After completing the two minute film and realising I could know more theory behind editing and the process behind it, I did some research into my role as the editor to hopefully help me pick up any techniques or elements of editing that I had overlooked. The book I used for research was Voice & Vision by Mick Hurbis-Cherrier and I focused on the most relevant chapter to my role, The Art and Technique of Editing. This chapter started by focusing on how the story is told in a film and what obligations the editor has in order to create and feed this story to the audience "We, as filmmakers, don't just objectively show actions, we narrate, which means interpreting the story through the voice of a storyteller. And much of the filmmaker's voice is located in the domain of the editing process." This shows the importance that the editing process has on the final outcome of the film and how it will be key to creating an engaging and clear narrative. In our film this will be a very important and key factor, as it is with any fictional drama piece, especially as our story is quite ambiguous and could have the potential to be quite confusing considering the tight time we have to create the film and make it under 10 minutes. "The primary reason we edit is to tell a particular story in our unique way: to guide the audience to see what we want them to see..." Editing is essentially the process of selecting and arranging visual and sound elements together to create a unique story in a film.
As our film is almost like a si-fi, a major task for me as the editor will be to enable the audience to believe that what they're seeing could be true, and get drawn into the world that the narrative creates. As we are only on a very very small budget, creating this world won't be down to special effects and set design alone, it will have to be built up on believable cuts and transitions, as well as tension building and empathy building for characters. "Most films have moments that must be elevated through expressive or stylized editing to reveal their true dramatic importance... But all narrative films also have many fairly utilitarian passages that should be cut, simply just to get us from narrative point A to narrative point B efficiently." I will have to bare this in mind when editing our film as there is a lot of room for this expressive and stylised editing in the first part of the film which is more experimental and ambiguous than the second part which has a much heavier focus on explaining the narrative through dialogue. Therefore I will need to think about techniques I can use to create this expressive style of editing at the start of the film, and make it effective and engaging for the audience so it doesn't seem boring or confusing. This will require me to work closely with the sound designer to see what I can do visually that will work in conjunction with the score he creates.
Further on in the chapter, it starts to discuss technical effects or transitions and why they are commonly used in films. One that was particularly relevant to our film was the small section on fades. This is because our film is comprised of a number of different scenes that take place in different days and/or locations and to transition from one of these scenes to the other smoothly could be a problem. "The fade-out/fade in technique is frequently used as a time ellipse or to punctuate a major shift in the dramatic direction of the movie." I don't want the audience to feel as though the film is made up of several different short films and the way we have masked this is with a simple fade in and fade out effect so I will be exploring other ways that could work in its place in a more effective and creative manner.
A final point of consideration for me was that I had to be selective and take a considered approach on where to cut and what to put in the film. "Keep in mind that NOT cutting is an editorial decision, too, and it can be a powerful one." Deciding when to cut and when not to cut in a short film is vital to creating a smooth narrative as well as keeping a good pace for it to run with and, in short films especially, deciding to sacrifice continuity and stylised shots instead of good performances and clearer context.
I will attempt to keep all of these learning points in mind when editing our final film, in hope that I can produce a more professional and entertaining film.
(All quotes from Mick Hurbis-Cherrier (2007), Voice & Vision: A Creative Approach to Narrative Film and DV Production, Focal Press)
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