Editing is something you do once you have you footage shot. You can't really edit until you have something to edit, right? Wrong. Trick question, totally unfair of me. Sorry.
You should think about editing from the beginning. In the script phase, look at what scenes may run too long, which may need to move fast, and which ones may have some room to play with when you shoot. You might see a ten minute conversation in a diner that only needs to be two minutes. By trimming it down in the script, it's not only less footage you need to trim later to get the point across, it's less you have to shoot in the first place.
In preproduction, when story boarding or the like, you'll want to know how every scene is going to be constructed. Do you go with one long shot? Several standard reversals? Are you going to try and shoot as many quick clips and odd angles as possible and put it together later? Knowing how you want it to play should be what defines how you shoot it.
One long take is the hardest to prepare for, because you really don't have many editing options. You have to get it perfect, and be confident it flows well. You won't be able to trim out a snip in the middle usually, unless you have a lot of camera movement within the take and are willing to make a few cuts. Even then, it will stand out. Spend as much time as you can getting the lighting perfect, checking the audio levels, making sure the background elements are secure (like an air conditioner not kicking on mid take), and having the actors run their lines.
Keep shooting until you get all the way through the take and everyone feels good about it. Keep shooting beyond that. Have them get a take where they go through it all much faster. Go until there's one everyone feels good about. Do the same for a very slow take. If anybody has ideas, hear them out. You want to have options, and while it's a pain to spend all day on one long shot, it's better than spending a half a day on something you can't use. Beat the damn scene into the ground.
Get coverage anyway. If people are stumbling over lines, change your angle and pull in a little closer on them. Have them go line for line on their own through the scene with short pauses in between. Then have the whole scene read line for line, again putting short pauses between lines. Let them know their reaction is what you are capturing. Besides giving you something to cut to, it helps the actor really listen to the lines other characters are saying, building their motivations, and possibly getting a better performance out of them. Do this for each actor.
In case you think the pauses are just for pacing, or distinguishing line breaks, or keeping them from skipping over someone else's lines, well, that too. Really it's for reducing your headaches in post. I've been on plenty of shoots where people were getting close-ups, and each close-up was unusable, because off-camera actors stepped over the lines of the person in shot. It's a hell of a lot easier to layer separate audio tracks than it is to remove some element from a track. If the person is not on camera, and you don't actually see them speaking, make sure they aren't ruining what actually is in the shot. If they step on someone's line, roll up a newspaper and smack them in the nose. It's a natural instinct for some people, and a bad one for post.
If you planned on cutting the scene in a traditional fashion, use the above method, but with more coverage. Make sure to pay close attention to any movement, gestures, and props. If somebody scratches their chin, or leans in to the conversation, or takes a sip of water, they need to do it at the same time every take. After the first take, ask them about each gesture. Why did they do it then? Connect the gesture with the moment and they'll either drop it altogether or incorporate it into each take. Either way you have continuity.
There's something called the 180 rule. It basically means you don't want to reverse your angle more than 180 degrees between shots. More simply, imagine a line going from one point of action or interaction (a character, a car, a something we are invested in) to the other key point of action or interaction. Pick a side of that line and shoot from that side. You can move that line through the scene, but you need to show that the line is moving. Move towards it, straddle it, slowly move to the other side. If you have one character on the left and another on the right, then you jump to the other side of that line, now they're reversed. The audience won't think about camera placement so much as that the characters suddenly switched places, the background changed, and get pulled out of the moment. Even though it may not be, it will subconsciously read as a continuity error.
If you want to try and emulate Robert Rodriguez, Michael Bay, or Sam Raimi, and plan on shooting something that will cut together into a fast-paced fury of action, you'd better plan ahead. Every one of those shots will need to be set up. Even if you only see it for two seconds, you can't completely forego detail. Continuity needs to be tracked, sound needs to be checked, the lighting needs to be consistent, and you need to make sure you don't skip anything. Every radically different shot or odd camera placement means your crew will need to be in different places. This means changes to the lighting and possibly the set, depending how crazy you want to get. Every one of those set ups is time, and all of that is nothing compared to putting it together in post.
Every time you switch from one image to another, you have to make sure the sound levels match between shots if they have their own audio, and the sound needs to synch up properly if you're using one audio take between shots. The color, saturation, lighting, and so forth need to be consistent. All post cleanup needs to be done on each shot, so the less shots you have to include, the fewer times you need to go through the process. It's the difference between tuning a guitar and tuning an orchestra. If you have a vision, it should be worth the effort. If you feel like shooting fast and loose and crafting the sequence later, you're clearly too impatient for the work you've just laid out ahead of you.
I also don't believe shooting so you can edit later is a style. It's a technique, but not a style. If you want to use it as a technique, go ahead. If you cover the basics while you shoot, then play around as well, you may come up with some very inventive stuff, as well as a lot of coverage to work with. The final product may be very dynamic, exciting, and different. Just don't convince yourself that you don't need to shoot much if you're planning to sort it all out in the editing room. If you go in with a specific vision, you shoot for enough coverage to satisfy what you see in your head. If you don't know yet what you want, I think it's foolish not to shoot at least twice as much, just to have options. While you have the set, the actors, etc., why not get more than enough?
While I don't always agree with David Mamet on film theory, I think he's dead right about editing. Every cut has meaning. If you leave one image for another, there is a narrative reason. While the cut might exist because the take was blown and you had to cut away, that's not what the meaning is for the cut. Intentional or not, that change in image means "what you are looking at now is more important than what you were just seeing." If you cut to a reaction shot, in the narrative you are telling the audience that this person's reaction means something, and is more important than watching the person who is talking. Insert shots need to show something vital for the audience to understand. When you are cutting from one image to the next, you need to ask what is so important about this image as it related to the scene, the previous image, and the one to follow. You also need to make sure the images physically work together in continuity, style, and angle. You need to really think about how much planning ahead might help.
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| Make Me Proud |
Every other Monday
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| Patrick Storck |
Patrick hails from Baltimore, MD, where playing by the rules is frowned upon. Only average things come from playing it safe.
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