[.ca] The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

From Amazon.com:
"Editing is what makes film a film." That audacious statement is made at the beginning of this 2005 documentary about the art of film editing. After listening to many editors and directors, movie novices as well as cinephiles may agree. Kathy Bates narrates this whirlwind history of the art punctuated by dozens of scenes to illustrate the effect of film editing in heightening reality and making a visceral impact on the filmgoer. In fact, the profession seems to be run on "a gut feeling" whether it's clipping a few frames, or 20 minutes of the final act (which we learn happened with Lenny). James Cameron illustrates the importance of a frame as we see a scene from Terminator 2 with 1 frame out 24 missing (24 frames representing one second of film). Or as Quentin Tarantino states, "musicians have notes, editors have frames." It's fascinating to see how editing--the process of assembling the film after it's been shot--can save films, make performances better, and become the ultimate jigsaw puzzle. The last concept is demonstrated as we return time and again to the most well-known editor of the time, Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient), as he edits a few scenes from Cold Mountain in front of us. We see how he works with light, covers mistakes, and controls emotion. For those who wished for a sequel to the excellent documentary on cinematographers, Visions of Light (1993), here's the next step (although made by different folks including first-time director Wendy Apple). Now, anyone want to tackle art directors? --Doug Thomas

Movie editors come out of the closet:
This documentary is a general overview of how film cutters evolved into film editors and took their place among the giants of the film industry. We are introduced to methods and philosophies used down through the ages and the metamorphosis from celluloid to digital recordings. As informative as this documentary is it suffers from sound-bite-itus instead of concentrating on one person or thought, we are leaped back and forth trough a collage of people, techniques, and time. This method of presentation can become quite boring after a time. Still the documentary (that only shows highlights and nothing practical) is worth viewing.

A decent introduction to the importance of the movie editor:
"The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing" is a 2004 documentary celebrating the first century of film editing. Those expecting a fitting counterpart to "Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography" are going to be a bit disappointed because this documentary is not on that same level. What you will find is part history lesson on the development of movie editing and part introduction to the things film editors do. The emphasis at the beginning is all about cutting, but we will learn that film editors make a lot of other decisions and there are lots of film editors and directors appearing as talking heads to explain these things with accompanying examples from lots of classic (and not so classic) films. Quentin Tarantino speaks to the importance of a single frame and his reasons for deciding to work with a female film editor, and Steven Spielberg talks about the objectivity of the film editor. But you have to wish that this documentary could have let these points be made by the film editors themselves since one of the premises here is that film editors are often forgotten when people think about how a film is made. The history lesson begins with not only the creation of movie editing when Edwin Porter, one of Thomas Edison's employees, first cut scenes together to create a story in 1903, first in "The Life of an American Fireman" and then the more famous "Great Train Robbery." A theoretical distinction between the polar approaches of D.W. Griffith's seamless editing, as in "The Birth of a Nation," versus the more manipulative approach of Russian documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov and his team in "Man with a Movie Camera" and later Sergei Eisenstein in "Battleship Potemkin." The history of film editing seems to come down to certain individuals who were in the right place at the right time, but there is also the interesting observation that originally women were film editors because the task was seen as being akin to knitting, and it was not until sound was introduced and the process became so "technical" than men started doing the job instead. Ultimately the goal in this documentary is not just to be informative but to persuade viewers that after the director and the stars the film editor is the most important person involved in the production of a film and in creating "the final script." Sections are devoted to the general idea of cutting action, suspense, or sex, as well as cutting for the studios or to make the actor a star. At one point "The Rules" are established, and then the documentary looks at how successful film editors have broken all of those rules. Specific examples of editing that look at the specific choices that were made are fairly rare in this documentary. There is a brief example from "Home for the Holiday" where we actually get to see some of the choices for cutting a scene where a turkey falls on Cynthia Stevenson, but usually all you get is the editor describing after the fact what they did, as with Walter Murch and the hotel sequence at the start of "Apocalypse Now." There are a couple of choice examples of how sound comes into play with Pietro Scalla in "Black Hawk Down" and Tina Hirsch in "Dante's Peak," that helps to expand our notion of film editing. Then you have the extreme case of Alan Heim convincing director Bob Fosse to cut 20 minutes following the climactic courtroom scene in "Lenny" to get to Bruce's death. The problem is every time you get one of these specific examples you want more and the documentary is more likely to get back to a general topic (I was waiting for a section on the concept of American montage exemplified by the baptism scene in "The Godfather," but that never came). Still, you do get a decent introduction to the topic. Final warning: although it is not really a story about editing, this documentary does include the infamous interrogation scene from "Basic Instinct," which means you do not want to be showing "The Cutting Edge" to a group of younger students.