Filmmakers still say they are “cutting a film,” even when there is no film and no cutting involved. What they really mean is something like, “I’m arranging some time-based media into an effective dramatic order on a nonlinear editing system.” Now, I’ve done some film editing in my time, including the kind where you use a guillotine, tape with sprocket holes in it, a gang synchronizer, Moviola, and other stone-age type stuff. There is something awesome about holding film in your hands and cutting it into little pieces and gluing it together in a different order, but the digital way is better. (Carrier pigeons are cool, too, but I still want my phone.)
While I am in the early stages of editing a film right now (log and capture, anyone?), I am by no means a film editor. Film editors are high-order artists with warring left-side/ right-side brains. I have the kind of brain that can never remember which side is which. I don’t even know my personality or blood type. I’m working with Final Cut Pro, the editing software with a user manual thicker than the one found in the glove compartment of the space shuttle. Lucky for me I have a friend with genius editing skills, and he still returns my text messages. (Check out Scott Chestnut on imdb.com.)
Editing, like writing, is pretty lonely. You sit in a room by yourself for long hours, and if you’re editing, the room is dark. Holidays go by, kids grow up, polar ice caps melt, and you’re in there with big pupils trying to create something out of whatever mess production dumped in your lap. That’s particularly irksome when you are both production and the editor, as in my case — at least for now. Ultimately, I will need to bring in a pro to finesse the project. You can’t fly the space shuttle with only a motorcycle license.
Whether you edit in a primitive cave or in a technological cloud, the results are magic. Filmmakers figured this out early on, like a hundred years ago when the Russian Kuleshov demonstrated his famous effect (now known, unsurprisingly, as the Kuleshov Effect). He inter-cut images of a hottie, a bowl of soup, and a child’s coffin with identical close ups of an actor. Audiences believed the actor’s expression was different, depending on which image bracketed the actor’s face (that is, he was horny, hungry, or grieving). Audience members, as the legend goes, raved about the actor’s performance, when in actuality it was the editing, not the acting. So, in honor of Kuleshov, and Chestnut, I have created a short piece to demonstrate the “WTF Effect.”
— david warfield
