One of the things I had to look at and was a big part of the editing process, was trimming the fat after having a fine cut. Trimming the fat is basically cutting out the unnecessary stuff that bring nothing to your movie and those small frames or seconds that just slow down the pace of a scene. The main reason for working a lot on this, was due to advice from Tim, an editor that was brought in to watch the films and give feedback and later from Simon. This was really important and good because there were a lot of bits that were really bringing nothing to the show anymore. It all started with having our video as a 29 minutes piece with no closing credits, being a problem since we needed to keep it no more than 28-29 minutes as it is a Pilot episode. The other reason was because there were scenes that were not really working as much on screen as they worked on the script and we needed a bit of guidance on what to do with them. At this point is where the fun began on understanding what was really unnecessary and what wasn't. It was interesting to have at this stage two different points of view on trimming the fat, both from Tim and Simon, because Tim was looking more on the film as an editor and how the images and sound flowed properly, where Simon was looking more into it from the storytelling point of view. This was quite helpful because I started to get a bit more of a sense of what wasn't working in the film in general from different aspects of it. Apart from their input I made a brief research into it and found something interesting that I wanted to share.
Andrea Allen, a staff member of Vimeo, who is also a Director, Producer and Editor, explained quite nicely the process and importance of trimming the fat with a nice example added to it as well:
If you’re shooting a scene for a film or maybe just taking footage of someone performing a simple action, it’s always a good practice to shoot more than you think you’ll need. This method gives you plenty of footage to pick from when it comes time to editing your video and putting it all together. However, with so much footage to choose from, you have to learn what shots are the most important to convey the action of the scene. In essence, you need to learn how to trim the fat.
Take a look at this exercise we did to illustrate the effects of cutting extra shots while still creating the same result — and actually a more-succinct scene.
Here’s a video of me getting coffee. Not the most cinematic of scenes, I know, but it’s a good mundane action that allows us to prove a few points. First, we overshot the scene and came away with WAY too much footage. Then, we made two edits: one overly long, drawn out and completely ridiculous scene, and one short, sweet, and succinct scene. Here’s the first. Pay attention to the pace and flow. Do you see anything that seems superflous? Are all these shots necessary? Does the viewer need to see all this stuff?
https://vimeo.com/blog/post/trimming-the-fat
https://vimeo.com/blog/post/trimming-the-fat
I am not gonna lie, but this is a great example of the things I had to do exactly! For my final cut before starting to trim the fat, I had a look at things like:
- Unnecessary Shots
- Length of the Video
- Execution of Story
- How to Quicken the Pace
This were very key elements when it came down to making some really long dragging scenes, into something more compact but actually working.
Simon mentioned something that was quite helpful, which was that going from 29 minutes of a 30 page script, down to 24 minutes as an example, was fine and was achievable. The fact that the script implies one minute per page making it around 30 min show, doesn't mean that we have to stick to that, because there are things that don't need be shown and the audience can imply. I give an example of a book I was recently reading called "Unlimited Star Wars" where it quotes:
"If you're familiar with Ric Olié, the sand aqua monster, Slave I, Varykino, IG-88, Lobot and Ewoks, you must be a fan of Star Wars. But if you recognize any of those names, thats remarkable because non are mentioned in the Star Wars movies themselves, so you must have gained that knowledge elsewhere, possibly from toy packages, comics, books or pure osmosis"
The reason I quote this is because it is very interesting how even some big major films, there are elements and characters that are never mentioned, but we constantly see them. For example: Slave I is Jango Fett's airship which we see in a big scene where Obi-Wan is being chased from him al the way from Kamino to Mustafar. And the Ewoks, which are small creatures that live in the City of Clouds that look like mini Chewbaccas (Appreciated at the end of Episode IV).
There are many other cases with lots of other movies and shows where they confuse their audience and it is because you can't give all the information to the audience and not just only so they can think for themselves, but because its obvious stuff and people can easily assume that if one person is in one place and suddenly in another, they have moved there, they have exit a room and entered another, that can be implied. The SHORT version of that Coffee example, is very well done in the sense that is very similar to what I did which was looking at things like:
- Pace of Video
- Clarity of Story
- Transitional Shots
- Action that isn't Shown, but still Understood
All of this has helped so much and I understood that bringing that film from 29 minutes to 21 which is what it is at this moment, is a massive step, instead of taking elements of the story and just shortening it, it actually brings more to it, things are more clear, easier to understand and it flows, it gives people time to understand and enjoy the story and also a break to enjoy jokes and funny parts. I think that this was probably the biggest thing done during the whole editing process and I can say I am very happy with it as it has solved a lot of things that instead of helping me bring more to the film, was actually taking from it.
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