Techniques That Impress Fellow Filmmakers and Annoy General Audiences

C

combatentropy

Veteran
I pulled out some documentaries I made over 15 years ago. I could barely watch them because the editing was so choppy. While making them I was afraid it would get boring if I stayed too long on a shot. I ended up overcompensating.

When I watch other people's works, I see that I am not the only one who falls victim to a twitchy edit finger. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find I am less disdainful of the foibles of amateurs and more distracted by from the overwrought products of professionals. The editing is too cutty. The depth of field is too shallow. The music is too hyper or, usually, just plain unnecessary.

It's not just in filmmaking but in many crafts where your development seems to go through these phases:

1. Newb. Low knowledge, low skill, make mistakes, make simple works.
2. Intermediate. Think you know something, make complicated works.
3. Master. Knows quite a bit. Make careful choices, make simple works.

It's worthy of a separate thread, but I find it a plentiful source of irony that the Cahiers du Cinema --- that cradle of the avant-garde, experimental, French New Wave --- had as their favorite director, Howard Hawks, whose style was intentionally minimalistic and conventional (I mean his camerawork and editing, not necessarily his stories or the way he directed actors). In fact his definition of a good director was "someone who doesn't annoy you."

Anyway, is anyone else becoming this way? What did you used to do that you now renounce? Or what do others do that annoys you even though it impresses people in your field? (It can be in filmmaking or some other art that you are into, like music or writing or plumbing.)
 
Have you ever seen all or portions of "AC/DC at River Plate"?

It was directed by David Mallet, a seminal music video director of the 1980's, who along with his business partner and fellow director Russell Mulcahy, has essentially defined the genre. And I love AC/DC.

But watching the concert made me want to throw up.
 
I dont make enough films or anything really to have much to contribute but I STILL edit too fast much of the time. Its hard to be objective about your own work so for me when youre “waiting” for a cut it can seem like a shot is going on forever. Sometimes giving it a few days/weeks/months if you have the luxury before revisiting something can make you more objective.

I see this as a song writer when I write things in a “simple” genre (rock) that end up needlessly complex OR too linear and simple (in other aspects) when plenty of folks have had great successes doing just the opposite but the opposite doesnt feel natural/right to me so I continue to make the same mistakes and annoy myself.
 
There was an idea running around a few years ago that no cut can last more than something like 3 seconds (or maybe it was 1 second). Massive hogwash. Several professionals were spouting this filth, and of course large numbers of youtubers regurgitating that same. The content and mood never mattered to these people, just that you cut every second, on the second, no matter what was happening.

Hopefully all of these people learned to do things differently when the scene required it, or have gone on to flip burgers at the local fast food place.
 
On the other hand, Andrei Tarkovsky had these super-long takes but yet was dismissive of the fellow Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov for having done the same in films like "I Cuba". Both are revered in the West. As they should be.

 
Greg_E said:
There was an idea running around a few years ago that no cut can last more than something like 3 seconds (or maybe it was 1 second). Massive hogwash. Several professionals were spouting this filth, and of course large numbers of youtubers regurgitating that same. The content and mood never mattered to these people, just that you cut every second, on the second, no matter what was happening.

Hopefully all of these people learned to do things differently when the scene required it, or have gone on to flip burgers at the local fast food place.
Click to expand...

Watching a lot of youtube and other online content definitely got into my head about editing. I was taught that generally hard cuts and dissolves are all you need unless there's a very good reason. Now there's all kinds of wacky transitions, speed-ramps and general editing chaos. Made me feel like my edits were boring in comparison, and made me worry that I was falling out of touch. Either that, or it's a passing trend that will be looked upon as laughable, similar to lots of 80s music videos. Still not sure which.
 
So many fall into the “trap” of forgetting about the actual intended audience and are more concerned with impressing their bosses and peers and forget about making something the general public/intended audience will actually enjoy. And then you also have the self-righteous douches who will say you just don’t “get it” and you’re too dumb to understand. But it’s generally the former.

I remember the “cut every two seconds” BS that was spewed out back in the day. In fact I remember getting a call for a corporate type video in my early days back in the late 90’s and that being thrown out there by the person that called me(the PIO of the police dept. that was also married to a still photog of one of the newspapers). I still see a lot of fast cutting, just for the sake of trying to be “fancy”, when letting the shot breathe would let the viewer actually see what’s going on. There’s a time and place for fast cuts and rapid-fire montages, but 99% of the time when I see it, it’s usually just someone trying to show-off.

Something else that used to be drilled into everyone was the “nat pop”. You could always tell the guys at the local stations that were “NPPA Photogs”*, because the top of the package was always 3-4 really hard nat pops. I’ve actually seen a slight resurgence in nat pops recently, but they seem even more forced and out-of-place than ever, because of poor execution by the photog/editor.

*see first sentence
 
I don't think there is any formula about cutting style. Good editors cut the story together in a way that engages the audience, period.
That can be frantic editing like Watchtower of Turkey or glacial editing like Wenders used in "Wings of Desire" or anything in-between.
Good editors have taste and a vision for how they want their cutting to affect you. I think sound design is probably the most underrated
component that most editors neglect, the right sound design means everything in an edited piece and it's tedious and time consuming to
find the right music (if you're using music?) and sound effects, beds, ambient.

I really dislike editing that is trendy, like speed ramping everything and the overuse of slow motion, those are the two things that I think
really date a lot of modern content. Slow motion has lost most of it's effect and impact because so many people use it for everything, it gets boring
and tedious. Same with speed changes, used here and there for a big effect, they can be really great, but when most shorter form videos are almost
all speed ramped, gag, its so repetitive and overused.

I also find that longer for documentary storytelling is a completely different animal than 2 minute YouTube Videos, promos and music videos, the styles
are so different as to be almost impossible for one who is good at one style to be good at the other. Short form cutty promos and sizzles are such a different
style and audience. I totally agree about simplicity, cuts and an occasional dissolve are all I really want to see for most content other than commercials, music videos or
title sequences, for those some clever editors do some pretty engaging things that make you wonder, "Wow, how did they do that?" as far as mattes, layers and composites
 
Last edited:
Yes the Nat pop is making a comeback in my market as well. And when done with a purpoe, it can have a powerful effect on the rest of the piece.
 
I've come to really appreciate the conventional directing and editing in films like When Harry Met Sally, or Planes Trains and Automobiles. I'm tired of filmmakers trying to show off how badass they are as filmmakers. Probably my favorite directing and editing of all though is Woody Allen. He covers scenes with the fewest number of shots necessary and has some of the most efficient directing I've ever seen. Specifically watch his films from the late '80s.
 
puredrifting said:
I don't think there is any formula about cutting style. Good editors cut the story together in a way that engages the audience, period.
That can be frantic editing like Watchtower of Turkey or glacial editing like Wenders used in "Wings of Desire" or anything in-between.
Good editors have taste and a vision for how they want their cutting to affect you. I think sound design is probably the most underrated
component that most editors neglect, the right sound design means everything in an edited piece and it's tedious and time consuming to
find the right music (if you're using music?) and sound effects, beds, ambient.

I really dislike editing that is trendy, like speed ramping everything and the overuse of slow motion, those are the two things that I think
really date a lot of modern content. Slow motion has lost most of it's effect and impact because so many people use it for everything, it gets boring
and tedious. Same with speed changes, used here and there for a big effect, they can be really great, but when most shorter form videos are almost
all speed ramped, gag, its so repetitive and overused.

I also find that longer for documentary storytelling is a completely different animal than 2 minute YouTube Videos, promos and music videos, the styles
are so different as to be almost impossible for one who is good at one style to be good at the other. Short form cutty promos and sizzles are such a different
style and audience. I totally agree about simplicity, cuts and an occasional dissolve are all I really want to see for most content other than commercials, music videos or
title sequences, for those some clever editors do some pretty engaging things that make you wonder, "Wow, how did they do that?" as far as mattes, layers and composites
Click to expand...

+1

That really says it all. Nothing to add, nothing to subtract.

And just because I can't leave good enough alone, I'll add some superflous verbiage :)

The key sentence that boils everything down into a principle is this: "Good editors cut the story together in a way that engages the audience, period."

This is true of all artistic endeavor, period. Engage the audience! By any means necessary. There are no rules, save this one. If you can manage to do it by cutting every 0.5 second, go ahead. If you do it by shooting the whole film in one take, go ahead. Did you engage the audience? Then you succeeded. However you controlled the elements of your project, it was all in service to this one overarching principle. That's all you need to know.

One of the bigest challenges for artists is how to retain objectivity in face of over-familiarity. If you've been working on a script for months on end, you become inured to it - and then just doing a change for the sake of change makes it feel fresh to you, because it is simply unfamiliar, and so you think it's fresh to the audience, whereas it is only fresh to you, and that change was actually detrimental. When editing, you are looking at the same footage over and over again, and just because you know what the shot is, you are already subconciously weary of it after a few seconds, so you feel the need to cut, where the cut is not needed, because the audience who sees the shot for the first time does not have the same sense of over-familiarity and impatience. Sometimes artists fiddle with the work because they keep looking for ways to make the work fresh to themselves, and can't put themselves in the shoes of the audience who is experiencing the work for the first time; and then, they fall into a vicious cycle, where the "new" version becomes over-familiar and then they need to come up with a "newer" fresh version which in time becomes overfamiliar and they spiral into a neverending cycle of revision and endless fiddling that makes the work completely tortured and dead.

There is a big difference between perfecting the work objectively, and "perfecting" it as a mirage, similar to how you keep thinking you're getting closer to the water in the desert, and it keeps moving away every time you get closer. An artist must be able to distinguish between the real work and the mirage image.

The longer you chase the mirage, the worse things get. To regain objectivity, you need to change your perspective and there are many ways: some is just to lay off for some time and come back to the work with a new look at it, have someone else look at it (feedback), or something that many artists find very useful, is just to be in the presence of the prospective audience as they experience your work - be in the same room as someone who reads your script, or watches your film, or looks at your painting or listens to your music - without talking to them, just being present. All these are in service of being able to be objective about your work - which is another way of distinguishing between your work and the image of your work.
 
Good points. I don't think I can escape my own subjectivity through sheer force of will. One of the things etched in my memory is when I asked my roommates to watch a rough cut. "Whoa, the cutting is too fast," was their feedback. It gave me the confidence and certainty to slow it down, which I don't think I could have mustered on my own.


Drew Ott said:
Probably my favorite directing and editing of all though is Woody Allen. He covers scenes with the fewest number of shots necessary and has some of the most efficient directing I've ever seen. Specifically watch his films from the late '80s.
Click to expand...

It's funny you say that. A decade or so ago, I discovered the director Alan J. Pakula. I had always liked All the President's Men. And then I saw others of his, like Presumed Innocent and Klute. I was really drawn to the visual style of those films. Later I found out that Alan J. Pakula is an actor's director, and I don't know if he has a visual style of his own. It turns out that who I really liked was the cinematographer, Gordon Willis.

Gordon Willis's most famous works are the Godfather trilogy. But he also did several with Pakula, and several others with Woody Allen, 1977-1985, like Annie Hall and Manhattan (see The Willis Frame, by Stephen Benedict). But you said the late 80s, so maybe you like Carlo Di Palma or Sven Nykvist. I'll have to check those out.

All the President's Men is appropos to this discussion, because it has a famous phone scene that is done in one shot.

In the shots leading up to it, there is another characteristic of his camerawork that for now I am calling, until I find a better term, oblique. Oblique is the opposite of what I would call on the nose. On-the-nose camerawork is when you are always cutting to the person talking (or the person reacting). You are always cutting to whatever is the most interesting, and you are making sure to get a nice, straight shot of it. Oblique camerawork, on the other hand, is more laid back. "I'm sorry I didn't get a good head-and-shoulders shot of you when you said that line. I just thought it was more interesting over here. And anyway, I just sat down." For example, in that clip of All the President's Men, we don't see anything but the back of the librarian when she comes to give a photograph to Robert Redford. I'm sure her parents were ticked. On-the-nose camerawork is like the overeager nerd scrambling to keep up with the story, and oblique camerawork is like the Fonz. That's it, Gordon Willis is the Fonz of cinematography.

But probably my favorite combination of camerawork and editing is The Hunt for Red October. Directed by John McTiernan and photographed by Jan De Bont, it has some really great camera angles. But it also has an editor with nerves of steel (well, a pair of editors, according to the credits). Check out how often it doesn't cut in this scene:


Ahh, I would have had such a hard time holding the shots like that if I were the editor, but as a viewer I thank them for letting the scene take its time. And you can see it really isn't necessary to always cut to whoever is talking or whoever is thinking, to still feel like you know what they are feeling. Just hearing their voice, combined with context of the scene and what you already know about the character, is enough to let you become ensconced in the scene.

But like some have said, it depends on the scene, and in other parts of the movie, the editing picks up:


I said there were two editors, and there were really at least three, because John McTiernan would have had a hand in it. I was floored when I heard him talk through his shot designs: John McTiernan on filmmaking philosophy.
 
Last edited:
Well, y'a know, Gordon "The Prince of Darkness" Willis was one of the all time greats. "Klute" was a hangover from the 1960's in the Lelouch/Yates mode. The "Godfather" was the return to the classic 40's-50's cinematography. His Allen's films were essentially Cinema Verite, with "Manhattan" being a combination of both.
 
I always cut audio content first to create the mood and tempus. So cuts can be either long or short and should be to get a dynamic result. This comes from 25 years experience when looking back dissolves or effects often look dated when looking back. Make this simple.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top