Carrying on with the last post in which I am talking about editing efficiently and tips from Oliver Peters and how the have managed to change my work in a positive way, I will introduce the fourth tip:
Don’t cut back to the exact same angle – If you have a choice of several camera angles, don’t automatically cut back to the same camera angle or take that you just used in the previous shot. This is, of course, unavoidable in a dialogue scene with only two angles and one take of each; but, if the director shot different takes with different framing, try to use a little of all of them. Don’t get stuck in a cutting rut, like master/single/reverse, master/single/reverse, etc. Mix it up.
This tip applied just for a very small portion of the film, because I realized that mainly the whole episode has a lot of dialogue apart from three main scenes which are the beginning in the football pitch, the nightclub scene and the ending again at the football pitch. This actually works quite nice because it allowed me to put this tip into action that I find myself very useful not just for this but for any future editing as well. I avoided 100% using the same shot or angle in the three scenes, because if there is no dialogue, the shots need to do the job of carrying us through the story (or action), meaning that the cuts in the edit have to be on point. Here are three still that I captured from my timeline in Final Cut Pro X, where you could appreciate how the cuts were done and how I don't repeat any angle at all:
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| Beginning Football Pitch |
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| Nightclub |
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| Ending Football Pitch |
The fifth tip is:
Cut for the eyes – Actors that do well on TV and in films (as compared with the stage) are all very expressive with their face, but most importantly, their eyes. When I’m cutting an intense dialogue scene, I’m looking at how the actors’ eyes play in the scene. Do they convey the proper emotion? What is the reaction of the other actors in the scene? What the actors are or aren’t doing facially determines my cutting. It drives my decision to stick with the principal actor delivering the dialogue or whether I briefly cut away to see reactions from the others.
This is something very truthful and that I struggled with when it came down to editing a lot of the dialogue, because in some scenes the acting or the facial expression wasn't on point, meaning that it was harder to cut. We tried to have at least two takes of the same scene that worked at least 90% of it, just to make sure we had options, same with the ones that didn't work as well, we kept rolling just so we could have some extra options there. When I realized that a lot of the scenes were working, I took this on board and decided to carry on cutting not just by a scene that was looking good, but one that was transmitting emotion more importantly. Emotion and feelings is something that is not easy to show on camera, but even those really bad quality clips from phones, computer cameras and such, can transmit a lot if the content of it is on point. One of the things I decided to do in some of the shots at least, was to hold the shot for a but longer if the emotion of the actor was actually good and was making the scene more emotional, because sometimes making a cut where the audience is feeling attached to a moment, can actually destroy that moment completely so it is very important to know when to cut but also when not to. One example for this is the scene in which Dean is trying to convince Don to coach their team, by telling him the bad stuff they have been going through and how one of the players (Nath) got beaten up. This exact shot was held for 25 seconds without a cut, because all three characters in it develop through those 25 seconds with emotions and facial expressions, making the audience engage more with that scene:
The sixth and last tip is:
Shaping story – It is said that there are three films: the one that’s scripted, the one that’s been filmed and the one that’s edited. When you cut a feature, pay close attention to the story chronology and don’t be afraid to veer from what was written or filmed if it makes sense to do so. Many editors use note cards on a storyboard wall to create a quick visual representation of the storyline. This helps you make sure that you reveal things to the audience in the most logical order and that nothing is inadvertently edited out of place.
This played probably one of the biggest parts of the editing in general, because at first Danny and I were purely focusing on the script, not just from the preparation point of view, but also for filming and editing as well. This was a good up to a point, where we had to remember that things can make sense on paper, but maybe not screen. If you think of movies like Harry Potter, which is a 2 hour long film (120 min) that came from a book of about 600 pages, was clearly reduced in length, because there is a lot of details that a book or a script can give you as a reader, but as a viewer they are unnecessary and can be discarded without ruining the essence of the story. At this point it was where we started to discard things because some of them were just filling and we didn't want to have filling really, taking into account that we only had about 22 minutes to tell a story from beginning to end (due to being a Pilot). One of the scenes that I got rid of was the one where the Ollie and Dean arrive at the Hall where Don is supposed to be and before entering the building, they bump into two of the bridesmaids which originally were going to sleep with them two later in the episode, but since that was changed, I thought there was no point on keeping that scene anymore because by getting rid of it, the story still flowed and nothing was lost really.
Another example of this was the scene in which Dean calls Nathan to see where he is as he is meant to be playing football but there was no one there. Although in the scene it is important to understand what is happening, he never really implies that he is talking to Nathan or at any point we saw them planning seeing each other there on anything, which was discarded as well because in the next scene he is shown with some bruises as he got beaten up and in that scene is in which it is explained what happened, so going from Dean talking to Tom on the phone saying that he is going to watch Nath play for Strood and then seeing that it was a lie and he actually got beaten up, actually makes sense for the audience and it is not necessary to show that scene of him in the pitch anymore.
For more useful tips from Oliver, you can visit his blog which is filled with a lot of very useful content!
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/12-tips-for-better-film-editing/
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