The Cutdown
Over the past few years, I’ve made a habit of jumping to read the latest in the ‘How to Build a Life’ column in The Atlantic, from writer and professor Arthur C. Brooks. Recently he posted an excerpt from his new book “From Strength to Strength” which gave a quick anecdote of his vist to the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.
While there, a museum guide made a simple but profound remark to him. He asked Brooks what he imagined when thinking of a work of art that was not yet started.
“An empty canvas, I guess” Brooks replied.
The guide nodded and stated that indeed, many Westerners view art as something being created from nothing.
In the East, the guide countered, there’s an alternative view.
He pointed at the Buddah jade carving in from of them. Art is like the marble stone of jade before it has been carved. The carving within the block is already there, it just needs to be revealed by removing everything that is not a part of the sculpture.
“The art already exists”.
Brooks goes on to make a great point of how we can approach our lives in this way; less an endevour to accumulate, and more a striving to strip away. It’s well worth the read.
I’m not a philisophy writer. I’m not even a writer. So I’ll get to the point; while reading that parable my mind, somewhat embarrasingly, went straight back to my job.
Editing encompasses both views.
Build Up, Cut Down
While it’s certainly true that an editor builds an assembly or rough cut, the process after can often be just as much about what is being removed.
Editing is not a unique artform in this way, and its far from novel for me to point this out. But, I do think its still underappreciated. Much like chiseling away at stone to reveal the sculpture underneath, so too does the (re)editing process allow the best version of a story to come forward.
Within your raw footage, there’s a film already created. You just have to cut and trim your way to revealing it.
I think aspiring and younger editors would do well to recognize this. I think I need to be reminded of this too when I’m getting impatient on the 18th revision.
What makes it all so interesting is that you cannot skip the building step. You must assemble all the hard-earned ingredients - everything seen and heard in your dailies that countless crewmembers worked hours to capture - before you can get to the chiseling. You have to appreciate that you will almost certainly ‘overbuild’, regardless if there are lines or even full scenes that you initally feel aren’t necessary.
If you don’t build it all, you risk not having the full view of your material. You’ll be starting with a smaller marble block.
An Assembly/Editor’s Cut I completed on a project. Length: ~41 minutes
The Producer’s cut of the same project Length: ~30:30. Every splice on the top most track (V11 - TC) indicates a moment trimmed or cut out. Of course, many other changes were also made before hitting lock.
Because editing is an artform that takes place over time and mostly behind closed doors, its difficult to show the progress without watching the entire evolution of the cut:
Assembly/Editors cut >
Director’s cut >
Producer’s cut(s) >
Rough cut >
Fine cut(s) > and finally,
Picture Lock.
And, while poor edits from shot to shot are an obvious sign of an unpolished cut, that’s only half the equation. Editing is of course also taking into consideration what and where information is being parsed out, and what the cumulative effect is of such placement of the information. Simply put, you have the micro and the macro of editing - shot to shot, and act to act.
Why Less Can Be More
Somewhere, buried in the thousands of combinations of assembling your dailies, is the ‘best’ or ideal version of the story. Obviously, you don’t know exactly what that best version is, even though the pursuit of it is your North Star in the edit.
The Assembly/Editor’s Cut/Rough Cut are going to be your ‘overbuilt’ version of the story: far too many details; dialogue rendered redundant; story beats which on paper seemed critical now bring the plot to screeching halt.
If you think of the ideal story path as a perfectly smooth thread, then the editor’s goal should be to eventually get as close to the same line as possible. I don’t know if its realistic to say you’ll hit it 100% the entire runtime - I assume there’s always going to be a few strangling elements that could’ve used improvement.
You have to start with extra thread so that you have wiggle room to shape it. Once its in a good place, you can pull it taut.
Everyone knows reshoots are a common for big productions. In my experience so far in episodic however, they have only been for minor insert shots and pickups, not whole scenes. So many times, you’re not getting saved by a bunch of new material to pad up whats ‘under’ built in the edit.
But here’s the bit of magic; by removing what is overbuilt, you can actually allow for the underdeveloped material to be elevated.
Why and how does this work? By maintaining the audience’s focus.
When there’s multiple details, storylines, or perspectives to parse through, we’re asking the viewer to do a lot of work to parse it. We’ve thrown so much noise in the signal because we think each of those items makes the world fleshed out. Instead what happens is the crucial detail gets totally drowned out.
Does this always work? No, probaby not. But it is a lot of common sense. Ever heard someone butcher their own joke by giving way too much backstory? Same idea.
Questions for the Approach
I want to offer a glimpse behind the scenes - to show how one could track the changes from first assembly cut to picture lock. But showing the reconstruction of a cut is tricky for a couple of of reasons.
1) It is difficult to maintain fresh eyes on the material. This is a foundational skill that editors themselves have to constantly work at, since they serve as the eyes and ears of the audience.
Once you’ve seen the scene a certain way, you already know the path it takes. Your subconcious comparison of the two versions is already a position outside an audience member’s perspective. More on that on a later post.
2) No studio/director/actor is going to want the unpolished material out there for people to gawk at. Even on the simplest projects, it will require multiple levels of sign offs that I simply do not have the influence or cachet to obtain (…at least, not yet?).
What I can offer, right now, are the questions I ask myself when looking to tighten
In each scene you can ask:
Putting aside the beautiul openers, what’s the quickest way to get into this scene? How far into the conversation can we start?
Conversely, whats the most earliest we can leave the scene?
It’s very common for dialogue to be a dance between characters as they exchange information; the same question or reveal can be asked or stated multiple times. Identify the most important instance of the question or reveal. Reduce, or even fully eliminate the others. How does the scene feel now? Too far?
Is the crux of the scene getting muddied by other details? (world building, exposition, character beats that can/will be later introduced)
How much air is there between each line of dialogue? Is it there for a specfic reason? Can we reduce?
And if you’re really desperate to shave down time: does this scene advance the plot or show us something new about the character? If not, do you even need it?
You will likely cut too much and then have to dial it back a bit. That’s fine! Actually, I think its a great strategy to find the sweet spot - to feel what’s central for the story to work, by really missing it.
And even if you think you really miss it, see what happens if you live without it in the cut for a few days. You might just find the story is stronger without it.