“Wall” is about Hare’s own experiences with the Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and Palestine, and is being presented as a companion piece to “Berlin”. I think it may be a testament to the fact that I’ll never be a true theatre-type that when people start talking about the walls we build around ourselves, I’m more likely to think about Pink Floyd than the Pyramus and Thisbe reference  that followed last night.

Nonetheless, amongst several astounding pieces of commentary last night from both the subjective and objective viewpoint, I feel compelled to share the following paragraph – a quote from the reading last night:

I don’t entirely understand this. People always ask: how do you choose the subjects you write about? I have a glib answer. Why did Bacon paint popes? Meaning: the artist doesn’t choose the subject, the subject chooses the artist. ‘Go to Rwanda,’ said my American agent, when ten years ago I first proposed a play about Israel/Palestine. ‘Better still, go to Kashmir. Now there’s a dispute nobody understands. Throw some light on Kashmir.’ But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Recently, I found myself writing about Berlin because I don’t understand it. Now I want to write about Israel/Palestine because I do. No, hold on, let me rephrase, that’s a preposterous claim, nobody understands the Middle East – but put it this way: I recognise it. It answers to something in me.

I found editing whilst on a degree course which had absolutely nothing to do with media at all. I joined the student television station and tried all sorts of roles – camera, floor managing, sound mixing, vision mixing, co-producing… but when I got my first chance to creatively put something together at my first year – a trailer out of an evening’s recorded event at the university – something was answered in me. From that point on, I knew I never wanted to do anything else. And with each project that I look at – some will inevitably stir more passion than others, and those are the ones which will really work.

Editing can often be seen as a technical vocation by the people who don’t understand it – but it’s truly anything but.

Now  that I live in London, I’ve continued to see plays old and new by the National Theatre, Royal Court, RSC, Almeida, and many others…. and I find that it stretches the part of my brain that I use for editing in a most pleasing way.

The Editing Process

During the course of becoming familiar with certain works – especially Shakespeare – a certain amount of work not dissimilar to film editing becomes apparent. The works of Shakespeare themselves are published in many different versions even whilst Shakespeare was still alive, and any given production may use aspects of a certain quarto or folio. The recent RSC run of Hamlet directed by Greg Doran moved the “To be or not to be” soliloquy back significantly to the first time we see Hamlet after he has conversed with the ghost of his father, having discovered that it made more sense for their interpretation to follow the first quarto version at that point rather than placing it in the more traditional place between the arrival of The Players and their performance. They also chose to end the play as Fortinbras entered after the death of Hamlet, rather than fully concluding that particular political sub-plot.

Audience Engagement

See any modern production of a  play more than once in the same run which involves the same cast (more on that later), and the chances are that you’ll notice some differences – even if you can’t exactly pinpoint what they were. Changes can be made during previews and even the run according to audience response – much like test screenings for films. Even one night to the next, audiences will react differently (and often unexpectedly) to lines and events, and the mark of a really good company is in how they’ll adapt to their audience response and make the evening even more memorable for those who are there.

Choice of seat can also have a marked effect on the experience a member of the audience will have. A balcony seat at the end of a row 100 feet away from a proscenium arch stage can imitate an extreme long over-shoulder shot for the duration of a pivotal conversation, whereas a centre stalls seat a few rows back can be an optimal position from which to choose whose reactions to monitor –  a sort of self-edit. A thrust stage side-on view can almost place an audience into the play itself, whilst a round situated below audience level gives an eerie uncomfortable CCTV feel to an audience witnessing scenes which become even more intensely private.

Performance

The most recent RSC production of Hamlet made the headlines in 2008 for the speed in which the London run (taking place after many months in the RSC’s home of Stratford-upon-Avon) sold out once the tickets went on public sale. This was largely due to the casting of David Tennant in the title role, rather well known for being in Doctor Who since 2005 – and generally seen by many as a good time to introduce the wider public to Shakespeare because of the casting.

Then, during the run, he got sick. Several weeks of a severely limited run were led by the understudy Edward Bennett. People still went, although empty seats were very noticeable in stark contrast to the lines outside the theatre overnight waiting for returns when Tennant was still in the role. Accusations of ’star casting’ had been largely vindicated by the press once the play had opened in Stratford (as I knew they would be, having seen him on stage several times in the past), but I took the opportunity to see the difference that casting can make.

In the RSC, when a lead player is ill and their understudy takes their place, it tends to have a knock-on effect amongst the entire cast. The understudy for Hamlet was playing Laertes in the same piece, the understudy for Laertes was playing Guildenstern, the understudy for Guildenstern was part of the general ensemble in the play, and on and on until there are just scenes with fewer people than there generally should be and someone with twice as many lines. I’ve seen understudy performances before, when Frances Barber was ill during the London run of Ian McKellen’s King Lear… but having seen this Hamlet in Stratford I was able to compare between the two characters.

The results were interesting. Ed Bennett had had relatively little stage experience prior to 2008, and certainly not within the context of such a leading role on a West End stage. And whilst the performance was consciously different, it still had to fit in with the remaining cast who were still playing their usual roles – notably Gertrude, Claudius, Horatio, Polonius, Ophelia – as well as the staging extensively rehearsed by all and the motivations worked out by the company in rehearsal.

Ultimately, I was quite surprised by how different the characterisation turned out to be within the constraints mentioned above. A fairly different relationship with Claudius largely communicated by eye contact and posture, a more subdued form of madness with less conveyed via physical comedy, and success with humour within entirely different parts of the script. Of course, whilst understudies lack the chance to rehearse as much as the principals OR adjust the aspects of performance to entirely suit their own preferences, there was still the sense of watching two actors play the same role with the same director and external circumstances. Different performances will always suit different tastes, but the points at which they took control of the stage or passed it over to other characters were varied enough to be significant.

So when this transfers to the medium of video, it can never be enough to cut between actors just because of the lines they’re saying.That’s editing by numbers, and more than usually following a set format of  ‘line, cut, line, cut’ … potentially with some variation. Performance is so key. With a really good actor who’s embodying the role and properly thinking about their motivations, their footage can be both a great signpost to appropriate editing decisions within the context of the story that their rushes are telling – as well as a joy to work with. A different actor in that role – even with the same director, motivation, surrounding cast – should result in a different edit, just as much as two editors would never edit the same scene in the exact same way or two concert pianists would never perform a sonata with the same emotional level at the same points.

As we were running late, I had to go to pick up one of the actors from reception whilst another was finishing up in the recording booth. I saw him, went over, said his name…. and then realised that there was absolutely no reason in the world why he’d know who I was. I may have been editing material with him in it for the past month, but he’s never seen me before in his life.

I’d read about this aspect of editing before in books, but had always assumed it to be along the lines of seeing a well-known TV or film personality walking down the street. We may watch them weekly on television, but we never think that we know them.

Except from a certain aspect, we do know the people who we’ve edited. We’ve actively studied their physical and facial reactions on several different takes in an attempt to judge one the ‘best’ or ‘most apt’ for the surrounding scene and performances. We’ve berated them (sometimes loudly in the direction of the computer monitor without acknowledgement of the futility of such an action) for an utter lack of consideration to continuity between different slates. We’ve interpreted their intentions and characterisations – and when hard decisions have been made on the subjects we’ve made them with the actor because of what they’ve given us to work with. We’ve made cuts and decisions alongside their performance - to enhance one character trait whilst diminishing another, to engage the audience as if they were there in the room when the scene was being filmed (or even within the mindset and context of the drama they’re watching, as appropriate).

It just seems a little harsh at times, when part of the job description involves getting involved to some extent in the emotional journey of the characters that you’ve been watching on screen for weeks or even months. The lack of acknowledgement can sometimes feel total. They’ll likely never know just how much we study them and feel that we know them and/or their character. But it’s probably for the best. A self-conscious actor is usually the last thing you want when they’re doing their close-ups, and so long as the finished product looks great then everyone’s done their job well.

Student delegate pass for the London Film Festival 2008

I managed to get to four films in total, all press screenings.

Frost/Nixon was screened at the Odeon in Leicester Square (where a large number of UK/ world premieres are held), and drew quite a large crowd. Having recently taken quite an interest in film adaptations of theatrical pieces (since noticing a dialogue scene in a restaurant in David Hare’s My Zinc Bed SCREAM OUT that it was timed for live performance of a certain genre – even though it leant itself well to the discomfort of the on-screen situation), the adaptation of this was superb – notably so since both leads had of course been playing the roles for some time, and would have had to overcome differences within the adaptation. Similarly, the setting didn’t seem too ’sceney’ - the flow of locations and discussions and character encounters were precise and correct. And whilst I know just about nothing about the historical relevancies and accuracies of the story, enough information was given as was necessary for the plot and genre whilst not labouring it out. Fantastic film, brillliantly structured.

One of the criticisms that student films here often get is that the motivation of characters is missing, or their actions are unbelievable. By the time this point is raised to a significant level, we’re usually within the final stages of the edit and the “do we need to reshoot or can we fix it?” question is whispered amongst the significant production crew members.  Of course by that point we’re usually so far into the process that either the budget’s disappeared in its entirety (along with the contingency and any ‘extra funding’ occasionally raised on the sly), or we’re so far into the woods on a crammed schedule that we can’t see the trees for the caterpillars on the leaves. So it’s useful to be able to spot it and other common flaws in the work of others, as a known easy pitfall. And I certainly recognised the signs in 1234, a low budget British first feature. Their press release focusses massively on the looks, cast and music… which for a film about a band are all clearly major points and probably the things that a target box office audience would care most about after all (and the music backing/ references are certainly all in place). And it certainly functions as a story - the first half concerning the build-up of the band is great, and the audience at the screening were all along for the ride. But then during the gradual break-up of the band, the film seemed to come apart too. Things which seemed inevitable were treated as surprises, significant actions came either completely out of the blue or after a massive delay during which the pace of the film seemed to slow…. still, it makes it clear just how much I’ve learnt from making the mistakes that I’ve made whilst cutting myself.

Director/ Editor Antonio Campos on Afterschool:

I made a short film in 2004 called Buy it now, which was about a teenage girl who sells her virginity on eBay [...] But there was so much rapid cutting and too much music on the soundtrack; it took away from the experience because it felt so cluttered. I decided to make a film about teenagers and do everything in the opposite manner. As opposed to a lot of cutting and a heavy score to try to communicate the sense of adolesence, I decided to watch a confused adolescent in a room, watch two kids talk, observe a conversation between a mother and daughter uninterrupted. And I liked it. I liked watching people.

I had read that before watching the film, and it did help to explain a lot of the decisions… which were often well-judged (a section where the principal of the school is leading a service for the two dead girls is framed for him – and remains so when the mostly much shorter school children go up to deliver their tributes), but did sometimes feel like something he was stubbornly trying to do past the usefulness of the shot. The tribute video which the main character co-shoots and edits is a lesson in editing appropriately for the purpose, though!

Last up was Slumdog Millionaire – Danny Boyle’s latest film, set in India and investigating the life of a child from the slums in India who is one question away from winning the top prize in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And it was fantastic. Gritty, emotional, harrowing, beautiful, funny, human. The overall effect was outstanding. It’s not out til next year, and does mark a massive change of pace and scene for its director, but I’d recommend it even above Frost/Nixon for the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of the story.

The past month or so has been devoted to the Fiction graduation film. It’s been a bit of a journey, and our final structure is borne of the knowledge that we’ve tried just about all reasonable alternatives in-keeping with the genre. We’re at the stage now where if someone suggests something different to the version they’re seeing, I can just grab it from another sequence and demonstrate why it was rejected.

However, the fact that we’ve arrived at something which bears a strong resemblence to the first cut (barring two scenes swapped and others shortened or deleted) may have been a product of not trimming the scenes down at an earlier stage, to work with their position at the time – which would have made it easier to isolate the reasons why certain themes weren’t working so well rather than leading us around a mad semi-fantasy world in which half of the virgin audience thought that our main character was mad (we’re aiming for rom-com)! Not that that didn’t have its value of course – we determined the precise value of the dream section and returned it to its original form, cutting out all recurrences or flashbacks – even those originally scripted.

But whilst I thought I was going in and trimming as much as I could whilst we were still moving scenes around – thereby saving time because of not having to massively adjust scenes when we’d changed the order of events, I can see now just how much it held us back. In one sense.

In the other sense, we’re still on track to picture lock on the original schedule – and we almost certainly wouldn’t have arrived at the same film with the same confidence had we not gone through the stages that we did.

A still from “Mr Perfect”

1. Optimism – “This could be really good.”
2. Confidence – “This is great!”
3. Doubt – “This is what they want, right?”
4. Resolve – “Fuck ‘em! We can do this!”
5. Despair – “Fuck, we can’t do this!”
6. Siege Mentality – “Fuck everyone, what the fuck do they know?”
7. Insane Euphoria – “Hahahahahaha! Who gives a fuck? Let’s edit with our toes like Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. Let’s voice it ourselves. On helium. Let’s fashion part three from brie or jam or Old Spice or bits of dog.”
8. Relief – “Pub?”

This of course is a subject we’ve all discussed before – what if editing could have the user interface of Minority Report?

In the film, Tom Cruise reviews video footage of a crime (that has yet to happen, but that’s irrelevant here) and utilises all manner of time-lapse, zoom and selection tools via a pair of gloves and a projector.

The potential has always been obvious – mapping functions on an editing system to certain gestures (in the same way they can be mapped to buttons on the shuttlepro) to start with, with more specialist applications being developed to relate those gestures to certain areas of the screen/room or depending on the toolset you’d like to access at the time…. but with the wii remote and now the promised multi-touch mapping to multiple features and becoming a part of regular useage, the future seems to look bright. We’re getting there. Now just to combine them and not actually need a physical connection to input data.

Another ‘future’ development that came to my attention recently was in the 20th June issue of Broadcast – the UK TV trade paper. Within a more general section hypothesising the technology available in 2012 (with a fair number of mentions given to stereoscopic techniques, also known as 3D and previously discussed in this blog), there was a mention of the implications for post-production involved in tapeless filming. If rushes/ dailies are recorded straight to a disc, could that disc be part of a network which also includes an edit suite? How soon could editing theoretically begin after filming starts? And if an editor is on set/ receiving footage in real-time even in a remote location, how would that alter their role – as well as that of the director and cinematographer?

As a recent entrant to the post-production business, it’s easy for me to think of the current processes as how they’ve always been. My technological progression has more or less been from Premiere to various versions of Final Cut and Avid. As part of the Editing MA at the NFTS we do two excercises on Steenbecks with 16mm film, and I have a vague recollection of witnessing linear editing at Oxford Road in Manchester during some BBC outreach programme I participated in during my school years. Unless an article or book is specifically referring to the physical techniques involved, the view seems to be that the editor’s role and input has stayed largely the same over the conversion to digital even if the techniques have changed. But as I prepare to start my professional career (with any luck) with the tools that I think will see me through for the time being at least, I do wonder how different the job will look and be in 40 years’ time.

Playing around with Wordle, I entered in the text from my ‘about’ sections here and on my website as well as my CV…. and generated the above. It’s interesting to see without the surrounding context – some things are titles or synopses of projects, some things are background information which aren’t so relevant to what I do now, seperate words are broken up… but I suppose it’s fairly similar to how a computer would see the site, and also shows the emphasis (however unintentional) on certain words.

It’s fairly elementary, but the Doctor Who Confidential (BBC iPlayer – I believe only accessible from the UK) from last week has quite a nice insight to sound post-production processes for the uninitiated. Sound is always something I feel I’m lacking in – either I put off laying temp tracks etc for longer than I should within the editing process, or I just play around for ages with controls without any real sense of what I’m doing when I try to achieve a certain technical effect. Foley recording, however, I love. Take that as you will…. it seems fairly counter-intuitive for an editor, but the rhythms and the precise timbres of sounds synched to a video just appeals to a certain side of me which I guess I usually use in dialogue scenes more than anything, but comes from my musical and orchestral past.

Also, I’m considering my next phone. I think I’ll need email and internet, and I’m torn between the iPhone, a Blackberry, or a Nokia (E90) Communicator.It’s a few months away, but I’m currently swaying towards the Nokia, unless anyone has any insights?

Production designer James makes some last minute adjustments

The second stage of editing on my NFTS graduation animation, in which the live action background rushes are assembled according to our original animatic, has been completed. The backgrounds from the first shoot were done a few weeks ago, and given to the animator as a low-res .mov so that she could start work on the line drawings and getting the early stages of the animation started. This finished sequence will now replace that half-finished version in the first layer of her after-effects timeline.

Handles have also been added to a duplicate sequence to be graded (to allow colouring and compositing to start) so that they’re available for any extensions to the head or tail of a shot, should they turn out to be necessary – even though we timed everything as near as possible during the animatic phase. The film was shot with this in mind, so overall the sequence with the handles that will be graded is almost twice as long as the animatic and final film, though it’s the same number of shots so it shouldn’t be a major additional burden on the grading – and notes will be made on the EDL on which frames (multiple of 10 for easy trimming purposes) at the start and end of a shot are the handle.

We’ll be exporting a full res (1920 x 1080) TARGA sequence from the online suite because the school edit suites only have Sony HVR-M15Es and we’re not linked to any of the higher-res decks, and once I’ve removed the handles I’ll be giving my animator a TARGA sequence (plus any additional frames as necessary)… so it seems to make sense. To us, and that’s possibly what counts the most. It’s all about the trial and error really – the way we’re going about it may not be the most efficient, but given the resources we have plus the need for the animator and editor to have immediate access to the graded handles once the grader’s left the job (he’s a former student of the school – grading a grad project at this point in the year is a tricky proposition) it’s what we’ve come up with.

As part of the film school process, we constantly have reviews of the film as we’re working on the edit so that the tutors can advise when something doesn’t seem to be working out, ask the right sorts of questions about how necessary certain scenes are or the ordering of the ones we have…. etc etc. But at the start it was difficult to get used to it (despite having been part of the selection process for admittance to the school – 11 people took a 5 day course at the school for the 6 places). Screenings, no matter how late in the edit, were inevitably accompanied by some form of disclaimer on how there hadn’t been time to do one bit, how it wasn’t yet close to what we were actually going for because we hadn’t had time to physically and/ or technically achieve that, or how it wasn’t quite along the right lines corresponding to the director’s vision once we started learning to work with directors and needed our own time to find the film….

But for the most part we’ve learnt to get past that now. Whether it’s the self-confidence that we know that it’s not the final edit and will hopefully be able to persuade anyone who asks of that fact now that we’ve had a bit of experience, or that we’ve grown used to the process, or just that it’s too valuable whilst at Film School to not get every ounce of opinion that you can on your film (even if the suggestions profferred aren’t ultimately taken up and a different solution is tried), it’s something that I hadn’t really noticed until working with the composer on the short I’ve been cutting for the last 3 weeks. Until now they’ve been used to working primarily with picture locks, but we really wanted to see how much some original music could set the tone and move the film on a bit so we brought it in fairly early in the edit. And all of the old discussions about screening rough cuts came back to me. Back when we used to work on the same rushes for exercises, and had screenings every few days so that we could see what everyone else was doing with the same material. And funnily enough, though we may have ‘borrowed’ ideas from another cut we still never ended up with even two films vaguely alike. Seeing the different stories you could tell by choosing different shots at different moments was possibly one of the most pivotal moments of my first term at Film School, and if I’d been hiding behind my seat from the shame of having to show my unfinished work to other people I think I’d have missed a lot. And I suppose that that would always hold true whilst you still consider yourself to be learning a craft – i.e. for as long as you continue to do it.

What I guess I’ve really learnt out of the experience is how to make the most of the early days – to make a proper rough representation of how a film will be, with the majority appropriate shots in the right place. Early edits can be fairly demoralising when cuts don’t seem to flow or characters aren’t really coming alive. But finding the bits which aren’t working can really help on the way to getting a respectable cut, especially when you get that first onscreen insight into what makes your character tick. And if it’s all been a struggle and things still aren’t working, an outside perspective on the world you think you’ve been trying to create can really help to just plant a new idea in there. Just for now, I’m trying not to discount anything which may ultimately be of benefit to the film, and the comments made always help to remind me what I should be looking out for as an editor.

Certain elements of plot are given away below, so don’t read if you’re spoiler-sensitive.

The story tells the view of events (a presidential assassination) as seen by several different people. First up is the news van – giving a blanket overview of what’s going on. The content is basic – the point of interest lies mostly in the technical goings-on in the OB van until the big event, the characters introduced on the screen have no major significance to the rest of the film, and the section ends more or less when the president has been shot and the two bombs detonated. The style similarly is fairly mechanical – typical GVs, paced cuts, in on the action and information.

Story two is from a secret service agent played by Dennis Quaid (backstory provided in the news section). In this we see what he’s interested in – fast crowd shots as he scans his surroundings for potential threats, close shots of him as he responds to what he sees – rapid but precise and still full of information. He responds to information that we aren’t allowed to see until later, the footage on a camcorder and one of the camera feeds from the news van, which seems to be a jump to the opposite perspective (as the people he interacts with have no idea why he does what he does next) but that does lend the character some authority in the midst of the chaos that very quickly surrounds him.

Story three is from a character previously introduced in the first two sections – first as having run up onto the platform immediately after the assassination, then declaring himself as a police officer protecting the mayor before escaping the scene with a gun in the second section. This section fills in some information and is the first to extend outside of the arena in which the president was shot and the second bomb detonated (which we now know he had taken in and handed to a girl who’d tried to kill him when she threw it under the stage near where he was being held by secret service agents). This is our first real ‘action’ character – his escape across the town is fast paced and action filled. We linger on characters who he recognises, realise the significance of certain characters and their actions for the first time because he knows that information, and once again ends on a confrontation.

Story four is that of an American tourist with a camcorder played by Forest Whitaker, previously noticed in the previous two stories as an information provider. We see long sweeping general shots, and focus on the minutae of inter-personal relationships, events like a small girl walking into him with an ice-cream… the little details which seem insignificant to most people – definitely the characters we’ve encountered so far. Some ultimately were, some had a greater role to play later or provided characterisation in advance. But even the way the tape in the camera was viewed by the secret service was played differently – I’d have to watch again to know for sure if it was purely down to the angles and editing or actually a subtly different performance (as in the 1999 Go) , but either is possible. This story extends a minute past the previous one, and cuts out when he realises that the little girl with the ice cream from earlier was about to get run over – the most significant event which could make him act.

Story five opens with the president who we’ve now seen get shot four times. The temptation to think “this’ll be short” passes as it’s revealed that they’re sending out a body double in his place, and he watches the ‘assassination’ on television in his hotel room… before a bomb (the first) explodes in the lobby of the hotel he’s staying in and a masked man breaks into his hotel room.

We then go back to the little girl getting her ice cream in a cafe with her mother, and as they leave the camera stays with a man talking on a hands-free kit in the cafe. This is our first clue that something’s changed. Leaving that character to meet another who we’ve previously seen arguing with the female bomber confirms it – we’re into conventional narrative. The story plays out from there and the previously missing information is supplied with all characters interweaving multiple times before ending up at the exact same spot.

What I find most interesting is the choice of where to break the single perspectives for each character, and the decision to suddenly combine them all when at least two characters have more or less played out their major parts. There was opportunity to play out a significant part of at least one further major character (or at least a general ‘terrorist’ POV), but then there may well have been too much blurring of statement or it could have taken the focus away from the events themselves if too much time was spent exploring reasons. Or now that the central event of the assassination had been proven false, a new style was needed. Or just that they’d done all of the pre-assassination stories that they needed to by that point and just kept going. Or decided which bits fit in best with the end continuous story and filled up to that point in the other viewpoints. I can’t help but feel that it would be interesting to know which alternatives were considered during editing. And how it was organised – the IMDb page lists 3 editors, 5 assistants and 2 apprentices.

But what do the regular audience think? Upon exiting the cinema, my viewing partner (my mother, on the last day of my Easter break) said “You know, they really could have gotten to the interesting bit sooner”. A point perhaps crassly made – and she doesn’t after all have a history of appreciating slow-burning films… but whether it was the ‘twist’, boredom with too many repeats of the ’same’ story or the return to conventional multi-POV that re-engaged her I haven’t managed to determine.

In any case, editing commentary on the DVD? Please, Colombia?

Ever since you first got into music, you’ve been waiting for one of the world’s biggest bands, U2, to play a live gig that you can get to. Finally, they announce their tour. You buy your ticket, you take some holiday time away from work, you drive down to the venue, you queue for 3 days. When they finally open the gates, you run to the very front barrier as fast as you can. This is your chance to be the closest you will ever be to the greatest band in your world. You get to the front…. And find that just in front of the barrier you’re heading towards is a rather large camera crane. With TWO cameras mounted, and a larger than normal crew. All inbetween you and the stage.

The reason? U2 3D. Now in cinemas nationwide.

Last Friday 22nd February, through the NFTS, I was able to go to a Masterclass in the Cineworld at Shaftesbury Avenue (currently showing the film) which was hosted by the UK Film Council, and had a panel of people who’d been involved in the film and the technology involved from the start.

Things have come on a long way from the red/blue glasses and headaches usually associated with 3D. Polarisation has been around for a while now, but the ultimate application that they’re heading for is home viewing of sports without the need for eyewear at all (via hi-res lenticular screens… apparently already working on a small scale). But they decided to build the technology on the most complex thing they could think of – a 9 camera position (18 altogether, given the need for two cameras to function together as human eyes would to provide a natural 3D effect), multiple venue, 14 song live music tour of South America. In natural lighting. We didn’t actually get to see any of the final film because of time issues, but you start to get the idea of the scale of the project when you learn that they were in post for one year (including R&D).

They actually did the basic edit in 2D on an Avid. But had to think differently from the outset. For a start, fast cuts of the type usually associated with live concert footage were right out if the film was to be released in 3D. In their place, layering effects were utilised, and cuts made only when the drama of the shot naturally took you to a different angle. Balancing the depth of the 3D between one shot and the next was vital in order to avoid rapid eye fatigue from constant refocusing, and recreation of shots where the cameras weren’t working perfectly together (through tape change, lens issues, foreground objects, or any other number of reasons) had to be done to the pixel. An IMAX grade had to be performed separately because of the necessity of printing onto film rather than distributing digitally – and the 3D had to be imagined on that scale as well when deciding how extensive it should be.

In this film the 3D wasn’t to be used as a gimmick – it was a means of immersing an audience within a scene, rather than relying on things flying out of the screen at them. And it seems to be fairly appropriate. But the claim put forward that this is as big a technological step as going from silent to talkies seems a little far-fetched. Dreamworks’ plans to go entirely 3D starting 2009 as opposed to adding 3D elements to a finished 2D film sounds exciting, but certain film genres will never lend themselves to 3D. The limit on the speed of cuts will surely be a major sticking point in narrative film, and it seems possible to me that it will be pushing a bit too hard on the suspension of experience which allows editing to work in the first place – to view a 2D image jumping across to the other side of a room isn’t intuitive to the human eye and personal experience – but it still works. To effectively place someone in a room, then have them jump around within it, to another scene in a different location, back to that room… physically it seems disruptive, psychologically invasive and voyeuristic, and generally uncomfortable. You learn fairly early on that there are more important aspects of a cut than continuity on the screen or within the frame – but along this ‘z’ axis out of the screen, continuity will be key if people aren’t to reject the images because their eyes are constantly refocusing. The 3D elements invoking a very specific point in the overall image that an audience should be looking at – leaving open a massive space for action to be missed, and trust to be lost if that space is exploited. Once that trust is lost, we may as well all give up.

It sounds like a great tool, and it’s clear that a massive amount of thought, time and skill has gone into the development even in these relatively early days – but as things stand, I don’t see a major place for it in the non-specialised filmmaking process.

http://www.reald.com/

http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/13641

Still, the result cleared up a major plot point which had never really come across as well as it could have. The screenplay had already reorganised Will Shakespeare’s scenes (logical in theatre, potentially section-after-section in modern day film terms), so I can’t really feel too bad about my last minute shuffling. My most recent documentary edit utilised the scene rearrangement method from a very early stage, but this is the first time I’ve extensively reshaped in fiction in this style – our short films at the school don’t lend themselves open to much of that sort of thing. But having seen how effective it was, my mind feels blown open for future edits in all projects.

You really can read all of the books that you want on the theory of editing – but you just can’t learn how to edit from them. Because editing has to be instinctive, it has to be natural, you have to feel it… and even the most poetic instruction manual is still an instruction manual.

So really, the greatest compliment one can receive at the end of a scene is a comment on the story itself – an “oooh, that’s not going to last long” in reference to the newly formed relationship between two key characters or an “oh my god, he’s mad” after a key incident with a character (assuming of course that that was the impression you intended to convey) is praise of the highest order. It’s also an opportunity to discuss those strange people who have numerous issues that you’ve been getting to know recently. And just being able to do that makes any other potential gripes about the job disappear.

*This does happen. Though like the directors and writers, they’re also often blamed when it doesn’t work.