3.1 SCRIPT BREAKDOWNS

I read the script and let the story wash over me. I then break down the script for character, themes, metaphor, lifts, and heights and valleys. All these individual parts that make up the whole story will affect the way I cut a scene. I try to imagine everyone’s faces, expressions, how they feel about what is being said, or, equally important, what is not said. I see their proximity to each other, their moods and hidden agendas. I like to feel as if I were in the room with my characters, and I am their protective, best friend. I see the movie unfold visually, and hear the sounds of their environment. This process of envisioning the film will make it easier when you receive the dailies. Essentially, you have already watched it. You will know who you want to cut to for certain lines, the beats that will be important to infuse and the gist of the scene. Of course when the film is shot you might be wonderfully surprised by how the director has elevated the dailies with eye candy, brilliant coverage, marvelous performances and a style that embellishes the story even more than your envisioned scene. You might also be sorely disappointed, and this is where your preparation and editing skills can service the show.

After my first read-through, I do a character breakdown, story breakdown, thematic breakdown and list of possible lifts in the shooting script.

The character breakdown lets you follow one character throughout the movie. It is a list of all the acts and scene numbers that this character appears in. It has a brief scene description. I also make a side note about their emotional state of mind during the scene, and even attribute a numeric value based on the emotional level of the character at that point in the script. This number indicates the degree of their passion, anger or humor from one to ten. When you know the emotional level at which you last saw your character, it will help you identify the performances that best match the scene you are about to cut.

In our fictitious film, Mandy and David, Mandy Black is a journalist who is dealing with an emotionally devoid husband. One day at work she receives an anonymous note threatening her life. She reports her situation to the police who assign Detective David White to the case. David is currently working on a serial murder case. He also has a challenging home life with a terminally ill wife. Mandy survives an attack one night and the perpetrator leaves enough evidence for Mandy to ID him. This leads to David solving the serial case as they are one and the same person.

As you can see in the character breakdown (Figure 3.1), Mandy’s emotional state fluctuates. When we receive the dailies for a scene shot out of scene number order, I will use my breakdown as a reference and a guide for the tempering of that performance.

Another character we will breakdown is David White, the detective (Figure 3.2).

When you finish the character breakdown for all of the main players, you will be able to see whether they are the ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C’ or even ‘D’ story by the amount of screen time, the amount of scenes they are in. If you are on a feature where there are no act breakdowns, you will be able to tell just by the amount of screen time. Count the pages of dialog for each character and you will know whether they are the ‘A’ story or the ‘D’ story.

After the character breakdowns are done, you will have enough information to start a story breakdown (Figure 3.3). In the story breakdown you look at the arc of individual characters in the movie.

FIGURE 3.1

FIGURE 3.2

FIGURE 3.3

Now we are able to do a story breakdown for David (Figure 3.4).

FIGURE 3.4

Once you have identified the pared down storylines of all the other characters in your story breakdown, it becomes evident what parallel threads the writer has created in the film. This is helpful because it sums up the characters’ story arcs in a nutshell and makes it easier to compare and contrast.

The thematic breakdown follows (Figure 3.5), with the insights from the story break downs. The juxtaposition of the parallel tales produces an understanding of the symbolism and metaphor that the writer has interwoven.

FIGURE 3.5

In a full breakdown, there would be half a dozen or more characters to assess. Finding commonalities in your characters and story can be obvious at times but rather obscure in some cases. If you are able to find the interwoven threads, you will tell an even more complete story with your visuals and sound design.

The larger implication of these intertwined themes is that it informs the editor about what music to choose, or perhaps when to use dissolves. When the editor wants to help ‘marry’ two characters who have a common story thread, using the same thematic temp score helps blend their journeys. I am more inclined to let a music cue continue longer from one scene into the next to help mirror two characters. When choosing stock footage to bridge two scenes that are about life passages (birth, death, new beginnings) I might choose stock that is symbolic of these rites—waterways, bridges, canals. A dissolve between the images of these parallel characters conjoins them even further. When breaking down the script, I make a list of stock shots that will possibly be needed at the head of a scene, as well as score or needle drops that I might use. When cutting a pilot or movie, I always consult the director about his take on the musical soundscape that they would like to use.

When I read the script, I like to make notes on the page about which dialog I would pre-lap from the next scene and which bits of the scene I would like to condense. If you know in advance that you will pre-lap the first line of dialog from Scene 13 over the end of Scene 12, or over a stock shot you will add, it will affect your opening shot for Scene 13. This will preempt recutting the opening of the scene when the movie is assembled. If you know that your script is long, and that you will be over the format footage, it is helpful to notate the lines of dialog that can be lifted or shortened without hurting the story.

The final list I make, the Lift Breakdown, is a list of scenes (or partial scenes) I feel can be omitted from shooting, and/or lifted after they have been shot. Once in a while this list will be of value to your director and producers during shooting. After principal photography has been completed, this list of lifts might help when it comes time to suggest how to take out time when your film runs too long. I keep this list of lifts to myself unless asked. It is fun to see how right or wrong you are after the picture is locked.

When you have completed your homework on the script, you will be much more prepared for your tone meeting, your first discussions with the director about the film, as well as your first day of dailies. When the dailies stray from the original concepts of the script because of direction, performance or happenstance, your acute awareness of the story that was meant to be told will add to the ease with which you make it through. This preparation can be the groundwork for your approach to the film. There is much more creative leeway with script interpretation on a feature.

From this paperwork skeleton, the foundation of every scene, sequence and movie will be built. As in architecture, there are rules for a sturdy construction. To achieve a balanced visual tension, you must understand when to use the master, how to layer the visuals and how to infuse a full soundscape.

As the editor, it is your job to sculpt each moment of every scene to its greatest potential, engage your audience and move the story along.

3.2 ARCHITECTURE—THE MASTER AS THE SUPPORT BEAM

When you sit down to cut your first scene, view the master to see how the director blocked the scene. The master will normally cover the scene from top to bottom. It lets us see what every performer is feeling about what is happening, and where everyone is in relation to the other characters. Without the wide coverage, we lose sight of the characters’ geographic relationships. This is essential for the scene to play. If the director’s coverage or the actors’ performances leave a hole in the scene, the editor will then have the master to fall back on. Most importantly, the master is the essential support beam in your construct that should be accessed judiciously throughout a scene. Even if all the tighter coverage is brilliant, and every moment has been captured on film, the overall effect of not using the master in the scene is that your audience will feel claustrophobic.

In television, since the screen is smaller than in a theater, the master is oftentimes too wide to see the range of emotions on an actor’s face, and the producers or studio shy away from it for fear of disengaging the audience. It has come to be regarded as the conservative way to tell the story. However, in features, the use of the master, and allowing the scene to play wide, is much more accepted.

The three best times to use the master are:

• For geography—when a character enters/exits or changes position from one side of the room to the other.

• For emotional content—when the story calls for underlining the emotional state of despair or solitude.

• For safety—when you need to reorient the audience and remind them of who is in the room and where they are in relation to the other characters. It is important to avoid using the part of a master that has no movement in it—something or someone should always be moving or wiping the frame.

There are of course other uses of the master. In musicals, the master is essential to show the footwork of the dancers. In sports sequences, the geographical location of the ball and its proximity to scoring is essential, and in action sequences, the master lets the audience know where the pursuer and the pursued are in relation to each other during the chase.

The master is a way of letting the audience feel safe in a scene—once they know who, what, when and where they are, it makes the viewer comfortable and they will be ready to receive more input from the story. The audience will be able to pay closer attention to the dialog once they are oriented. If your audience is confused about geography in the scene, they will disengage. It will take them out of the movie, and ultimately make them miss dialog, getting them further away from the story you are trying to tell.

Now that you have viewed your master, you have a firm grasp on how the scene will play—who enters, who leaves, who sits, when intimate dialog starts. The one question that I am asked often by young editors is, “Where should I start, how do you know what to cut to first?” There is no singular correct answer to that, but what we hope to do is give you some guidelines on how to make that first cut easier.

3.3 EYE CANDY

The second item to look for in dailies is eye candy. Though hard to define, eye candy is usually aesthetically pleasing visuals that are attention compelling. Wipes—an actor crossing in front of the lens, a car-by—long lens coverage, time-lapse, a woman’s robe falling to the ground, slo-mo, a hand touching another hand, explosions, crashes, eyes opening to look at you, and so many other icons can be defined as eye candy. They are as mesmerizing as a crackling fire, or crashing ocean waves. When you identify the eye candy, you will know which images to insert in the proper story place. They become one more piece placed in your chessboard of a scene.

3.4 THE DIRECTOR’S BREADCRUMBS

The third component you look for in dailies are the breadcrumbs that the director has left for you. There might be a shot that the director designed to open and to close a scene. It is perhaps a master that enters the character into a room that turns into his over-the-shoulder coverage; or maybe it is the close up tea kettle coming to a boil on the stove; it is the crane shot that starts over an exterior ocean and travels inside the window to the house on the beach; it is the dolly shot that starts in black behind your character and widens to reveal her walking down a hospital corridor. The closing shots are harder to design and to find. A slamming door, two people shaking hands, a high angle shot of a figure alone in a silent room, a close up of a face turning towards an offstage sound; these are all interesting ending shots and good devices to help move the story forward and project us into the next scene.

As you watch dailies, note the performance evolutions from the first printed take to the last printed take. Know that the director worked very hard for the change in nuance that was accomplished in the final take. For my first pass, I usually start with the last printed take. You can always go back and cull the previous printed takes for a performance that might be better for a certain line or action. But for the sake of speed, and to create the architecture of your scene, you can begin cutting with these final printed takes or the preferred takes that are notated by the script supervisor on the facing page of your lined script. Make sure, before you put this scene to bed, that you have viewed all the dailies and that you have not missed a vital moment that was captured way back in take one or two.

Sometimes the blocking of the scene changes by the final printed take, and if the director has elected to print the previous masters that reflect his original blocking, it might only be to match some of the tighter coverage. You will have to make a choice as to which blocking solves most of your performance hurdles, and go with it.

One easy breadcrumb that the director leaves for you is shots that take hours to film. Crane shots, dolly shots, any coverage where they laid tracks down, rack focus, camera moves—all of these took extra time to film. They should not be ignored. If the director shoots a zillion takes of an insert or close coverage, he is obviously trying to get a specific thing. Identify what that is and use it. If there is a pick-up shot in dailies, then note where in the scene the director started this pick up, and surmise that he probably wants to use the pick-up performance for that line.

If the director has covered the scene with over shoulders as well as side angles, it is your job to find the most organic usage of this coverage. Even if you feel the side angles are less emotional, or the close ups are not well framed, or the 50–50 performance is too broad, or the wide is devoid of feeling, you must still use all of the coverage from the various setups. Find a way to make them work best—identify the throwaway lines, and be in the less emotional coverage for that. When you have a relationship with the director after more than one film together, you will be able to dispense with using the coverage you do not care for, but until then, the director will generally want to see everything he has shot.

Listen carefully to the sound track in between takes. The director’s private input to the actor can sometimes be heard in the recording, so pay special attention to what he says after “Cut.” A director will often start talking to the actor about nuance or shifts in attitude that will help guide you in the cutting room and make you aware of how to sculpt the performance.

If there is stray or random coverage of extras or specific background activity, try to figure out where the director wants to use it, and/or call the set, and ask for input; it might only be for transitional use or as cutaways in a specifically designed fashion. But if it is shot, there was a reason, and not understanding what the coverage is for is no excuse for not using it or seeking guidance.

Once you have looked at dailies, have found the eye candy and decided where the master could be best used, as well as discovered the director’s breadcrumbs, there are some theoretical rules that we want you to be aware of before you begin editing your film. Know where the eyes of your audience are at all times, marry the sound with your picture organically, understand what each character is going through during each scene, clean up the production and cast errors, and have a reason for every single splice. All of this is a vital part of your job.

3.5 CUSTODY OF THE EYES

Editors take the audience on a journey—an emotional roller coaster told in part by its visual landscape as well as auditory soundscape. You essentially have custody of the audience’s eyes and ears and mind. The writers, the directors and cast and crew have provided this story and its visuals for you. But what you do with these images and story, these building blocks of clay, is entirely up to you. You must know where your audience’s eyes are looking at all times, or as close to guessing that fact as is possible.

The British call a splice a join. It is what we do; we join one image to the next as invisibly and smoothly as we can. To do this, we need to take into account where we left the audience’s eye in the last image, and how to match that placement in the next image. For example, if the first image on the screen is a car passing by going left to right, we will most likely cut on the frame where the car leaves the screen. The next image should be of something that demands the audience’s eye to be on the right side of the screen where we left it. If we edit with that in mind for each and every splice throughout the film, we will have provided a smooth journey for the audience’s eyes.

If you take care to make this eye journey pleasant, the cumulative effect will be that the audience will not be tired of viewing, or be disturbed by an indefinable irritation. However, if you are attempting to put the audience on the edge of their seats, and create agitation, then the opposite strategy works, and you can allow the eyes to be taxed with erratic movement.

3.6 TEN O’CLOCK RULE

In photography, one of the simplest rules of composition is the Rule of Thirds, which has its origins in a classical Greek concept of the Golden Ratio. If you divide your frame into thirds vertically and horizontally, you have nine boxes, like a hashtag or tic-tac-toe board. Where these lines intersect is a good placement for points of interest. For example, in a tight close up of a person’s face, the eyes are traditionally framed where the top horizontal line trisects the vertical lines on the left and right. If you were to draw a round-faced clock and superimpose it over this graphic, then you would see that where the top horizontal line meets the left vertical line is at ten o’clock. When you join two pieces of film together, I believe the default position that your eye tends to go to when watching a movie is this ten o’clock position. I believe this is due to the audience’s interest in the characters in the film; we seek the actors’ eyes first, and slowly allow our eyes to travel the rest of the frame clockwise.

Of course, if you are cutting images that project the audience’s eyes to different parts of the frame, e.g. a train running right to left, a rocket up into the sky, then the eye will follow the item of interest, making the ten o’clock rule secondary.

Once you have decided where the eyes are looking within a frame, you have to estimate the amount of time it takes the eye to fully capture the information of these frames, and time the duration of your shot accordingly. Be aware that the timing is affected by the size of the screen, and that a few frames more are needed for the eye to travel on a large theater screen as opposed to a smaller home television monitor.

3.7 LAYERING

There is a competition in our brain between auditory and visual perception, and the editor must make the choice as to what the audience will see and/or hear first, second, third and so on. For example, we might start silently in black. A beat later, we might introduce the sound of a distant train and as we hear it getting closer, we might cut to picture—the train races by, under which we hear the clackety-clack of the railroad ties, wind buffeting us and then we introduce the high pitched wail of the train horn. Underneath this screech we begin to hear a human shriek, which segues us to the next scene of a newborn child wailing in his mother’s arms. Each picture and each sound has been added in layered timing. We have asked our audience to look at this, now listen to that and now hear this new sound underneath it, so that we might cut to a new visual. We have created a symphony of sounds, each one placed strategically to lead the audience forward through the story. There might be only a fraction of a second separating these layers, but the timing you choose must consider that it takes the brain a moment to digest every new bit of information. We invite the audience to come hither with each added sound and picture frame. This layering will add to the grace of your film, and move the story along elegantly.

Sound also gives a new value to silence. The lack of sound can add to the pulse of your symphony and the rhythm of your storytelling.

Remember that pre-lapping dialog is also a form of layering, and serves the dual purpose of pulling the audience forward to the next scene. After you cut to the sync picture, you can start the background sounds, as opposed to during the pre-lap.

3.8 JUGGLE THE CHARACTERS IN THE ROOM

In a simple two-man scene, our attention and cuts are on one person or the other, but when you add more characters into the mix, the editor is faced with choosing when to cut away from the on-camera dialog and incorporate into the scene the other characters in the room. The audience needs to know what everyone onstage is feeling and thinking. Like a juggler, it is the editor’s responsibility to make sure that all the balls are in the air throughout the scene. The hardest part in deciding when to use these cutaways is figuring out which dialog can be heard even though the cut is on someone else in the room. Once we know what dialog can be sacrificed to a reaction shot, we have an opportunity to define with one cut or two, what other folks in the room are feeling. These feelings are their unwritten dialog in the story, and offer a key element to the scene.

3.9 CYCLES OF MOTION, DIRTY FRAMES AND EMPTY FRAMES

When choosing where to cut on physical action, it is smoothest to allow the cycle of motion to be completed. An arm extends to point camera left, a punch is thrown, a pair of eyes is averted, etc. For the sake of pace, you can start a cut with the motion already begun, but if you cut away before the motion is near completion, it will feel abortive. Following this axiom, the editor still needs to cut away before a person starts to blink, or a head starts to turn, or any motion begins. If you allow a frame or two of this new cycle of motion to remain at the end of your cut, then you have what I refer to as a dirty frame. This extra frame or two causes the audience’s eye to be attracted to an interrupted moment. Of equal dismay is allowing a character or object to exit the frame and then staying on this now empty frame. This allows the audience to become bored or start thinking about something other than the story you are telling.

3.10 ACTOR GROOMING

Many performers have bad habits. They lick or smack their lips, play with their hair, blink incessantly, close their eyes before and during the beginning of their lines, breathe loudly in between lines and a myriad of other tics that need to be cleaned up by the editor. The cumulative effect of these repeated nuances will leave the audience annoyed or distracted. It will help the actor’s performance to remove them. They will appear focused on their character and unaware of themselves as actors. Try to clean up all performances, so that what nuance remains speaks only to the story.

3.11 HEADLESS HANDS

When you cut to hands, you need to know to whom they are attached. For example, when an actor is in a procedural scene, setting the bomb, examining forensic material or combing through drawers, you have to let the audience know, before or after this close coverage, who is involved in this moment. We care so much more when we know who the player is. As we discussed earlier, the master helps keep your audience oriented and safe in a scene. Headless hands will work against this feeling.

When cutting a procedural scene, e.g. crime scene laboratory footage or a jump cut montage of an actor searching an apartment, it is important to keep this in mind. You must always refer back to the character’s face during any procedural as an anchor for the audience. It helps to humanize the scene as well, which contributes to the audience’s investment in the scene.

3.12 OWN EVERY CUT

When you have completed your cut of the film and hand it over to the director, be confident that every single decision you have made about the exact frames you have chosen to splice has a reason. You must be able to answer the inevitable questions, “Why this close up?; Why open in that shot?; Why is this line off camera?” You must have a viable answer to defend your thought process. It might be hard to recall all the intricate problems you encountered while editing the sequence; you will surely remember that you were handcuffed in your choices due to a combination of missed coverage, performance issues, camera bumps or wrong dialog. You must be able to articulate the problems, but without complaining, and also be willing to change your cuts graciously according to the spirit of the director’s notes.

It gets trickier later when you sit with the producers in the editing room and they ask similar questions, and now you have cuts in there that were not your original cutting pattern. Without pointing a finger, let them know that you have an alternative (alt) version of the moment in question and will be happy to infuse it. Always protect your director’s back.

In the end though, it is your name on the screen as the film editor, and if there are moments, cuts, transitions or performance choices that you feel strongly about and want to change, you must speak up. Once. And then let it go. Sometimes, the more you dig your heels in, the more the final decision is made in opposition rather than creative acumen.

3.13 POLISH YOUR CUT

When the time comes to review your cut, ask yourself:

• Have I been true to the script?

• Have I incorporated every moment for each character’s story?

• Have I made the most of the comedy and the tears?

• Have I used all the eye candy?

• Have I captured the best performances?

• Have I added the necessary stock shots?

• Have I added the superimposed chyrons, subtitles, credits?

• Have I added the sound effects, the walla, the backgrounds?

• Have I removed all the director’s cues?

• Have I cleaned up the offstage camera noises, floor creaks?

• Have I added the source music and EQ’ed it?

• Have I scored the appropriate moments?

• Have I adjusted all of the levels of the dialog, SFX and MX?

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Will Rogers

Take this to heart, and make sure that you polish each scene you cut before you allow anyone to watch it. It is fatal to lose your director or producer’s attention to a stray noise, forgotten insert or an unsolved editing problem in the coverage or performance.

Since the inception of digital editing, the expectations for an editor’s first cut have risen to include sound effects and music. Many producers, even directors, have come to expect the temp MX tracks and SFX to be perfectly laid out, and their ability to extrapolate what the film would be like without these embellishments is limited. Too often, your producers will be displeased because of the lack of sound design. The ‘wrong’ song or the unsweetened action scenes make them dislike the sequence, even though the story and visuals are well told.

There are many editors who do not add sound effects or music into their first cuts. Perhaps they leave the SFX to their assistants, or wait to track their scenes after they have all been assembled into a first cut. My methodology is, get the picture right, the dialog track at a cadence that is crisp and refined and then, before I put that scene to bed, cut the SFX in so that it is part of my orchestral palette. The editor has the ultimate responsibility, and opportunity, of choosing when and how to elevate the story with their soundscape. Each new sound is married specifically and organically to the dialog and the visuals.

I like to add the score or a needle drop if the scene calls for it when I am completely satisfied with the cut. This way, I know the scene is in good enough shape to play dry. Look at your original breakdown of the script and note where you felt the score should start, or if the scene needs a lyric in a needle drop, or if the previous scene would have the score that would transition into the start of this scene. Perhaps the end of the scene needs to have a cue to underline the momentum, and that will segue into the following scene. Place these cues into your first cut of this scene, and all you have to do when you attach the preceding or following scene when it is shot and received, is extend your music. It might not be the right cue in the end when you watch the movie as a whole, but your spotting is correct, and the tenor of your choices will be in the ballpark.

The film editor is the one person on the show who weaves the imagery, dialog, sound effects, titles and chyrons, and music into one tapestry. Some directors, especially in features, share this responsibility. The timing and placement of these threads that create a piece of artwork come together in the editing room, and are overseen by you. After the movie leaves your room, the sound and picture are separated and placed into expert, but compartmentalized hands and you are the only person who knows the original composition intimately. The director has a clue, but nobody knows the tracks like you.

This chapter’s guidelines are some very basic rules of how to approach constructing your sequences. You have to keep them in mind as you wade through dailies, and allow them to be a good place to begin. If followed, these rules should help keep your audience engaged. It should preempt the need for directors, producers and studio executives to unravel the architecture of each scene. There might be line lifts, or swapping out performances, or shuffling scenes around, but the basic foundation of your structure will be stable and therefore unassailable.

In the next chapter, we will get down to some nitty-gritty rules and guidelines that will help speed the process of your first cut.