, shortening the shots to the proper in-and-out points. This is why you often hear that feature films had really long rough cuts at one point — ‘legendary 4 hour version’ … that’s normal, and those are never intended to be finished products. The operative maxim that oftens applies to student films: “I didn’t have enough time to make it shorter!’ _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
