Film editing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
A film editor at work in 1946.



With the advent of digital editing, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For instance, in past years, picture editors dealt only with just that—picture. Sound, music, and (more recently) visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the picture editor and director. However, digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the picture editor. It is common, especially on lower budget films, for the assistant editors or even the editor to cut in music, mock up visual effects, and add sound effects or other sound replacements. These temporary elements are usually replaced with more refined final elements by the sound, music, and visual effects teams hired to complete the picture.



Early films were short films that were one long, static, and locked-down shot. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. There was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera.

Screenshot from Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost, the first film to feature multiple exposures.



Excerpt from the movie Fire! directed by James Williamson







The original editing machine: an upright Moviola.

Film editing technology[edit]

Before the widespread use of non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film workprint (cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film. Strips of footage would be hand cut and attached together with tape and then later in time, glue. Editors were very precise; if they made a wrong cut or needed a fresh positive print, it cost them money for the lab to reprint the footage and push the editing process back farther. With the invention of a splicer and threading machine with a viewer such as a Moviola, or "flatbed" machine such as a K.-E.-M. or Steenbeck, the editing process sped up a little bit and cut came out cleaner and more precise.

Acmade Picsynch for sound and picture coordination



Women in film editing[edit]

In the early years of film, editing was considered a technical job; editors were expected to "cut out the bad bits" (Avent, 74) and string the film together. Indeed, when the Motion Picture Editors Guild was formed, they chose to be "below the line," that is, not a creative guild, but a technical one. This was very helpful to women. Women were not usually able to break in to the "creative" positions; directors, cinematographers, producers, and executives were almost always men. Editing afforded creative women a place to assert their mark on the film making process. Many film editors were women, for example Anne Bauchens, Margaret Booth, Adrienne Fazan, Eda Warren, and Blanche Sewell. Although not the majority today, women are still part of the field of working editors.


Main article: Post-production

Editor's cut[edit]

Main article: Editor's cut


Director's cut[edit]

Main article: Director's cut

When shooting is finished, the director can then turn his or her full attention to collaborating with the editor and further refining the cut of the film. This is the time that is set aside where the film editor's first cut is molded to fit the director's vision. In the United States, under DGA rules, directors receive a minimum of ten weeks after completion of principal photography to prepare their first cut.

While collaborating on what is referred to as the "director's cut", the director and the editor go over the entire movie in great detail; scenes and shots are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked. Often it is discovered that there are plot holes, missing shots or even missing segments which might require that new scenes be filmed. Because of this time working closely and collaborating – a period that is normally far longer, and far more intimately involved, than the entire production and filming – most directors and editors form a unique artistic bond.

Final cut[edit]

Main article: Final cut privilege





Methods of montage[edit]


There are at least three senses of the term:


Soviet montage[edit]

Main article: Soviet montage theory


Although, strictly speaking, U.S. film director D.W. Griffith was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing — mastering cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.


Montage sequence[edit]

Main article: Montage sequence


Continuity editing[edit]

Main article: Continuity editing

What became known as the popular 'classical Hollywood' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the 180 degree rule, Establishing shot, and Shot reverse shot.

Alternatives to continuity editing (non-traditional or experimental)[edit]

Early Russian filmmakers such as Lev Kuleshov further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature. Sergei Eisenstein developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.

Alternatives to traditional editing were also the folly of early surrealist and dada filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel (director of the 1929 Un Chien Andalou) and René Clair (director of 1924's Entr'acte which starred famous dada artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray). Both filmmakers, Clair and Buñuel, experimented with editing techniques long before what is referred to as "MTV style" editing.


Editing techniques[edit]

Vsevolod Pudovkin noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of film making originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film.[citation needed] Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was quoted as saying: "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."[7]

Edward Dmytryk lays out seven "rules of cutting" that a good editor should follow:[8]

  • "Rule 1: NEVER make a cut without a positive reason."
  • "Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short."[9]
  • "Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'."[10]
  • "Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'."[11]
  • "Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continuing action."[12]
  • "Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'."[13]
  • "Rule 7: Substance first—then form."[14]

According to Walter Murch, when it comes to film editing, there are six main criteria for evaluating a cut or deciding where to cut. They are (in order of importance, most important first, with notional percentage values.):

  • Emotion (51%) — Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment?
  • Story (23%) — Does the cut advance the story?
  • Rhythm (10%) — Does the cut occur "at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and 'right'" (Murch, 18)?
  • Eye-trace (7%) — Does the cut pay respect to "the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame" (Murch, 18)?
  • Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) — Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule?
  • Three-dimensional space of action (4%) — Is the cut true to the physical/spatial relationships within the diegesis?

Murch assigned the notional percentage values to each of the criteria. "Emotion, at the top of the list, is the thing that you should try to preserve at all costs. If you find you have to sacrifice certain of those six things to make a cut, sacrifice your way up, item by item, from the bottom."-Murch

According to writer-director Preston Sturges:


Assistant Editors[edit]


Television shows typically have one assistant per editor. This assistant is responsible for every task required to bring the show to final form. Lower budget features and documentaries will also commonly have only one assistant.

The organizational aspects job could best be compared to database management. When a film is shot, every piece of picture or sound is coded with numbers and timecode. It is the assistant's job to keep track of these numbers in a database, which, in non-linear editing, is linked to the computer program. The editor and director cut the film using digital copies of the original film and sound, commonly referred to as an "offline" edit. When the cut is finished, it is the assistant's job to bring the film or television show "online". They create lists and instructions that tell the picture and sound finishers how to put the edit back together with the high quality original elements. Assistant editing can be seen as a career path to eventually becoming an editor. Many assistants, however, do not choose to pursue advancement to editor, and are very happy at the assistant level, working long and rewarding careers on many films and television shows.

Credit controversies[edit]

One current controversy is that assistant editors are increasingly responsible for planning, managing, and checking the visual effects of a feature film, yet cannot receive credit for it. Technically, this task is assigned to a visual effects editor. However, many mid and low-level films will save money by putting the responsibility on the assistant editor, an idea that makes great sense since the assistant is closest to the footage and the cut. However, the Motion Picture Editors Guild does not allow assistants to receive more than one credit, so they never get credit for the vast amount of visual effects management that they do. (Unless, of course, they give up their assistant credit.)

Another controversy is that although assistants and other editorial staff work on the picture from the first day of shooting to the last day of mixing, they appear almost at the end of the credit roll. They may be on the film for a year or more, yet be placed way behind someone else who worked on the set for a day. The reason for this placement goes back to the early days of film. For much of film's history, credit rolls were not as long as they are now. The tradition established was to list persons in order that they contributed to the film. But about thirty years ago, credit rolls began to grow greatly in length. They may last up to ten minutes now. Assistants appear chronologically in the post-production section, about eight minutes in to such a roll. By contrast, a set PA, who may have worked only for a short time, would appear in the production section, about four minutes in. Picture editors, who have front end credit (at the head of the film or head of the credit roll) are not affected. Recently, the Motion Picture Editors Guild issued a letter to producers, asking that they move their editorial staffs up the credit roll. Owing to strong traditions in studio film policy, and habit, not many features have volunteered to move their editing staffs up.[16]

See also[edit]

Two Editing Tables



  1. ^ Harris, Mark. "Which Editing is a Cut Above?" New York Times (January 6, 2008)
  3. ^ "The Brighton School". Retrieved 2012-12-17. 
  4. ^ Originally in Edison Films catalog, February 1903, 2-3; reproduced in Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 216-18.
  5. ^ Arthur Knight (1957). p. 25.
  6. ^ Arthur Knight (1957). pp. 72-73.
  7. ^ Walker, Alexander, Stanley Kubrick Directs, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
  8. ^ Dmytryk, Edward, On Film Editing, New York
  9. ^ Dmytryk, p.23
  10. ^ Dmytryk, p.27
  11. ^ Dmytryk, p.37
  12. ^ Dmytryk, p.38
  13. ^ Dmytryk, p.44
  14. ^ Dmytryk, p.145
  16. ^ Editors Guild Magazine - Columns - Union Made


  • Dmytryk, Edward (1984). On Film Editing: An Introduction to the Art of Film Construction. Focal Press, Boston.
  • Eisenstein, Sergei (2010). Towards a Theory of Montage. Tauris, London. ISBN 978-1-84885-356-0
  • Knight, Arthur (1957). The Liveliest Art. Mentor Books. New American Library.

Further reading

  • Morales, Morante, Luis Fernando (2000). Teoría y Práctica de la Edición en video. Universidad de San Martin de Porres, Lima, Perú
  • Murch, Walter (2001). In the Blink of an Eye: a Perspective on Film Editing. Silman-James Press. 2d rev. ed.. ISBN 1-879505-62-2

External links[edit]