At last, a diligent soul, one John Buck, has had the passion and taken the time to trace the track of editing from its manual scissors and glue past to its electronic mouse and keyboard present. An Australian editor, Buck writes up the recent fast track decades of technological advances as well as the build-up to them over scores of years in two books under the title: Timeline: A History of Editing.

EditDroid: Where Darth Vader appeared

when you tried something it didn’t like.

Volume 1 details the evolutions from 1898-1988, spanning the period from film (nitrate and non) to tape (linear and non).  It contains interviews Buck made of major system inventor-engineers Adrian Ettlinger and Andy Maltz (Ediflex) and others responsible for the development of analogue, tape-based systems such as CMX, Convergence, D-Vision, EditDroid, and Montage.

Lightworks’ unique console

Volume 2 covers the years 1988 to 2000 and the saga of how film and video systems paved the road to today’s currents digital editing tools. It too is chock full of interviews with the key players and prime movers of today’s tools which include: Avid, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Lightworks, Media 100, and Premiere.

Buck’s book includes the following splendid timeline – decipherable by logo by the end – of editing technology. You can download a high, medium, or low res copy here.

We are indeed indebted to Buck for a contribution to film history that only an editor could make.

admin Editing practices, History/research, Technical & process

I received an email from Linton Davies and an invitation to download his book for free for review purposes. Glad I took this UK editor up on his offer. The Editing of Star Wars: How Cutting Created a Classic offers insights to Star Wars fan boys and girls as well as professional editors. I learned a few things myself and was impressed by Davies’ astute diagnosis of the editing in this classic, game-changing film as well as editing in general. Before I talk about what I learned, to make a short story short – the book is a pithy 86 pages here’s a bit from the author himself.

Davies reasons to write the book

Davies emailed me:

“As a long suffering editor in the trenches I became frustrated about how little this side of filmmaking is discussed in relation to actual ‘cuts’, not just in purely technical (‘my RAM’s bigger than yours’) or philosophical (‘you just have to feel it!’) terms. The book seeks to address that, using one of the most popular films of all time as a peg to go into the practical cause and effects of the choices editors make.”

In the book’s preface Davies writes, “My goal is to demonstrate how ‘cutting’ is at the very heart of everything we love and remember about Star Wars, hiding in plain sight since its initial release. I believe there to be tremendous value in spending time thinking about editing in this way, not just from a purely theoretical perspective, but through the lens of a real world example, where cuts take on a life of their own. Editing is ultimately and essentially the art of storytelling, so how can it be rationally discussed if separated from the story itself?

Davies succeeds at his task and more.

A few of the interesting things I liked and/or learned

1. Rhythm section

Davies devotes the second most space (19 pages) to discussing the pace and duration of cuts and relating to the overall rhythm of scenes, evoking Eisenstein, Hirsch, and other illustrious editors. He includes a graph of ASLs (Average Shot Lengths) that covers all the scenes of Star Wars and another of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to compare the first and last movies in the series.

2. Editing Section (22 pages) and the meatiest section

a. Droids and the Cold War
Davies relates, “Lucas viewed the droids as key to his Cold War message, cultivating the idea that seemingly ‘disposable’ civilians can have a huge impact if they have the right spirit, that they can take down the seemingly all powerful evil Empire.”

b. Cheating Dialog
Obi Wan Kenobi’s famous line “May the force be with you” was neither scripted by George Lucas nor uttered by actor Alec Guinness who made himself unavailable after production. Editor Paul Hirsch wrestled the sentence, sans light saber from several sentences Guinness voice during production.

c. Movie Roots
Davies digs at the roots of the Star Wars saga and uncovers just how derivative the time honored movie is. For instance, the opening credits are taken in 1940 from Flash Gordon, an early space series.

Last word

Davies has put his love of a film as a kid together with his time in the cutting room as an adult to put forth a book well worth reading. The force of editing – and love – is with him in The Editing of Star Wars: How Cutting Created a Classic.

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research, Sound & music editing

In “The ‘Invisible Art’: A Woman’s Touch Behind the Scenes,” a May 25, 2012 NY Times article, John Anderson writes about the deficit of women DPs (2) and directors (0) in this year’s 22 nominated features for the penultimate of film festivals – Cannes. This lack reflects the still abysmal statistics for ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) which has 225 male and 8 female members and the DGA (Directors Guild of America) which has 25% female membership and reported that Caucasian males directed 77% of the 2,600 scripted TV episodes for the 2010-11 season.

Anderson goes on to note that one-third of the films were edited by women and went on to look at other numbers regarding female editors: MPEG (Motion Picture Editors Guild) has a total of 1,500 women in its 7,300 active membership (21%); A.C.E. (American Cinema Editors) tallies 650 members of which one third are female and has six females on its 14-member board of directors.

Are women more suited to editing?

I wonder, as Anderson does, if there are male and female characteristics – a gender basis – for editing (and other professions). Here are the responses he got from female editors:

Mary Lampson, feature doc editor (Harlan County U.S.A and A Lion in the House): “Many good editors are sort of introverted, shy people, observers of life. They’re very funny. They’re ironic. And all those traits are what you need to be a good editor. I don’t think women have a monopoly on those traits, of course. But women tend to be more like that than men.”

Dana Glauberman feature editor (Up in the Air and Labor Day): “It’s easy to say we, as women, are a stronger talent at it, simply because people think we are more nurturing than men are, we are more sensitive than men are. Obviously, there are many talented male editors, some of whom I’ve learned a great deal from.”

Alyse Ardell Spiegel, feature doc editor (Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory and Unraveled): I’d like to think my being female contributes to my sensitivities and strengths in storytelling, but it feels ridiculous to say that. You have to be a good listener and interpreter.”

Why do so many women go into editing?

Anderson interviews women editors and delves into the question of what women bring to the editing table. Mary Jo Markey, feature editor (Super 8 and Star Trek): “A lot of women go into editing because women go into editing. People come out of film school wanting to be directors and the odds of that are long. “It makes sense to me that women would see what a viable option editing is, and it’s one that women are succeeding in.”

Kim Roberts, an Emmy winner and feature doc editor (Food Inc. and Waiting for Superman) remarks: “There’s a lot of joking among editors about our willingness to be alone in a room with a computer, not seeing the sunlight. But there’s something in my personality that wanted something more secure, where I didn’t have to hustle and I could have a family and go home and have dinner with them every night.”

The Research and reactions

Researchers such as Simon Baron-Cohen have looked into gender characteristics and occupation. Editing involves both male preferences such as “sympathizing” and extended periods of working alone and female preferences of “empathizing” and being able to read facial expressions.

Mary Jo Markey states: “Empathy is one of the most important things I bring [to editing]. Making the action work depends on your investment in the characters. I won’t say this about all women, but I do think I was raised like a lot of women in my generation, not so much to be seen and not heard, but encouraged to be observers. And I do think it creates a quality where you look at people and think about what they’re thinking and experiencing, and that’s kind of what I do when I’m cutting.” Markey also notes that women edit “male” TV shows like Alias while men work on Felicity, a “female” series.

Why are there more women editors in documentaries?

Anderson raised this question with female doc editors and garnered these answers.

Penelope Falk (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work): “…there’s not a lot of money in docs. It’s not glamorous. No one’s getting rich. And that’s another reason it tends to be very female. It sounds sexist, I know; I’m sounding reductive, but there’s more pressure on men to make money. Although I know it’s shifting: I want to make money, too.”

I agree with Penelope Falk about gender traits with editing and other professions: “It’s more cultural than biological. But what you do in the edit room, I don’t think it’s gender-based.”

Mona Davis (Advise and Dissent and Adama): “It’s all conjecture on all our parts. But what’s struck me now, at least in documentaries, is that my generation, and I’m in my mid-50s, we’re the last generation in which a preponderance of women will go into editing. I know so many documentaries now directed by women, shot by women D.Ps. When I was coming up, there were like two.”

Last word

I am both encouraged and discouraged. Encouraged that more women are becoming DPs and directors as well as editors and that there are fewer boys’ clubs dominating sound and picture cutting rooms; discouraged that in general, women (and many male parents) still are caught between kids’ schedules and work schedules and that there is no universal childcare. Also, I see how culturally there are certain female and male values and traits and I continue to question their biological basis and how they serve society.

What do you think?

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research, Jobs

Chauvet cave paintings of lions.

Photo by HTO/Wikimedia Commons

Muybridge…Disney…Pixar…may not have been the animation mavericks many believe them to be. There’s strong speculation that cave people were the first to create animation, according to an article in this month’s issue of Antiquity magazine written by two French men: artist Florent Rivère and Marc Azéma. An archaeologist and filmmaker with the University of Toulouse—Le Mirail, Azéma, spent 20 years studying cave animation paintings, some of which date back 30,000 years. “Stone Age artists intended to give life to their images,” he states. “The majority of cave drawings show animals in action.”

How did they animate the images? Azéma and  Rivère posit that the cave people used a torch and an incised disk as a crude form of a thaumatrope. Dubbed “the miracle wheel” and initially developed by astronomer John Hershel in 1825, a thaumatrope creates the illusion of motion by spinning images on a disk. Azéma and Rivère believe that “Paleolithic thaumatropes can be claimed as the earliest of the attempts to represent movement that culminated in the invention of the cinematic camera.”

admin History/research

A main title in its best form is like a prologue to a movie. Ideally, it sets you up for the emotional content of the film and gets you excited about it.

Kyle Cooper, title designer, Rango, Tron: Legacy, Ironman, and Spider-Man 2.

How did we get from here…(View Dr. No opening credits from 1962 below.)

…to here? (View Quantum of Solace opening credits from 2008 below.)

If you’re in Los Angeles this summer, enjoy a little bit of hedonistic nostalgia at LACMA (LA County Museum of Art). To honor James Bonds’ 50^th anniversary on the silver screen, the museum is running all of the movies. Also, in conjunction with a former employer of mine, the Loyola Marymount School of Film and Television, the museum has created a video exhibit that loops all 22 Bond opening credit sequences continuously, 14 of which Maurice Binder created.

Charles Taylor wrote about Binder in the July 29, 2002 issue of Salon magazine: “His title sequences are three-minute refutations of the laws of gravity: Figures jump and bounce and run through the colorful voids, or simply luxuriate in midair as if the atmosphere itself had become the most inviting bed in the universe. The sequences are a distillation of the films to color and movement and sex…They move with a deliberate and luxuriant sensuality, drinking in all the nudie cuties prancing and posing through them. It’s pure sex, both hot and cool, urgent and deliciously slow, celebrating both pursuit and release. The sequences are so rich, the atmosphere so thick, you begin to feel as if you could walk up the aisle into the screen.”

So go and enjoy! And notice the changes in actors, “Bond girls,” costumes, music, VFX, and editing styles.

admin Editing practices, Fun & games, History/research, Visual FX editing

Increasingly, studios are securing film prints in vaults and only sending DCPs (Digital Cinema Packages – hard drives with files of the movie) to exhibitors. In an April 12 article in LA Weekly, “Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling,” reporter Gendy Alimurung stated, “The six major studios spend $850 million a year to have release prints made, and an additional $450 million to deliver them.” She also reported that theatre owners received this letter from 20th Century Fox in November 2011,: “The date is fast approaching when 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight will adopt the digital format as the only format in which it will theatrically distribute its films…We strongly advise those exhibitors that have not yet done so to take immediate steps to convert their theaters to digital projection systems.”

For chain and first-run theatres, conversion to digital is a no-brainer. For art houses, classic theatres, and other independent exhibitors, adopting the new format is financially prohibitive. John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, warned at the association’s annual convention last year, “If you don’t make the decision to get on the digital train soon, you will be making the decision to get out of the business.”

Beyond the financial aspect, some moviegoers and cinema owners want both a print and a digital choice, like book readers have. And then there are the folks such as projectionists, curators, post personnel, and couriers whose livelihoods are threatened and have been extinguished by digis and the businesses like labs and film stock manufacturers – just think Kodak – that they’ve shut down. Also, ponder how editing and cameras have gone digital.

But this is not to decry DCPs or take a Luddite leap back to the days of film only. Rather, the big question, as I ended Part 1 of this two-part series remains: How will digital stack up against print in the future?

The Future

As discussed in my March two-partner, ““Digitally yours forever: Where and how is preservation going?” a major downside of going digital lies in its preservation. Studios tend to look at short term profits and ignore that their product may not be available for future profit if DCP sources are not properly migrated to new formats as they evolve and vaulted properly along the way.

Losing data or having it become corrupt is also a scary but realistic nightmare and has occurred on major films, as Alimurung notes, on Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2. She quotes an engineer, Shawn Jones, “Digital snowballs on you. It starts simple. Then as you grow and use more of it, your costs quickly escalate.” Digital data cannot just be vaulted and abandoned, like film negative. Data and its devices require testing, playing, and maintaining at regular intervals. And often it’s repurposed for games or videos or otherwise manipulated, so maintaining and preserving it is an active, ongoing job.

Sad and frightening to think that we’re creating more content than ever every day yet its life may be snuffed out more quickly than ever.

admin History/research, Technical & process

There’s nothing like the smell (and look and feel) of a new book in the morning
(to steal from that famous phrase in Apocalypse Now).

For over a year now, I’ve been mentioning why I felt it important and necessary to re-write my first book, Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video and excerpting parts here. Now the result of my year of labor – 477 pages of newly minted book – has arrived on my doorstep and I can share it with you and the world.

Learn all the details about the Cut by Cut 2 here . Or tour the book’s highlights below.

What’s new in Cut by Cut 2:

• Workflow charts and explanations for film, tape, and file-based shows HD and 3D practices throughout the book.
  • Updated music and sound editing workflows as well as the disk authoring and DI (digital intermediate) workflows.
• HD and 3-D content and VFX editing process and types of edits.
• Up-to-date info for finishing on film via DI or traditional negative cut process.
• An in-depth look at modern, “MTV” style editing vs. traditional, Hollywood style that employs current research and a chart detailing the differences.
• Advice from 15 experienced editors working in all film genres from comedy to corporate videos to news to music videos to reality shows.

Like the first edition, Cut by Cut 2:

• Clearly and completely lays out the editing journey from the first frame of the shoot to the final show exhibited on tube, theater, disk, or Web.
• Concentrates on the why and what to do next, delineating how editors perform their job on Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and other digital editing systems.
• Details the post production process from dailies to finishing via online, negative cut, disk authoring, and the DI process.
• De-mystifies codecs, telecine and reverse telecine, aspect ratio, time code standards, and a multitude of other video, film, and digital editing concepts.
• Explains how to approach cutting the footage: Make your first edits, deal with mismatches, and conquer action and dialogue scenes and more.
• Spends two chapters describing how sound and music are designed, recorded, and mixed.
• Defines and explains the terms, apps, and practices that working picture, sound, and music editors use.

Cut by Cut 2 contains:

• Editing exercises and over 150 tables, charts, photos, and illustrations.
• A meaty section on how to find an editing job whether you’re starting out or looking for that next job or career move.
• An extensive glossary and an editor’s resource guide.

I wrote the book for:

• Editors of all stripes: Indies, students, and professionals.
• Aspiring editors: Assistant editors, apprentice editors, and career changers.
• Filmmakers: Directors, producers, writers, and everyone who want to understand editing.
• Professors and teachers of editing.
• Prosumers who want to make the leap to professional.

I sincerely hope Cut by Cut 2 helps you with your projects.

Check the book out and let Joy know what you think.

admin Announcements, Editing & life, Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research, Jobs, Sound & music editing, Technical & process, Television, Visual FX editing

Following on my March two-part series “Digitally yours forever: Where and how is preservation going?” here’s a view into print vs. digital projection.

Smaller, positive carbon rod (left) sparks larger negative carbon rod (right) to create burning arc of flame that light up film frames on reel.

Historically, of course, movie theatres have projected film, primarily 35mm but also 16mm, 70mm, and video. To the left is a photo of yours truly locking the pin on a 6000 foot (1 hour) reel attached to a projector that used two rods of carbon to create an arc of light to illuminate the frames (pictured to right).

But of course that was many moons and millions of feet of film through projectors ago.

I also worked on platter systems which can – and still do – spool an entire movie (12,000 feet of film on average) into a projector that relies on a Xenon bulb instead
of burning carbon. (See photo to right). Over the past decade digital projection has grown and shows no signs of abating. State-of-the art theatres have installed a server tethered to the projector for ingest files of the movie – referred to as the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) – which can be sparked to life with the selection of a playlist on an iPad (photo on left).

Digi-projector. Photo courtesy of Texas Instruments.

Platters holding film (on left) feeds a projector lit by a Xenon bulb (on right).

No longer does a film arrive in a projection booth in a couple of back-shattering battered cans that look like they went through WWII, lugged up by a manager (due to union rules). Today a hard drive with the DCP arrives in a sleek, lightweight, plastic suitcase and the manager or IT person – often the projectionist and invariably non-union – easily ferries it upstairs.

The battle between print and digi projection

In an article titled “Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling” April 12 in LA Weekly reporter Gendy Alimurung writes, “There is a war raging in Hollywood: a war between formats. In one corner…are defenders of 35mm film. Elegant in its economy, for more than 100 years film has been the dominant medium with which movies are shot, edited and viewed. In the other corner are backers of digital technology — a cheaper, faster, democratizing medium, a boon to both creator and distributor.”

At $150, a DCP costs 10% of film print which runs $1500. IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service reports that “This year, for the first time in history, celluloid ceases to be the world’s prevailing movie-projector technology.” The company predicts, according to Alimurung that in “2013, film will slip to niche status, shown in only a third of theaters. By 2015, used in a paltry 17 percent of global cinemas, venerable old 35 mm film will be mostly gone.”

The question

Once again it comes down to Hollywood being in the entertainment business. Digital is perceived as cheaper and it certainly appears to be in the short run. Digi-films do not deteriorate like print film does and can be shipped quickly, making screenings of certain indie films and theatrical events like sport matches possible. However, the digital equipment theatre equipment is expensive (70K to 150K/screen). Although the studios are offsetting this by offering to pay theater owners a “virtual-print fee” for ten years for each new release exhibited via DCP, the big question looms: How will digital stack up against print in the future?

Part 2 will focus on this.

admin History/research, Technical & process

This post completes my two-part series on “The Digital Dilemma 2,” AMPAS’s 135-page report on Indies (independent filmmakers) and the preservation of digital media.

What Indies Say

The report quotes them as stating:

We need archives that make it easy for independent image makers to donate their work. And those archives need to have the wherewithal – finances, storage space and staff – to preserve the work and store it for the very long term…I’m really terrified that once I die, all the work I’ve created will vanish with me.

The work we do becomes part of our collective history, even when it was not initially intended to be.

It’s essential for every filmmaker to pay attention to preserving their work for future generations, as well as for future revenue options.

Challenges

The main hurdles indies face when seeking to preserve their work digitally cost, lack of standards (e.g. what file format should be used), and the absence of established preservation entities and repositories to perform and store the files.

Terms and Concepts

Archivists use the terms “digital preservation,” “digital archiving,” and “data curation” to describe their mandate to preserving digital media which includes workflows beginning with the shoot with perhaps a DIT (digital image technician) on hand and concludes with the storage of the digital data and a set of clear, documented guidelines for its continued preservation. In the report an archivist observed, “Previously, preservation meant that the physical object or item was preserved. With digital preservation, it is the content and not the carrier that must be preserved.”

Conclusion

The report concludes:

The digital dilemma is far from solved. Unless preservation becomes a requirement in planning, budgeting and marketing strategies, it will remain unsolved for independent filmmakers, documentarians and nonprofit audiovisual archives alike. These communities, and the nation’s artistic and cultural heritage, would greatly benefit from a comprehensive, coordinated digital preservation plan for the future.

admin History/research, Technical & process

In 2007, AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and bestower of the Academy awards), published “The Digital Dilemma” about the preservation of studio-made motion pictures. With “The Digital Dilemma 2” a three-year study released in 2011, AMPAS teamed with NDIIPP (the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program) to probe the preservation situation for independent filmmakers (including documentarians) and non-profit audiovisual archives.

Fact: Indies account for 75% of exhibited features and include such recent Best Picture Oscar winners as Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker, and The King’s Speech.

While this short blog cannot possible do justice to this 135-page report, I will try to hit the major points of interest.

The Dilemma

• Most indie filmmakers are occupied with selling their films and moving on to the next project and pay scant attention to archiving.
• If an indie film doesn’t secure major studio distribution, its preservation is uncertain and content loss is most likely.

• Consensus among users is that recorded digital data will not last 30 years. No archivists surveyed by AMPAS trusted storing digital data tapes for that long because data storage hardware and software become obsolete in five to seven years.

Preservation of moving images and recorded audio takes place at the hundreds of archives, libraries, universities, studios, TV stations, and homes around the U.S.

How are these images and sounds being preserved?

1. On film:

The major studios are creating film separation masters which employ the OCN (original camera negative) to generate three B & W (black and white) copies, filtering each one for one of the RGB spectrums. After development, these copies are inert and deemed the most stable for long-term archival, preservation, and restoration purposes. They are vaulted in climate controlled rooms with passive deterioration detectors and straightforward inspection protocols. For indies, this route is financially prohibitive. Also, as digital cinema and cinematography increases, there will be more .DPX and .CIN files to contend with and less photochemical film.

2. On analog tape:

If stored properly in a cool room, this material is relatively simple to preserve and will last for decades, as long as the necessary recording and playback systems are retained.

3. On digital tape:

   Similar method and longevity to analog material.

4. As digital data on digital storage media

As editors well know, much digital tape, film, and analog tape are being converted to digital data in the post process. So dealing with digital data presents a huge challenge. This is due to digital data’s many potential failure points (computer, disk or hard drive, network, software, the actual media itself, etc.) and its short cycle of technical obsolescence (file formats, drive, data readers, etc.).

Digital storage systems range from off shelf, portable hard drives overseen by the filmmaker to complex data centers maintained by archival institutions’ IT departments. Both systems are typically accessed by a desktop computer and necessitate records keeping and tracking via a database software which can be as basic as FileMakerPro or complex as a DAMS (digital asset management system).

Cold storage isn’t enough for digital data which includes files, hard disk drives, DVD, etc. Digital data demands active management on a continuing basis to ensure access to the data. Active data management includes backing up the data to several drives in several locations, routinely verifying (inspecting) the data to make sure it’s pristine, and transcoding it to new formats and drives as they appear to have some staying power.

Summary

The AMPAS report states:

There is no escaping the fact that digital technologies enable independent filmmakers to explore and extend the art form in ways that are simply not possible with motion picture film. The price to be paid for these new capabilities, however, is either the loss of content to digital decay, or accepting the responsibility of working with technology providers to articulate and satisfy industry requirements for the long-term preservation of digital data, achieve satisfactory backwards compatibility and implement standards.

The next post will look at what indie filmmakers say about preservation and give the report’s findings for the future.

admin History/research, Technical & process