Where does the edit begin?

The first step is syncing the footage. This means that an assistant editor (or you, should you be so lucky) will go through every video file and every sound file and match them up using the clapboard. When the “sticks” hit, you hear the “CLICK.” By the time the official editor on the project sits down, all of the footage should be synced and organized. In the case of The Storyteller, Director Joe Crump brought in numerous assistants to help sync the dailies.

They went through and they were ahead of me as I was editing… and they synced all the different microphones. There would be some places where we would have three or four microphones and they would sync all of them up so it would make it easier for us to work with. – Joe Crump, Director of The Storyteller

The plan helps the edit

Mad Max: Fury Road is a film that’s been mentioned several times during this series. Not only because it’s one of the best movies to come out of Hollywood in the last 20 years, but because it’s that rare combination of technical achievement mixed with fantastic storytelling. In the below clip you can hear Director of Photography John Seale discuss how his filming of every shot ultimately helped the edit and thus allowed the audience to have a smooth, albeit heart pounding, storytelling experience.

Mad Max wasn’t the only film with a plan. Director Joe Crump made sure he was well prepared when it came time to shoot The Storyteller.

I had a very extensive shot list. It was combined with the script and some maps that I drew. It was about 350 pages long and I broke it up into binders for each location. So each location had its own binder. - Joe Crump, Director of The Storyteller

Writer, Director and Editor

For Director Joe Crump there was no question that he would be the primary editor on The Storyteller. Joe is in very good company with this approach – James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh, and many more have all edited – or been an editor on – their own films. (Although some credit themselves with a pseudonym). And like most of these Director/Editors, he brought in a co-editor, his daughter Katie.

Katie was sitting at my side the entire time. She edited sometimes and I edited sometimes so it was a co-production. Joe Crump, Director of The Storyteller

The Storyteller was edited using the Adobe Suite on Joe’s PC. What’s interesting is that he was able to send an EDL to the Special Effects Editor who would then work on a MAC. This was all done using Google Drive (password protected of course). Additionally, Vimeo Pro was used to share cuts of the films for friends/family.

Now, if you’re reading this and thinking: “I can’t edit. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Do I have to know Avid, Premiere Pro, Final Cut? I don’t even know what those are!” My first piece of advice is to settle down; it’s okay. Choosing not to be the editor on your film doesn’t mean you’re walking away. Because let’s be clear: the Director is almost* always involved in the edit. Whether they’re there actually pushing the buttons doesn’t matter. Film is a Director’s medium and that holds true until the film is complete.

*The word almost was included because, yes, there are horror stories of directors being locked out of the editing room by the producers, or even producers forcing the director to change their edit. This is why we have several cuts of Blade Runner…

And speaking of having several people involved in the editing process – Director, do yourself a favor and screen the edit for the writer. Writers understand pacing and good writers put the story above their own vanity. They might be able to see what’s not working better than you do.

Editing is about solving problems, even brilliant ones.

Filmmaking (along with TV) has such a unique artistic journey. This is mostly due to the many forms your film inhabits before it’s completed. Think about it: Words turn into shots that turn into edits. At every one of these stages, you’re making artistic decisions. Artistic decisions that later on can cause you headaches. This doesn’t mean those decisions were wrong. On the contrary, I would argue that it’s this ironic and yet oddly appropriate, even comforting, fact that let’s you know you were doing something right.

Indeed, Director Joe Crump faced these challenges when editing.

We did a lot of longer takes and sometimes that put us up against a wall. I could have played it safer and just done coverage but I preferred to do something that was more interesting visually. So I took a chance and… there were some shots I hated but when I put them into the edit, I was happy with the way they turned out. Joe Crump, Director of The Storyteller

And Joe’s in good company…

Thelma Schoonmaker was Martin Scorsese’s editor before he was MARTIN SCORSESE. She edited his first film and has edited every one of his films since Raging Bull. In the below clip, Schoonmaker discusses the most difficult scene of her editing career. You might think it would be a violent scene from The Departed or maybe a grand scene from The Aviator but in fact it involves two brilliant actors improvising. Her challenge was taking all those brilliant moments and crafting a scene that highlights the energy of the performance while moving the story forward.

It’s Always About The Story

Unlike the writer who can shape, change or even completely restructure the story with the flick of his pen (or keyboard), and unlike the director who can change blocking or direct the actors during multiple different takes, an editor must work with the footage we’re given. Unless working on a multi-million dollar studio movie, reshoots are probably not an option. The footage and the script are our only raw materials.

Bringing those raw materials together in a creative way, that’s the final rewrite and what ultimately breathes life into the picture. An editor’s job is to make sure every moment hits. That the audience feels every emotion that the story conveys. It’s a kind of manipulation, really. We pick the best takes, the best shots. Put them together in a way that’ll make you cry or laugh. A great edit is when choice and timing come together to deliver emotion.

We’re always trying to find the perfect take, the perfect expression, and the perfect reaction shot. So much of the movie is about reaction shots and how people are feeling about what other people are saying. What people are saying is rarely what they actually mean. It’s a process of finding the pieces to tell the story – Joe Crump, Director of The Storyteller

Till next time, here’s a video highlighting some great editing moments on film. Have you seen all of them?

Now, when you’re shooting for editing, you can do so to various degrees. A prime example that’s often brought up when shooting for editing is mentioned, is Robert Rodriguez’ El Mariachi. Hear the director explain how he planned his shots with the final edit in mind.

This is obviously taking it to the extremes. With digital cameras, laptop workstations and powerful editing software, your options are plentiful, even on a budget. So let’s take a look at how director and co-writer of The Storyteller, Joe Crump, approached the shoot – knowing that he would also be editing the footage. Here’s our conversation.

Why did you decide to edit the film yourself? Pros and cons to this approach?

 

In filmmaking, the story is told three times, 1. by the screenwriters, 2. by the director and 3. by the editors. I wanted to be involved in all three parts of this process. I also love to edit and my co-editor was my daughter, Katie Crump – who sat by my side and helped me craft the story.

 

So the pros of doing it myself is that it’s a hell of a lot of fun and I got to spend a lot of time with Katie. I also had help syncing the dailies from Nick Andrews, Saxony Wynecoop and Emelie Flower… which made our job a lot easier since they had to be done manually.

 

The cons – I couldn’t blame anyone else for my mistakes as a director or not getting coverage. I was told by several people that I should let someone else edit it – that I was too close to it – and I suppose that may turn out to be the case, but I don’t think it has. In fact, I think being close to it might have helped.

 

Knowing you would be editing yourself, how did you plan ahead? Did you organize the footage in a certain way?

 

We had a wonderful script supervisor, Michael Blomquist. He kept amazing notes and handed us a very detailed log when all was said and done. We also had a sound log that was very helpful from our sound mixer Bud Osborne. We kept all the camera file names so it was easy to cross reference.

 

After that, we kept track of everything by the day we shot it. We then created sequences that were about 5 minutes in length – we’d break them up by shot.

 

We then nested each of these sequences into one long master sequence. Using nested sequences speeds everything up and makes it much easier to find the shots you are looking for on your timeline.

 

We used an Alexa Mini and our camera original files were ProRes 4444, which won’t play on a PC – so we ended up making proxies to edit picture. While we were editing, (we used Premiere Pro CC), Adobe upgraded Premiere and now we can play the camera original on the PC – we still can’t open those files on a PC in Quicktime without hacking the metadata – and that caused the software to crash… you gotta love Apple and their proprietary codec.

Did the fact that you knew how you would be editing the film inspire any of your choices while shooting? Shot compositions? Long takes vs short takes? Blocking and actions?

 

Yes, absolutely. I spent a lot of time creating a shot list before I started directing. This is my first narrative feature film, so I had a good deal of fear and trepidation going into it – thinking that somehow, when I got on the set, everything would go to hell and I’d forget all the important things I needed to include or watch out for in the film. My shot list was 100 pages of notes, 100 pages of location pictures and diagrams and 90 pages of script. I broke up my shotlist into binders that we broke up by location. That way I wouldn’t have to carry all 300 pages, just the pages I needed for that particular location. Yes, this was probably overkill, but it makes things a lot more relaxing when you are prepared and it made it possible for me to work with my Director of Photography, Dan Clarke to come up with some additional shots that were better than I had planned on my own. As the shoot went on, my expectations of what our shots should look like and do got higher and higher. I didn’t just want to tell the story, I wanted to do it elegantly – and sometimes, you have to be there on the set to see something, an angle, a space, a camera move, the right angle of daylight… and take advantage of it when it appears. This takes a calm set and an fully engaged crew.

 

I was expecting to have a lot more emergencies than we ended up having. I was fortunate to have a great production team keeping things moving, headed up by our Producer, Rachel Noll.

 

We have a lot of live music in the movie, but we don’t just stay on people singing, we tell the story while the music is being played – so Rachel Noll (co-writer) and I designed a lot of the montage sequences around these songs. We freely played with time, location, memory – all that stuff during the songs. We also had to estimate how long it would take for certain images and sequences to play – how much screen time they would take – and I designed the shots so that we only had to shoot the parts of the song that we would actually show. I would like to have had more time to shoot more coverage, but it all ended up working pretty well when we got into the cut.

 

How did the intended use of visual effects in certain scenes affect how they were shot – and how does this play into how you are now editing those scenes?

 

We tried to use practical effects whenever we could. Dan put an LED light on the end of a wand and we floated it into the scene for the fairy effect. Some of the shots we don’t have that effect and you can tell because the light being cast from the LED gives a wonderful look on any object or person near the fairy – when we didn’t use it (usually because of time constraints), we had to fake the glow on their faces in After Effects. That worked too, but it was time consuming in post and never looked quite as nice.

 

We also shot a lot of Day for Night. Our main actor was a 10 year old girl (Brooklyn Rae Silzer) and because we shot under SAG Ultra Low Budget rules, we had to limit the times and hours we could use her. Most of the work we did in the woods was day for night – same with the work we did outside on the Fairy Bridge. Dan Clarke, our DP, also did most of the VFX work on the film… some of the effects have 35 or 40 layers in 3D space.

35-40 layers of effects in 3D space is a far cry from the simplicity of the shots described by Robert Rodriguez in the video at the top, but both approaches share a common goal: Making the best film you can with the means available to you.

For more on shooting day-for-night, check out our article on the subject here. And if you would like to take a peek behind the scenes of The Storyteller and see how some of the VFX shots were created, here’s a video of an early visual FX test.

Make yourself a cup of coffee, whip out a notepad, sit up straight and listen carefully. Enjoy.

He brings up several good points in his effort to explain ‘how an editor thinks and feels’ – the point that most resonated with me, was that editing is about rhythm. If you give it time, the scene will tell you when you cut. If you’re going for a certain feeling, you may interrupt the rhythm by cutting early or late. And that timing – the rhythm – is instinctual.

For me personally, editing is not a science. It’s not something you can just do by the numbers. Rather, it’s something deeply personal; a process of trial and error, eventually ending up with an edit that just feels right. Sure, there are certain rules – or suggestions – to follow that will make your final cut a pleasant viewing experience, but think of these rules as the framework within which you experiment. My point is this: Don’t get caught up in how other people edit, and instead focus your energy on developing good editing habits that will allow you to effortlessly try out all the many crazy things you can think of. And that’s really my take-away from Simon’s video. Develop good habits in terms of organizing your footage and your projects. Get creative from there.

Take a look and give it a try.

#1 Have a plan for your edit when you are making your shotlist.

Here’s an admission right off the bat. When I was making my shotlist I thought more in terms of ‘adequate coverage’ than I did ‘interesting editing’ – and it shows. I felt confident that the shots we had planned for would give me plenty of options in the editing room, and it did, but those options weren’t necessarily interesting. I now know that I should have more carefully considered not only what was needed to keep continuity, but also what shots would help me tell the story I wanted to.

#2 Don’t take slating lightly – organization is key to efficient editing.

We did this one right. Yay. As I was first looking through every single take to find my favorites, and then later matching my selections with their corresponding audio, I realized how important the meticulous organization of shots, slates, file numbers, file names and hard drive labeling was for my workflow. We had a couple of shots with no slate – shots we had needed to grab on the go – and even though they only make up a tiny fraction of the many shots I ended up using in my edit, they stand out as unnecessarily time consuming simply because they interrupted my workflow. So stay organized. It’ll save you time and headache.

#3 Don’t yell ‘CUT!’ when you feel the urge – wait a second.

I found myself in this situation more than once: I had found the takes I wanted to use, but had to either make faster cuts than I wanted to or make compromises with the audio, because ‘CUT!’ was heard in the background or – even worse – interrupted an actor’s thought process. My take-away here is a reminder to not get too caught up in the actions of a scene, but rather the thoughts that drive those actions in the actors. Sometimes it takes a second to finish a thought and sometimes it’s only after finishing the thought that we get a spontaneous reaction. And that’s the stuff we wanna catch on camera. So fight the urge to yell ‘CUT!’ too soon. It’ll give you more interesting options in editing.

#4 Cheat when shooting scenes with overlapping dialogue.

And by cheat I mean creating movie magic, not necessarily by being creative but rather by being methodical. If you are shooting a scene with a lot of dialogue – some of which is overlapping – say, in an argument or any other scenario where you envision a lot of cuts back and forth, do yourself a favor and do just a couple of extra takes with clean dialogue. On set, this means asking your actors to perform the scene exactly the same way they’ve done for the past two setups, except this time they’re not allowed to interrupt each other. Even if the script calls for interrupted speech, try a take where the dialogue is delivered just as if it is interrupted, but with a split second of air between the back-and-forth. Editing the audio without compromising on which takes to match will be so much easier.

#5 Kill your darlings.

It’s as true in editing as it is in writing. Sometimes your favorite take just doesn’t fit. Sometimes you need to cut a line or a look or a reaction in order to speed up the action. Sometimes what you thought was brilliant writing just didn’t deliver on camera. Kill it. Cut it. Don’t be sentimental about it. If you’re killing a darling for the betterment of the story, your audience will never miss it in the first place.

#6 F*&k the rules. Cut with your gut.

Alright, this one kinda sorta contradicts the very first thing on this list, but hear me out. Even if you have planned out your shots with a certain edit in mind, try not to be too attached to the rules of standard editing. Try cutting for the reactions rather than for the deliveries. Or try holding on a character a little longer than you probably should. Do split screens. Use jump cuts. Mess up time. If you like what you’re seeing, that’s really all that matters.

The film in question here, by the way, is called (Im)moral. Coming soon to a film festival near you. Also, all editing (both video and audio) – as well as color grading – was done in Final Cut Pro X with very little prior knowledge of how to use the program. It’s easy. There are no excuses not to do it.

I look at it like this: the editing determines the heartbeat of film. It can be fast, it can be relaxed, it can be erratic. It helps the viewer connect to characters and story arcs – it even triggers the viewer to feel the feels you want them to. But you don’t want any of this to be obvious. In fact, Jimmie Rhee – editor with 10 years experience – will go so far as to say that the goal of a good editor should be to eliminate himself from the product. In this latest video from our recent chat with Jimmie, he talks about how he came to this conclusion, how he learned to edit and what makes a good editor – in the cut vs. in the editing room.

Jimmie Rhee is a director, editor and 360° videographer with experience in everything from documentaries to FX-heavy commercial productions. His latest venture, Virtuality Lab, explores the exciting possibilities with 360° video.

More videos with Jimmie will be shared over the coming months, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and our YouTube channel. You might learn something.

An assistant editor’s first and most important responsibility is to make the editing process as smooth as possible. On a feature where footage will be coming in over a period of time this means communicating with the camera and sound departments to understand their workflow and the process by which the footage is being shot, downloaded and delivered. Understanding the type of camera and what kind of footage files are going to be delivered helps determine the post production workflow and whether the footage will need to be offlined and synced with the external sound files.

Need a refresher on post-production workflow? Check out this article.

The assistant editor’s duties include prepping the editing system for the editor. The first step of prep is to log the footage into the system. This means downloading the dailies from the hard drive, and, if the project is following an offline/online workflow, transcoding them to the offline format. Organization of the files is key not just in how and where they’re downloaded, but also what the file names are going to be.

But, wouldn’t it be easier to simply use the numbers generated by the camera? While the answer might be yes when you’re first downloading the footage, it quickly turns into a no when it’s crunch time and the editor is searching for their shot.

In naming files, I recommend using a system that includes the date the footage was shot (so that is can be easily referenced/ compared to the camera logs) the scene number, the camera (if it’s a multi-camera production), and the take number. So, if a scene 15 was shot on the A cam on May 25^th, 2015, the file name would be: 20150525_Scene015_CamA_Take001.

It is also during the logging process that the assistant editor will review the footage for any technical issues, such as picture and sound not syncing properly or a discrepancy in timecode, and add descriptions or what is called metadata. The best way to think of metadata is to think of it as keywords that are easily searchable. If the editor is looking for a particular shot of scene, they can search the metadata and find takes that match what they’re looking for.

Working in Premier? Here’s a great tutorial on how to customize you metadata!

Okay, so the clips are logged and the metadata has been added, but the prep isn’t finished. The clips must be organized in bins. For a feature, bins might be organized by scene. On a documentary, they could be organized into bins for each interviewee and a sub-bin for that interviewee’s B-Roll. If several editors are working on a project, such as a reality show, then creating a universal bin structure that will exist from episode to episode will greatly help with the organization. This is because even though each editor will in evidently customize their specific project file to their needs, having a universal structure will mean that the assistant editor will not have to go searching when it’s time to transfer files or work in said editor’s project.

Once the logging, adding of metadata and organization of the bin structure is complete, it’s time for the assistant editor to hand the project to the editor. This, however, does not mean that the assistant editor’s job is over. Editors rely on the assistant’s knowledge of the footage, and to troubleshoot any trouble with the editing software, be it Premiere, Final Cut Pro or Avid. This means that the assistant editor needs to know the program inside and out.

But where’s the artistry? Believe it or not, there is artistry in organization and technical knowledge. You are taking the raw elements are creating the building blocks (or legos) that they editor will then use to assemble the story. How you build and organize those blocks has a direct artistic relationship with what gets built.

Speaking of, let’s take a moment to remember this creative little story – that used nothing but blocks (or legos, rather):

Like all relationships in filmmaking, the relationship between the Editor and Assistant Editor is one of trust, support and teamwork. The editor has to trust that the assistant editor will organize and work with them to make the editing process a smooth one. The editor also has to trust the assistant editor understands that there is a bigger picture. Indeed, if the editor trusts the assistant editor, they will ask them to edit a rough assembly of a scene that the editor will they take and refine. Thus monitoring how the editor is bringing the story together is key because those rough assemblies need to have the same tone and emotion as what’s being editing.

Picture Locked – but wait, the job’s not done!

Once the editor is complete and picture lock has been achieved, it is the assistant editor who will take the project and begin the conforming process. The assistant editor will also be responsible to deliver the audio output to the sound designer. Indeed, the assistant editor can stay with a project long after the editor is complete, thus like I said from the beginning, they are the red blood cells of post-production!

On a final note, here’s a pretty accurate look/listen into the life of an assistant editor:

To begin, one must understand that historically there are actually two stages in post-production, namely offline editing and online editing.

What is offline editing? In short, it’s the stage where your raw footage is run through a program that transcodes it to have a lower resolution. You can then use that lower resolution footage to edit your film. Think of this as the storytelling stage. The editor focuses on the timing of the cuts, the pacing of story, and communicating emotions.

Online editing, better thought of as the finishing stage, is where you’ll reconnect those low-resolution files to the original, full quality footage. This is also when color correction, effects work, final titles, and audio are brought into the film. It’s at the end of the online stage that you export your completed film.

To illustrate the need for two stages, take a look at this chart and notice the ‘processing power needed’ axis:

Wouldn’t it be faster to just edit the high-resolution footage? Programs like Premiere do claim you can edit natively, but the answer is in your question: 4K files are HUGE. 4096*2160 pixels, to be exact!.The speed at which an editor can work depends on their software (the editing system they’re using) and their system’s hardware (the actual computer they’re editing on).

So while programs like Premiere are able to edit several high-resolution tapeless formats natively, your editor’s system still needs to have powerful hardware. Every time a cut or change is made in the timeline, the computer’s CPU has to process the large files. If the hardware can’t keep up, the editor will have slow playback, the system could potentially crash and, worst of all, the footage could be damaged. Situations like that will absolutely slow down your editing process.

And please take a note from a post-coordinator: Always, always, always have at least one back-up hard drive of your footage… ALWAYS!

There’s also another place where you can lose time; when actually trying to view the rough cut. Often cuts of the in-process film will be uploaded to a dropbox account, google drive, privately on youtube or vimeo or even to an FTP. If your editor is working natively, in 4K resolution, they are going to have export a compressed (smaller) version of the film to upload. Exporting and compressing a 4K file is going to take more time than exporting and compressing a lower-resolution file.

So, you filmed footage; you’ve got those files on an external hard drive… What’s the first step in the offlining process?  

To begin, a project will be made that brings in (imports) the full resolution files. This is a project that you won’t go back to until the offline process is complete.

The next step is to transcode. Simply put, that means turning (transcoding) the raw, high-resolution files into offline, low-resolution files.

Let’s be clear. When you transcode footage to have a lower resolution (in the above picture’s case, a 1920*1080 proxy file), you’re not changing the original quality of the footage. You’re making a lower quality copy that your editor’s system can easily edit. And in the case of 4K, you’ll still be working with high-definition footage.

When going through the offline process, I recommend transcoding your media into half the pixel size of your original media. So if you shot 4K, you’ll go to 1920*1080. I also recommend using the Pro Res 422 Proxy codec. Many sites will recommend using Pro Res 422 HQ, but I find that proxy is even easier on the system and the image quality between the two, in the offline stage, is negligible.

If you want to brush up on your knowledge of codecs before moving on, take a peek at this tutorial:

How do I transcode? That’ll depend on your footage and the editing software you’ll be using. Media Encoder is great when using Premiere, because they’re both in the Adobe family. Compressor could also be used for both Premiere and those that still edit in Final Cut. Another application, specific to RED footage, is REDrushes.

Once the lower-resolution footage has been made, it will be brought in (or imported) into a new offline project. That’s when the editor is free to work their magic.

Once the film is completed and, therefore, deemed locked, it’s time for the online process to begin.

The online process (also called the conform) means you’re taking the locked offline edit and reconnecting the used footage to its full-resolution parent. When using programs like Premiere and Final Cut, this starts by generating an EDL of the timeline.

An EDL is basically a reference file of your movie that your editor will open in the original project that contains the full resolution files. Once opened, the full resolution files connect and the timeline of your movie is now online.

But alas, we’re not done. Once the timeline of your movie is online, it’s time to color correct, do effects work and bring in the final audio mix. When all those elements come together, it’s time to export. And voilá, you’ve made a movie!

Remember: Creating a post-production workflow is about creating an environment where you and the editor can focus on your film. If this all seems like an unnecessary amount of effort and you just wanna get your masterpiece through post as quickly as possible, take a second with this countdown of some of the most effective editing moments in film history. It will make you appreciate the time and care needed in creating the optimal post-processing workflow.

And for good measure, here’s a clip from the film that won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Film Editing.