How exactly does FILM editing work?

ryan brown

ryan brown

lOwEr CaSe Member
Anyone care to break down (in layman's terms) how exactly the process works? I was thinking about it last night, did some searching and didn't come up with much. I came up with the processes, but nothing that explained what happens to the actual 35mm FILM, after it's been shot, to make transitions, effects, etc...

I read an article about the movie "Spun" just after it came out, and it stated that Jonas Akerlund (Director/Editor) actually editing the first cut of the film by litteraly cutting and splicing the film together with tape.

Anyway... just curious, as I can't really figure it out on my own. How would they do effects in the old school movies? cut out small peices of the film? how bout a simple cross dissolve? color grading??

-brown
 
Film is cut on a bench (table with a gang synchronizer, viewer, splicer, squawkbox, spindles) or an upright (a machine combining all of those elements in a stand-up device about the size of a file cabinet) or a flatbed (a machine combining all of those elements on a tabletop with platters for the film and mag spools and a (usually) larger view screen). If you're cutting synch sound, all of these systems are intended to keep your mag (sound) tracks - also called 'fullcoat' - filmbase covered with magnetic covering, like an audiotape, with perforations matching the film itself, synchronized with your image. Simple straight cuts are just that - cut the film, splice it back together with tape, or hot glue. Dissolves, etc are indicated for the lab, by making grease-pencil marks on the workprint itself noting the in-point/out-point of the effect, with marks in between telling the lab what effect you want. For example, a thirty-frame dissolve from A to B, is indicated by cutting from A to B fifteen frames in, then marking off the last 15 frames of A, the first 15 frames of B, and drawing a long <> (overlapped) in between the marks.

Clear?

Everything is kept synchronized using (a) clapstick sound on the mag and keyframe marked on the image and (b) the edge numbers that are latently-exposed onto the filmstock by the manufacturer, before it's exposed in the camera. Editing lives and dies by those numbers; every single cut/effect/whatever is done by the numbers by the lab that receives your workprint+mag, then conforms your negative and optically (or contact) prints it to create an answer print. The 'conforming' part, is taking your negative "A" roll (shot 01, followed by shot 03, followed by shot 05, etc, all with black leader in between) and your negative "B" roll (shot 02, followed by shot 04, followed by shot 06, etc, also with black leader in between) so that when the two are exposed together onto raw negative stock, the black leader in the one roll leaves unexposed stock onto which the image from the other roll can be exposed.

If you shoot film, but cut on video, your video time-code will be interpolated with your negative edge numbers, so that the lab can generate an EDL (edit decision list) off the tape, that tells them where to cut the actual film and how to put it together.

I forgot to mention, there's also any number of bins, cotton bags over which there's a frame on which you hang lengths of film that you have cut out, or are reserving to cut in. Don't lose anything! Don't forget which footage is on what peg over which bin! Don't mistakenly pick up a good take, and use it to slug out one of your mag tracks!

Color grading is a separate part of the process, performed with physical filters and timed/adjusted processing (bleaching, pushing, etc) by trained eyeballs, at the lab.

And there's a fair amount more, but you get the gist.

Thanks for bringing up those memories; I'm going to go have a nice quiet nervous breakdown, now.
 
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Did I mention that it was always cold, dark, raining, uphill (both ways) and at the intersection of four map squares?

and then there was the wolves...
 
I'm glad I got the experience of cutting on film, which is just as Sad Max says. I'm also glad I probably won't ever have to do it again.
 
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