Half-Fluent

Varkala, Kerala, India.

In 2015, a few years after graduating from university and starting my career as a logger, I saved up a modest sum and bought a one-way ticket to South East Asia.

After a couple of incredible months travelling through Singapore, Vietnam and Loas, I set my sights on the state of Kerala, in the southwestern edge of India, where both my parents were from, and where a number of extended family still lived.

I had never been to India before. I couldn’t speak our family’s native tongue, Malayalam. While that’s sad and maybe a little surprising, both my parents (and all my Canada-side uncles and aunts) were completely bilingual. And, while growing up in the diverse suburb of Brampton, most Indian-descended friends in the neighbourhood did not speak Malayalam, but rather the much more popular langauges of Hindi or Punjabi. As I connected easily with my circle in English, there was no forced need to practice the language.

Long story short, that’s why I couldn’t speak it. But, from all the years of being so near it - and being scolded through it - I could still somewhat understand Malayalam, a distinction that came into sharp focus when I landed in the motherland.

Over the 4 months I was in India, meeting relatives and their friends fell into a routine. After the intial introduction by a kind family member, the new contact would ask, in Malayalam, if I could speak the language. Each time, I would reply in stitled Malayam, with as warm a smile as I could muster, “Yes, I understand a little , but I can’t really speak”.

They’d usually smile back and do the classic Indian head-nod. Oh okay, very good.

Then one of two things would happen. They’d either launch into a very specfic question - speaking at mile-a-minute pace which quickly exposed the limits of my undestanding - or, hearing my Anglacized accent butcher their lovely language, they would assume I knew nothing and promptly shit-talk me.

“So, is he here looking for a wife?…He’s pretty short”

I just told you I can understand!

Automatic Comprehension

In contrast to my limited Malayalam, film and television is a nearly universal language. No one needs to join a class to learn it, or get humiliated by supposed family friends on the other side of the world. Regardless of where we grew up, or what language we first learned to speak, we’ve picked up the language of cinema the same way: through exposure.

A 5-year old does not need to be taught by their parent how to follow a scene from a wide shot to a close-up of the same characters. They’ve learned the continuity of the action before they are old enough to even consider the cut. They intuit that a slow dissolve from one shot to another means a long passage of time. They don’t know why they expect a scene to start from the establishing wide shot; but their brains have automatically made models from the patterns of thousands of scenes they’ve previously digested.

We are surrounded by the visual language from infancy. In Canada, a study found babies can remember brief on screen sequences as soon as 18 months old. In the US, by the time they turn 8 years old, kids are found to average between 4-6 hours of watching or using screens, per day. That would mean your typical American child has enough screen time to watch over 750 films in a single year!

As we grow, we don’t realize we have (already) put in the effort to learn and absorb the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a separate mode of communication.

However, much like my one-sided Malayalam, while most viewers are able to understand the language, they can’t quite speak it. And I don’t mean that they lack access to a camera or an editing app.

Layers

When editing, you are communicating visually and aurally to deliver story and emotion. That doesn’t come easy. It’s a muscle and skill that you have to build.

Since film is simultaneously rendering plot details, setting, atmosphere, character, and feeling, there’s an enormous amount of information that needs to be conveyed. And much like in everyday conversation, you may think you’ve said something super clearly to your friend, only to find they’ve misunderstood you. That’s why editing process can take so long, even after a film has been fully assembled. Filmmakers are constantly asking if they’ve communicated as effectively as possible.

Has the idea behind a line/scene/sequence/act been delivered in the best possible way for the (majority/target) viewer to understand and have it resonate emotionally?

This is also why the last rounds of film editing involve test audiences - because viewers provide filmmakers the ability to see what story & emotional information is and is not landing. Some film enthusiasiasts might think that test audiences are dumbing down movies with the requests for over-explained or safe storylines (I know I did). But whether or not that is the case, test audiences (or trusted friends) are needed for filmmakers to know if they’ve communicated clearly or not.

Evolution

When it comes to film, there’s actually no surefire way to know you’re coming across effectively. With all human languages, there is growth, evolution and change. New words are added, while others have their meanings shift.

In the filmic language, while viewers and filmmakers do of course rely on previous established techniques, there’s no actual concrete code. A technique or shot that seems to categorically mean one specific thing - like a slow dissolve denoting passage of time - could just as well be used as a transition into a side plotline, or a dream.

The language is flexible. Each film bends the lingustic rules as far as needed to ensure the correct information (story and emotion) is conveyed. You can always break the rules too, but I would caution to do so if its purposefully planned that way, and not as a band-aid solution.

Filmic language is dense, and it’s malleable. When it works, the filmmakers have successfully conveyed the information as needed, relying heavily on the viewer’s hard-earned film vocabulary and likely providing a few tweaks.

So…Half-Useful?

So what good is knowing all this?

Well I, for one, think its incredible that basically everyone can read and dicipher another language, without having been made aware they were learning it.

You, the person reading this who doesn’t consider themselves an editor or even have anything to do with media.

You, the film student who thinks they maybe have a shot working in an industry they love.

You, the on-the-rise editor.

You already have half of the language fluency down. You just don’t have the muscle memory to write and speak the language yet - but that’s fine!

As a viewer, you would never need to actually write anways. Though knowing this can give a respect for the difficulty in conveying ideas in the visual form.

As an editor however, it can bring humility and help remind you that your way isn’t necessarily the best way. And when viewers don’t understand your edit, don’t be so quick to shit-talk them :)