"Funny how words change their meaning.
A lot of folks on YouTube tell us we’re “good editors” which is an interesting thing to be called because that word doesn’t mean what the film industry thinks it means anymore. Used to be a time where people would apprentice under a film editor, organizing clips, syncing dailies, and doing all the grunt work that being an “assistant editor” entails. After they’ve paid their dues, they’d move up to actually cutting footage. Used to be a time when being an editor meant taking in the footage, working with the director, and cutting together the sequence of shots that make a movie.
But nowadays “editors” are the directors, and being an “editor” seems to entail a lot of aspects of film production, borne out of necessity. As a filmmaker just starting out, odds are you shoot your own footage, direct the actors, cut together and add effects to the footage by yourself. The entirety of the post-production process is what a lot of people seem to consider “editing” nowadays, and also to a lesser extent, the act of shooting the footage itself seems to be considered part of the “Editing” process. Being labelled a “good editor” is about the highest praise you can hope to achieve – even greater than “good director” or “good producer.” A “good editor” is someone that is good at the process of making videos as a whole.
I got no problem with this – when I was starting out, my friends and I all referred to what we were doing as “editing” and we were loose with the terms because there weren’t enough people around to assign specific roles to (not to mention we didn’t have any idea what those roles necessarily entailed). The usage of the title is a symptom of lack of resources as well as the fact that technological advances has enabled a single person to handle the entire post production process of a video all by themselves. Rather than invent a new term, an older one was co-opted. And because good editing should be unobtrusive, actually good editing (say, a well cut, well paced dialogue scene) escapes the radar because it doesn’t have the whiz bang effect of flashy special effects or percussive music video editing.
But I definitely get the sense that the usage of this term doesn’t extend beyond the YouTube/DIY community. You don’t hear Spielberg or Tarantino referred to as “good editors,” and conversely, I think most of the people using the term in that way would be hard pressed to name Kahn or Menke as their respective editors. The next generation of filmmakers, and to an extent the generation that I occupy, is composed of a lot of individuals that are used to doing things by themselves and who’ve become jacks of all trades.
It’ll be interesting to see how on-set roles will change in the years to come. The rigidly defined roles on set work around big shoots and film cameras, but what happens when the crews get smaller and are composed of people used to wearing many hats? I strongly believe editors will no longer be relegated to taking in footage after it’s been shot and staying off the set – they’ll also become “On-Set Editors.” The job of an editor will require someone who handles all the footage dumping on set and is also fast enough of a cutter to rough in entire sequences as they’re being shot – a luxury that is only afforded by digital filmmaking and individuals who can specialize in numerous roles.
The advantages of such a position would be enormous – a director can respond immediately to a scene if it doesn’t play correctly, the editor can request different performances from the actors, and cutaways and inserts can be noted and in some cases, grabbed on the spot, reducing the need for reshoots and pickups. Why should there be two rounds of “performance evaluation” of an actor – once on set by the director, and then again by the editor in the cutting room? What matters is if the performance plays on the screen – and that can be evaluated on the spot. By assembling scenes moments after they’re shot, they’ll ideally have a very rough cut of the film the day it wraps production.
It’ll be interesting to see how filmmaking changes in response to the habits of filmmakers who are growing up now. We can restructure the shooting process into something that makes more sense by reevaluating the needs of digital filmmaking in combination with the myriad of skills of the crew."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is just a reply I left to his post...
"Haha I’ve been getting a lot of replies on Youtube stating, “Oh you’re such a good editor!” or “How did you get so good at editing? I wanna edit like that!!!”
The thing thats most funny to me, is that its not how you edit a movie that makes it enjoyable to look at, its how you filmed it in the first place. If you have good sequences planned out and good composition in your shots, the editing really is a piece of cake…
I dont’ know, I just thought it was pretty funny when you said, “Being labelled a “good editor” is about the highest praise you can hope to achieve” and kind of had the same thoughts on it. But at the end of the day, I want to be known as a good director not editor
Good post though"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So ya, hopefully you guys will be more educated now ;)
Good luck with your filming!
No comments:
Post a Comment