Professional Documents
Culture Documents
THE
BLINK
OF
AN
Copyright O 1995, 2001 by Walter Murch
Silman-James Press
1181 Angelo Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Contents
xiii
I
which works out to be just over 230 hours. Since the on the ground and some in helicopters) each loaded
finished film runs just under two hours and twenty- with a thousand-foot (eleven-minute) roll of film.
five minutes in length, that gives a ratio of ninety-five At the end of one of these shots, unless there had
to one. That is to say, ninety-five "unseen" minutes been an obvious problem, the camera positions were
for every minute that found its way into the finished changed and the whole thing was repeated. Then
product. By comparison, the average ratio for theatri- repeated again, and then again. They kept on going
cal features is around twenty to one. until, I guess, they felt that they had enough material,
Traveling across that ninety-five-to-one landscape each take generating something like 8,000 feet (an
was a little like forging through a thick forest, burst- hour and a half). No single take was the same as any
ing upon open grassland for a while, then plunging other-very much like documentary coverage.
into a forest again because there were areas, such as Anyway, at the end of it all, when the film was
the helicopter sequences, where the coverage was safely in the theaters, I sat down and figured out the
extremely high, and other scenes where the cover- total number of days that we (the editors) had
age was correspondingly low. I think the Colonel worked, divided that number by the number of cuts
Kilgore scenes alone were over 220,000 feet-and that were in the finished product, and came up with
since that represents twenty-five minutes of film in the rate of cuts per editor per day-which turned out
the finished product, the ratio there was around one to be ... 1.47!
hundred to one. But many of the connecting scenes
Meaning that, if we had somehow known exactly
had only a master shot: Francis had used so much
where we were going at the beginning, we would
film and time on the big events that he compensated
have arrived there in the same number of months if
with minimal coverage on some of these linking
each of us had made just under one-and-a-half splices
scenes.
per day. In other words, if I had sat down at my bench
Take one of the big scenes as an example: The in the morning, made one cut, thought about the next
helicopter attack on "Charlie's Point," where Wagner's cut, and gone home, then come in the next day, made
Ride oj the Valkyries is played, was staged as an ac- the cut I thought about the day before, made another
tual event and consequently filmed as a documentary cut, and gone home, it would have taken me the same
rather than a series of specially composed shots. It year it actually took to edit my sections of the film.
was choreography on a vast scale of men, machines,
Since it takes under ten seconds to make one-and-
cameras, and landscape-like some kind of diaboli-
a-half splices, the admittedly special case of Apoca-
cal toy that you could wind up and then let go. Once
lypse Now serves to throw into exaggerated relief the
Francis said, "Action," the filming resembled actual
fact that editing--even on a "normal" film 2-is not so
combat: Eight cameras turning simultaneously (some
2 By comparison, an average theatrical feature might have a cuts-per-
5
6 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE WHY DO CUTS WORK? 7
stream of linked images: In fact, for millions of years- context: The displacement of the image is neither
tens, hundreds of millions of years-life on Earth has motion nor ~hange of context, and the collision of
experienced the world this way. Then suddenly, at the r---:--- - produces
these two ideas -.- a mental jarring-a jump-
beginning of the twentieth century, human beings were that is comparatively disturbing. 5
confronted with something else-edited film.
At any rate, the discovery early in this century that
Under these circumstances, it wouldn't have been certain kinds of cutting "worked" led almost immedi-
at all surprising to find that our brains had been "wired" ately to the discovery that films could be shot discon-
by evolution and experience to reject film editing. If tinuously, which was the cinematic equivalent of the
that had been the case, then the single-shot movies discovery of flight: In a practical sense, films were no
of the Lumiere Brothers-or films like Hitchcock's longer "earthbound" in time and space. If we could
Rope-would have become the standard. For a num- make films only by assembling all the elements si-
ber of practical (as well as artistic) reasons, it is good multaneously, as in the theater, the range of possible
that it did not. subjects would be comparatively narrow. Instead,
The truth of the matter is that film is actually be- Discontinuity is King: It is the central fact during the
ing "cut" twenty-four times a second. Each frame is a production phase of filmmaking, and almost all deci-
displacement from the previous one-it is just that in sions are directly related to it in one way or another-
a continuous shot, the space/time displacement from how to overcome its difficulties and/or how to best
frame to frame is small enough (twenty milliseconds) take advantage of its strengths. 6
for the audience to see it as motion within a context The other consideration is that even if everything
rather than as twenty-four different contexts a sec- were available simultaneously, it is just very difficult
ond. On the other hand, when the visual displace-
5 A beehive can apparently be moved two inches each night without
ment is great enough (as at the moment of the cut),
disorienting the bees the next morning. Surprisingly, if it is moved
we are forced to re-evaluate the new image as a dif- two miles, the bees also have no problem: They are forced by the
ferent context: miraculously, most of the time we have total displacement of their environment to re-orient their sense of
direction, which they can do easily enough. But if the hive is moved
no problem in doing this. two yards, the bees will become fatally confused. The environment
What we do seem to have difficulty accepting are does not seem different to them, so they do not re-orient themselves,
and as a result, they will not recognize their own hive when they
the kind of displacements that are neither subtle nor return from foraging, hovering instead in the empry space where the
total: Cutting from a full-figure master shot, for in- hive used to be, while the hive itself sits just two yards away.
stance, to a slightly tighter shot that frames the actors 6 When Stanley Kubrick was directing The Shining, he wanted to shoot
from the ankles up. The new shot in this case is dif- the film in continuiry and to have all sets and actors available all the
time. He took over almost the entire studio at Elstree (London), built
ferent enough to signal that something has changed, all the sets simultaneously, and they sat there, pre-lit, for however
but not different enough to make us re-evaluate its long it took him to shoot the film. But The Shining remains a special
exception to the general rule of discontinuity.
8 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE WHY DO CUTS WORK? 9
to shoot long, continuous takes and have all the con- And yet, beyond even these considerations, cut-
tributing elements work each time. European filmmak- ting is more than just the convenient means by which
ers tend to shoot more complex master shots than discontinuity is rendered continuous. It is in and for
the Americans, but even if you are Ingmar Bergman, itself-by the very force of its paradoxical sudden-
there's a limit to what you can handle: Right at the ness-a positive influence in the creation of a film.
end, some special effect might not work or someone We would want to cut even if discontinuity were not
might forget their lines or some lamp might blow a of such great practical value.
fuse, and now the whole thing has to be done again. So the central fact of all this is that cuts do work.
The longer the take, of course, the greater the chances But the question still remains: Why? It is kind of
of a mistake. like the bumble-bee, which should not be able to
So there is a considerable logistical problem of fly, but does.
getting everything together at the same time, and then We will get back to this mystery in a few moments.
just as serious a problem in getting it all to "work"
every time. The result is that, for practical reasons
alone, we don't follow the pattern of the Lumiere
Brothers or of Rope.
On the other hand, apart from matters of conve-
nience, discontinuity also allows us to choose the best
camera angle for each emotion and story point, which
we can edit together for a cumulatively greater im-
pact. If we were limited to a continuous stream of
images, this would be difficult, and films would not
be as sharp and to the point as they are. 7
10
12 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE "CUT OUT THE BAD BITS" 13
cussion-that controlled the order in which the vari- pile of dailies and another editor could sit in the next
ous pieces of information stored in the DNA would room with exactly the same footage and both of you
be activated and the rates at which that information would make different films out of the same material.
would be activated as the organism grew. Each is going to make different choices about how to
In the early stages of fetal development, it is dif- structure it, which is to say when and in what order
ficult to tell the difference between human and chimp to release those various pieces of information.
embryos. And yet, as they grow, they reach a point Do we know, for instance, that the gun is loaded
where differences become apparent, and from that before Madame X gets into her· car, or is that some-
point on, the differences become more and more thing we only learn after she is in the car? Either choice
obvious. For instance, the choice of what comes first, creates a different sense of the scene. And so you
the brain or the skull. In human beings, the priority proceed, piling one difference on top of another. Re-
is brain first, skull next, because the emphasis is on versing the comparison, you can look at the human
maximizing the size of the brain. Any time you look and the chimp as different films edited from the same
at a newborn human infant you can see that the skull set of dailies. 8
is not yet fully closed around the top of the still- I'm not assigning relative values here to a chim-
growing brain. panzee or a human being. Let's just say that each is
With chimpanzees, the priority is reversed: skull appropriate to the environment in which it belongs:
first, then brain-probably for reasons that have to I would be wrong swinging from a branch in the
do with the harsher environment into which the middle of the jungle, and a chimpanzee would be
chimp is born. The command from the chimp's se- wrong writing this book. The point is not their in-
quence is, "Fill up this empty space with as much trinsic value, but rather the inadvisability of chang-
brain as you can." But there's only so much brain ing one's mind in the process of creating one of them.
you can get in there before you can't fill it up any- Don't start making a chimpanzee and then decide to
more. At any rate, it seems to be more important for turn it into a human being instead. That produces a
a chimp to be born with a hard head than a big brain. stitched-together Frankenstein's monster, and we've
There's a similar interplay between an endless list all seen its equivalent in the theaters: Film "X" would
of things: The thumb and the fingers, skeletal pos- have been a nice little movie, perfectly suited to its
ture, certain bones being fully formed before certain "environment," but in the middle of production some-
muscular developments, etc. one got an inflated idea about its possibilities, and,
My point is that the information in the DNA can as a result, it became boring and pretentious. It was
be seen as uncut film and the mysterious sequencing 8By the same token, a chimpanzee and a cockroach are made from
code as the editor. You could sit in one room with a different "dailies" to begin with.
14 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
15
16 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
17
18 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE THE RULE OF SIX 19
good cut. At the top of the list is Emotion, the thing make a cut, sacrifice your way up, item by item, from
you come to last, if at all, at film school largely be- the bottom.
cause it's the hardest thing to define and deal with. For instance, if you are considering a range of
How do you want the audience to feel? If they are feel- possible edits for a particular moment in the film, and
ing what you want them to feel all the way through you find that there is one cut that gives the right
the film, you've done about as much as you can ever emotion and moves the story forward, and is rhyth-
do. What they finally remember is not the editing, not mically satisfying, and respects eye-trace and planar-
the camerawork, not the performances, not even the ity, but it fails to preserve the continuity of three-di-
story-it's how they felt. mensional space, then, by all means, that is the cut
An ideal cut (for me) is the one that satisfies all you should make. If none of the other edits has the
the following six criteria at once: 1) it is true to the right emotion, then sacrificing spatial continuity is well
emotion of the moment; 2) it advances the story; 3) it worth it.
occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting The values I put after each item are slightly tongue-
and "right"; 4) it acknowledges what you might call in-cheek, but not completely: Notice that the top two
"eye-trace"-the concern with the location and move- on the list (emotion and story) are worth far more
ment of the audience's focus of interest within the than the bottom four (rhythm, eye-trace, planarity, spa-
frame; 5) it respects "planarity"-the grammar of three tial continuity), and when you come right down to it,
dimensions transposed by photography to two (the under most circumstances, the top of the list-emo-
questions of stage-line, etc.); 6) and it respects the tion-is worth more than all five of the things under-
three-dimensional continuity of the actual space neath it.
(where people are in the room and in relation to one
And, in fact, there is a practical side to this, which
another).
is that if the emotion is right and the story is advanced
1) Emotion 51 % in a unique, interesting way, in the right rhythm, the
2) Story 23% audience will tend to be unaware of (or unconcerned
3) Rhythm 10% about) editorial problems with lower-order items like
4) Eye-trace 7% eye-trace, stage-line, spatial continuity, etc. The gen-
5) Two-dimensional plane of screen 5% eral principle seems to be that satisfying the criteria
6) Three-dimensional space of action 4% of items higher on the list tends to obscure problems
with items lower on the list, but not vice-versa: For
Emotion, at the top of the list, is the thing that instance, getting Number 4 (eye-trace) working prop-
you should try to preserve at all costs. If you find erly will minimize a problem with Number 5 (stage-
you have to sacrifice certain of those six things to line), whereas if Number 5 (stage-line) is correct but
20 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
21
22 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
23
24 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE SEEING AROUND THE EDGE OF THE FRAME 25
By the same token, there are occasions when you Wherever he goes, he should try to think, as much
shoot something that you dislike, when everyone is as possible, about things that have absolutely nothing
in a bad mood, and you say under protest: "All right, to do with the film. It is difficult, but it is necessary to
I'll do this, we'll get this one close-up, and then it's a create a barrier, a cellular wall between shooting and
wrap." Later on, when you look at that take, all you editing. Fred Zinnemann would go climbing in the
can remember was the hateful moment it was shot, Alps after the end of shooting, just to put himself in a
and so you may be blind to the potentials it might potentially life-threatening situation where he had to
have in a different context. be there, not day-dreaming about the film's problems.
The editor, on the other hand, should try to see Then, after a few weeks, he would come down
only what's on the screen, as the audience will. Only from the Alps, back to earth; he would sit down in a
in this way can the images be freed from the context dark room, alone, the arc light would ignite, and he
of their creation. By focusing on the screen, the edi- would watch his film. He would still be, inherently,
tor will, hopefully, use the moments that should be brimming with those images from beyond the edge
used, even if they may have been shot under duress, of the frame (a director will never be fully able to
and reject moments that should be rejected, even forget them), but if he had gone straight from shoot-
though they cost a terrible amount of money and pain. ing to editing, the confusion would be worse and he
I guess I'm urging the preservation of a certain would have gotten the two different thought processes
kind of virginity. Don't unnecessarily allow yourself of shooting and editing irrevocably mixed up.
to be impregnated by the conditions of shooting. Try Do everything you can to help the director erect
to keep up with what's going on but try to have as this barrier for himself so that when he first sees the
little specific knowledge of it as possible because, film, he can say, "All right, I'm going to pretend that
ultimately, the audience knows nothing about any of I had nothing to do with this film. It needs some work.
this-and you are the ombudsman for the audience. What needs to be done?"
The director, of course, is the person most familiar And so you try as hard as you can to separate out
with all of the things that went on during the shoot, so what you wish from what is actually there, never aban-
he is the most burdened with this surplus, beyond-the- doning your ultimate dreams for the film, but trying
frame information. Between the end of shooting and as hard as you can to see what is actually on the
before the first cut is finished, the very best thing that screen.
can happen to the director (and the film) is that he say
goodbye to everyone and disappear for two weeks-
up to the mountains or down to the sea or out to Mars
or somewhere-and try to discharge this surplus.
DREAMING IN PAIRS 27
26
-
...
28 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
29
30 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE TEAM WORK: MULTIPLE EDITORS 31
sometimes arise if there is just one editor on a film The interest on a $25 million film is around
and he develops a locked viewpoint about the ma- $250,000 a month. If having two editors can help you
terial. This is particularly troublesome if the director release that film a month earlier, they will have re-
and the editor have not worked together before and paid a good portion, if not all, of their salaries for the
have no time to develop a common language. In this whole film. It is simply a matter of how much you
case, it might not be a bad idea to consider having want to achieve in the time you have available. If you
multiple editors. end up with a cut-per-day rate of 1.47, as we did on
The Godfather was the first film on which Francis Apocalypse, that means that many different avenues
worked with two editors. Originally there had been have been explored to get to the final product. If that's
just a single editor, but the problem of locked view- what you want to do, you probably need more than
one editor.
point became acute and he was let go after several
months. The decision was made to reconstitute what
had been done up to that point and start again, but
because they had effectively lost those months, and
it looked as though the film was going to be almost
three hours long with an inflexible deadline, it made
sense to hire two editors. The film was still shoot-
ing and there was just a lot of work to do: Each editor
had a ninety-minute film to complete in twenty-four
weeks. But unlike the later Godfather, Part II or
Apocalypse, the work was split strictly in half. Bill
Reynolds cut the first part and Peter Zinner cut the
last part. There's a specific point where Bill's sec-
tion ends and Peter's begins.
On Godfather, Part II, although the responsibility
for editing was divided up in a checkerboard pattern,
scenes were initially cut and recut by the same per-
son.l0 But when Francis began to play with the struc-
ture of the film, people found themselves recutting
what others had originally edited.
10 The editors of Godfather, Part II, were Peter Zinner, Barry Malkin,
32
.......
THE DECISIVE MOMENT 41
40 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
across the first line, etc. So the juncture between those The editor's job now is to choose the right images
panels was an interesting thing to look at, because and make those images follow one another at the right
it juxtaposed frames that were never meant to go to- rate to express something like what is captured in that
gether and yet there they were, right next to each photograph.
other. And sometimes you got sparks out of that, it In choosing a representative frame, what you're
would cause you to think about things, editorial looking for is an image that distills the essence of the
leaps, that otherwise you might never have thought thousands of frames that make up the shot in ques-
of without this system. tion, what Cartier-Bresson-referring to still photog-
But the most interesting asset of the ph .lOS for raphy--called the "decisive moment." So I think, more
me was that they provided the hieroglyphs for a lan- often than not, the image that I chose wound up in
the film. And also, more often than not, quite close to
guage of emotions.
the cut point.
What word expresses the concept of ironic anger
tinged with melancholy? There isn't a word for it, in When you look at dailies, there's a pitfall similar
English anyway, but you can see that specific emo- to the one that you may fall into during casting ses-
sions. For the actor who is walking through the door,
tion represented in this photograph.
this casting session is the one and only time that he is
Or the photo may represent a kind of nervous going to present him or herself to you. This is a tre-
anticipation: The character is scared and lustful at the mendously important moment for him, but for you,
same time, and yet she is confused because that lust this may be the sixtieth person you've seen that day.
is for another woman. And that woman is sleeping Inevitably there is a kind of mental glaze that may
with her husband. So what does that mean? form after a while that stops you thinking as sharply
Whatever it means, it is there in her expression, as you should.
in the angle of her head and her hair and her neck Well, dailies are like that, too. Each shot is audi-
and the tension in the muscles and the set of her mouth tioning for your approval. Take five: "How about me?
and what is in her eyes. And if you can simply point I can do this." Then take seven comes in the door:
to an expression on an actor's face, you have a way "How about this?" Take nine: "Or this?"
around some of the difficulties of language in dealing
And to keep your awareness, to really be alive to
with the subtleties of nameless emotions. You, as the
the possibilities in each shot, you have to keep jab-
director, can say, "That's what I want. The sequence
we are working on should have more of that, you bing yourself. You try to remain fresh and see the
wonderful things and make records of those as well
know. I want it to embody the nameless but familiar
as the things that may not be so wonderful. Which is
emotion I see in that photograph."
what you have to do when you are casting a film.
42 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
43
44 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE METHODS AND MACHINES: MARBLE AND CLAY 45
I feel equally comfortable working on a Moviola, dance-the finished film is a kind of crystallized
a KEM Universal, or an Avid. It depends on the film, dance-and when have you ever seen a dancer sit-
the film's budget and schedule, and on my hunch ting down to dance?
about the style of the director and how long the aver- Other than the "standing/sitting" question, the dif-
age take is going to be. The Conversation was edited ferences between the Moviola system and the KEM
on a KEM, Julia on a Moviola, Apocalypse Now on a system boil down to sculptural ones: The Moviola
KEM whereas I used both on Unbearable-it started system "emulsifies" the film into little bits (individual
out ~n a Moviola and changed to a KEM. With the shots) and then the editor reassembles it out of those
KEM, I arrange things opposite of the way they are bits, like making something out of clay. You take a
normally done, so that the screen directly in front of little bit of clay and you stick it here and you take
me is my search screen and the soundtrack in front another little bit of clay and you stick it there. At the
of me is in sync with that. The screen on the left side beginning of the process there is nothing in front of
and the sound on the right side are in sync with each you, then there is something in front of you, and then
other and hold the assembled film. If I were working there is finally the finished thing all built up out of
on a bench, that would be what's going through the little clay bricks, little pellets of information.
synchronizer.
With the KEM system, I don't ever break the film
In fact, speaking of benches, I should add that I down into individual shots-I leave it in ten-minute
work standing up: My KEM is raised about fifteen rolls in the order in which it came from the lab. In
inches off the floor to put it at the right height for me. sculptural terms, this is like a block of marble-the
One of the things I always liked about the Moviola is sculpture is already there, hidden within the stone,
that you stand up to work, holding the Moviola in a and you reveal it by taking away, rather than building
kind of embrace-dancing with it, in a way-so it it up piece by piece from nothing, as you do with
was frustrating for me to have to sit down at the KEM. clay. It is really the difference between "random-ac-
I edited both The Conversation and Apocalypse that cess" editing and its opposite, whatever that is called-
way, sitting down, but a voice in the back of my head "linear-access," let's say.
kept telling me something wasn't quite right. And so
when I came to edit Unbearable, I had the KEM raised Computerized digital editing and, strangely enough,
up on two plywood boxes. good old-fashioned Moviola editing with an assistant,
are both random-access, non-linear systems: You ask
Editing is a kind of surgery-and have you ever for something specific and that thing-that thing
seen a surgeon sitting to perform an operation? Edit- alone-is delivered to you as quickly as possible. You
ing is also like cooking-and no one sits down at the are only shown what you ask for. The Avid is faster at
stove to cook. But most of all, editing is a kind of it than the Moviola, but the process is the same.
46 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE METHODS AND MACHINES: MARBLE AND CLAY 47
That's a drawback for me because your choices "Oh, this other shot is much better than the one I
can then only be as good as your requests, and some- thought I wanted." As soon as I saw it, I recognized it
times that is not enough. There is a higher level that as a possibility, whereas I couldn't articulate it as a
comes through recognition: You may not be able to choice.
articulate what you want, but you can recognize it
When you look at dailies the first time, you have
when you see it.
a relatively fixed idea-based on the script-of what
What do I mean by that? Well, if you learn to speak you are looking for. Later on, though, you review some
a foreign language, you will find that there is a gap of your original notes, and they will say, for instance:
between how well you can speak it and how well "212-4: NG." What does that mean? It meant that at
you can understand it when it is spoken to you. A the time you thought take four of Slate 212 was No
human being's ability to understand a foreign language Good, and you didn't bother to make a note of why
is always greater than his ability to speak it. you thought so. Well, many times in the re-editing,
And when you make a film, you are trying to learn what you thought was originally unusable may come
a foreign language-it just happens to be a unique to be your salvation.
language that is only spoken by this one film. If you If it was a question of only one shot, or two dozen
have to articulate everything, as you do with a ran- shots, you could probably deal with the problem of
dom-access system like video/computer or Moviola/ second-guessing those original notes, but, in fact, an
assistant, you are limited by what and how much you ordinary film will have 700, 1,000, 2,000 setups with
can articulate and how good your original notes were. more than two printed takes per setup on average,
Whereas the advantage of the KEM's linear system is and so there may easily be two to four thousand shots
that I do not always have to be speaking to it-there that you have to have an opinion about. That's a lot
are times when it speaks to me. The system is con- of second-guessing, so you tend to fall back on your
stantly presenting things for consideration, and a sort first impressions in the original notes. Which are valu-
of dialogue takes place. I might say, "I want to see able, but limited, if that is all you have.
that dose-up of Teresa, number 317, in roll 45." But
Whereas with the KEM system, because the film
I'll put that roll on the machine, and as I spool down
is all stored in these big rolls in an almost arbitrary
to number 317 (which may be hundreds of feet from
way, you are learning something new about the ma-
the start), the machine shows me everything at high
terial as you search for what you think you want. You
speed down to that point, saying in effect: "How about
are actually doing creative work, and you may find
this instead? Or this?" And I find, more often than not,
what you really want rather than what you thought
long before I get down to shot 317, that I've had three
you wanted. This system is useful enough in the origi-
other ideas triggered by the material that I have seen
nal assembly of the scene, in helping you to familiar-
flashing by me.
48 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE METHODS AND MACHINES: MARBLE AND CLAY 49
ize yourself with the material, but it becomes particu- ready to cut a particular scene, I would collect all the
larly valuable in the recutting, where your original relevant material and review it again, making notes in
notes-heavily influenced by the script-become less more detail than the first time.
and less useful as the film finds its own voice. When you look at rushes the second time, you
There are limits, of course: A system that is too have evolved and the film has evolved. You will see
linear (which means that you have to spend too much different things than you saw the first time, because
time searching before you find what you want) would you may have assembled scenes that hadn't been shot
be burdensome. You would quickly become over- the first time you saw the material, and strengths or
whelmed and/or bored with it. So there is a golden problems may be emerging with characters and events
mean somewhere. If the system is completely random- as they unfold.
access, that is a defect, in my opinion. But if it is too In an ideal world, what I would like to do is as-
linear, that's a defect as well. What I've found, per- semble a first cut and then stop and just look at all
sonally, is that given the attitude I have toward the the dailies again, fresh. Whether I would ever actu-
material, given the speed that I work, and given the ally be able to do that is another question: The
, mechanical speed of the KEM itself, keeping the dai-
i present schedule of films, at any rate, prohibits such
lies in ten-minute reels in shooting order adds just
I about the right amount of chaos that I need in order
a thing. This is where the hidden virtues of the lin-
ear (KEM) system come in-because of the way the
\,::: to work the way I want to.
I'
material is stored, in ten-minute rolls of film, it is
if The digital systems, Avid and Lightworks, are prom- constantly being reviewed. If this were gardening, I
J;i
Ii
!I
"
ising because they offer the potential to merge the
best of the Moviola's non-linear approach with the
would be talking about the virtues of turning over
the soil and aerating it.
!',
"
best of the KEM's ability to handle and review large In the actual editing of a scene, I will keep on
amounts of material qUickly. At this point, there is still working until I can no longer "see myself" in the
some procedural awkwardness with the digital sys- material. When I review my first assembly of a scene,
tems, but I expect those to be smoothed out over time. more often than not I can still vividly (too vividly!)
In any case, there are certain things that remain recall making the decisions that led to each of the
the same for me no matter what system I am using. I cuts. But as the scene is reworked and refined, it
would always review the material twice: once at the reaches a point, hopefully, where the shots themselves
beginning, the day after the material was shot, noting seem to create each other: This shot "makes" the next
down my first impressions and including any notes shot, which "makes" the next shot, etc. In this way,
the director cares to give me. And then when I was the Walter Murch who decided things initially gradu-
50 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE METHODS AND MACHINES: MARBLE AND CLAY 51
ally recedes until, finally, there comes a point where workprint there for comparison. And you can stop,
he has become invisible and the characters take over, go forward, go backward, etc.
the shots, the emotion, the story seem to take over. If you are fortunate enough to be working with a
Sometimes-the best times-this process reaches the good color timer at a good laboratory, of course, it is
point where I can look at the scene and say, "I didn't like any sort of successful collaboration.
have anything to do with that-it just created itself."
As far as the color balance of the final prints goes,
I've had a few good experiences, but many have been
frustrating for one reason or another. The worst thing
is that the labs show the film at twenty-four frames
per second (and sometimes even at thirty-two fps)
without the ability to stop or go backward. You are
sitting there and saying: "That shot should be red-
der." "Which one?" "The close-up of the foot." But
already eight shots have gone by. Most often, the
impression you get is that they are doing this as a
courtesy just to keep you quiet.
One way that works for me, where you can really
see what's going on and get specific with your notes
about color, is to take the workprint and the first an-
swer print and put them in sync over a light box of
the correct color temperature. There is something
about a low level of light coming through a piece of
film that enables you to see tonalities that are almost
invisible if you're looking at a bright screen of pro-
jected light. There may be a residual greenness, you
know, but you look at the film in a viewing theater
and you'll say, "I don't know. Is that shot a little green?
Or is it too blue?" And, of course, before you have
decided, you are looking at something else. If you
work with the light-box system, the green will just
leap out, especially if you've got your original
TEST SCREENINGS: REFERRED PAIN 53
52
54 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE TEST SCREENINGS: REFERRED PAIN 55
You shouldn't blindly follow what you learn from ment about one scene they do not like, the impulse
these test screenings any more than you should any- is to "fix" the scene or cut it out. But the chances are
thing else. What can you learn from the differences that that scene is fine. Instead, the problem may be
between the previous screenings and this one? Given that the audience simply didn't understand something
these two headings, where is the North Pole? Test that they needed to know for the scene to work.
screenings are just a way to find out where you are.
So, instead of fixing the scene itself, you might
There was one procedure on julia that, unfortu- clarify some exposition that happens five minutes
nately, I have never seen repeated. We had a person earlier. Don't necessarily operate on the elbow: in-
sitting at a table in the lobby of the preview theater stead, discover if nerves are being pinched somewhere
with a sign in front of him that said, "If you want to else. But the audience will never tell you that directly.
talk to us on the telephone after a few days, leave They will simply tell you where the pain is, not the
your number here." And then those conversations were source of the pain.
transcribed and added into the survey. If you are go-
'I
I Editing decisions become particularly acute in the
ing to do previews and listen to what people have to
L last days before the film is released, since changes
say, that's the way to do it-after they have had a day
made now will be permanent. If you, as the editor,
II I
or two to let the film sink in. Don't look at what people
have a particularly strong feeling about something
I write in the heat of the moment-you get a reaction,
at this stage, you should try to make your point as
but it is a skewed reaction. There's a lot of what is
forcefully and convincingly as you can-perhaps you
medically called "referred pain" in that process.
stay late and do a test version of your idea, sketch
When you go to a doctor and tell him that you something out-but you also need to have discre-
have a pain in your elbow, it is the quack who takes tion, a sense of who you are dealing with, and present
out his scalpel and starts to operate on the elbow. your ideas to the director or producer in the right
Then you wind up with not only the original pain but context. And how you go about this has to do with
probably a pain in your wrist and your shoulder as your whole working history, how you were hired,
well. Whereas an experienced doctor studies you, how much you respect the director, how much the
takes an x-ray, and determines that the cause of the director respects you.
pain is probably a pinched nerve up in your shoul-
I remember one moment particularly, after the
der-you just happen to feel it in your elbow. The
previews of julia, when Fred Zinnemann and I were
pain in the shoulder has been "referred" to the el-
debating what final changes to make in the structure
bow. Audience reactions are like that. When you ask
of the beginning, which seemed to have been diffi-
the direct question, "What was your least favorite
cult for the audience to follow. The opening reel of
scene?" and eighty percent of the people are in agree-
the film had a nested sequence of flashbacks-a
56 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
57
58 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE DON'T WORRY, IT'S ONLY A MOVIE 59
We are accustomed to such things, of course, in almost the same words used to comfort a child fright-
music (Beethoven was the innovator and master of ened by a film-"Don't worry, darling, it's only a
this) as well as in our own thoughts-the way one movie." Frightening dreams and films have a similar
realization will suddenly overwhelm everything else, power to overwhelm the defenses that are otherwise
to be, in turn, replaced by yet another, But in the effective against equally frightening books, paintings,
dramatic arts-theater, ballet, opera-there didn't seem music. For instance, it is hard to imagine this phrase:
to be any way to achieve total instantaneous displace- "Don't worry, darling, it's only a painting.")
ment: stage machinery can only move so fast, after
The problem with all this is that the comparison
alL So why do cuts work? Do they have some hidden
of films and dreams is interesting, probably true, but
foundation in our own experience, or are they an in-
relatively barren of practical fruits: We still know so
vention that suits the convenience of filmmakers and
little about the nature of dreams that the observation
people have just, somehow, become used to them?
comes to a stop once it has been made.
Well, although "day-to-day" reality appears to be
Something to consider, though, is the possibility
continuous, there is that other world in which we
that there may be a part of our waking reality where
spend perhaps a third of our lives: the "night-to-night"
we actually do experience something like cuts, and
reality of dreams, And the images in dreams are much
where daylight images are somehow brought in closer,
more fragmented, intersecting in much stranger and
more discontinuous, juxtaposition than might other-
more abrupt ways than the images of waking real-
wise seem to be the case.
ity-ways that approximate, at least, the interaction
produced by cutting. I began to get a glimmer of this on my first pic-
ture-editing job-The Conversation (1974)-when I
Perhaps the explanation is as simple as that: We
kept finding that Gene Hackman (Harry Caul in the
accept the cut because it resembles the way images
film) would blink very close to the point where I had
are juxtaposed in our dreams. In fact, the abruptness
decided to cut. It was interesting, but I didn't know
of the cut may be one of the key determinants in ac-
what to make of it.
tually producing the similarity between films and
dreams. In the darkness of the theater, we say to our- Then, one morning after I had been working all
selves, in effect, "This looks like reality, but it cannot night, I went out to get some breakfast and happened
be reality because it is so visually discontinuous; there- to walk past the window of a Christian Science Read-
fore, it must be a dream." ing Room, where the front page of the Monitor fea-
tured an interview with John Huston. I stopped to
(Along those lines, it is revealing that the words a
read it, and one thing struck me forcefully because it
parent uses to comfort a child frightened by a night-
related exactly to this question of the blink:
mare-"Don't worry, darling, it's only a dream"-are
60 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE DON'T WORRY, IT'S ONLY A MOVIE 61
"To me, the perfect film is as though it were un- After I read that article, I started observing people,
winding behind your eyes, and your eyes were pro- watching when they blinked, and I began to discover
jecting it themselves, so that you were seeing what something much different than what they tell you in
you wished to see. Film is like thought. It's the clos- high-school biology, which is that the blink is simply
est to thought process of any art. a means to moisten the surface of the eye. If that's all
"Look at that lamp across the room. Now look it is, then for each environment and each individual
back at me. Look back at that lamp. Now look back there would be a purely mechanical, predictable in-
at me again. Do you see what you did? You blinked. terval between blinks depending on the humidity,
Those are cuts. After the first look, you know that temperature, wind speed, etc. You would only blink
there's no reason to pan continuously from me to the when your eye began to get too dry, and that would
lamp because you know what's in between. Your mind be a constant number of seconds for each environ-
cut the scene. First you behold the lamp. Cut. Then ment. This is clearly not the case: People will some-
you behold me."12 times keep their eyes open for minutes at a time-at
other times they will blink repeatedly-with many
What Huston asks us to consider is a physiologi- variations in between. The question then is, "What is
cal mechanism-the blink-that interrupts the appar- causing them to blink?"
ent visual continuity of our perceptions: My head may
move smoothly from one side of the room to the other, On the one hand, I'm sure you've all been con-
but, in fact, I am cutting the flow of visual images into fronted by someone who was so angry that he didn't
significant bits, the better to juxtapose and compare blink at all: This is a person, I believe, in the grip of
those bits-"lamp" and "face" in Huston's example- a single thought that he holds (and that holds him),
without irrelevant information getting in the way. inhibiting the urge and need to blink. 14 And then there
is the opposite kind of anger that causes someone to
Of course there are limits to the kind of juxtapo- blink every second or so: This time, the person is be-
sitions I can make this way-I can't jump forward or ing assailed simultaneously by many conflicting emo-
backward in time and space (that is the prerogative tions and thoughts, and is desperately (but uncon-
of dreams and films).13 But even so, the visual dis- sciously) using those blinks to try to separate these
placements available to me just by turning my head thoughts, sort things out, and regain some kind of
(from the Grand Canyon in front of me to the forest control.
behind me, or even from one side of this room to the
other) are sometimes quite great. 14 There is that telling phrase from classic cowboy (and now diplo-
l .•
62 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE DON'T WORRY, IT'S ONLY A MOVIE 63
So it seems to me that our rate of blinking is some- presents us with an idea, or a sequence of ideas, and
how geared more to our emotional state and to the the cut is a "blink" that separates and punctuates those
nature and frequency of our thoughts than to the at- ideas. 16 At the moment you decide to cut, what you
mospheric environment we happen to find ourselves are saying is, in effect, "I am going to bring this idea
in. Even if there is no head movement (as there was to an end and start something new." It is important to
in Huston's example), the blink is either something emphasize that the cut by itself does not create the
that helps an internal separation of thought to take "blink moment"-the tail does not wag the dog. If
place, or it is an involuntary reflex accompanying the the cut is well-placed, however, the more extreme the
mental separation that is taking place anyway. 15 visual discontinuity-from dark interior to bright ex-
And not only is the rate of blinking significant, terior, for instance-the more thorough the effect of
but so is the actual instant of the blink itself. Start a punctuation will be.
conversation with somebody and watch when they At any rate, I believe "filmic" juxtapositions are
blink. I believe you will find that your listener will taking place in the real world not only when we dream
blink at the precise moment he or she "gets" the idea but also when we are awake. And, in fact, I would go
of what you are saying, not an instant earlier or later. so far as to say that these juxtapositions are not acci-
Why would this be? Well, speech is full of unobserved dental mental artifactsJ~!!.Lpart_<:>U~.f!1~t_~od we use
grace notes and elaborations-the conversational to make sense of the world: We must rendervlsuar
equivalents of "Dear Sir" and "Yours Sincerely"-and realjW -disC-;;nlin1Jou;-=9tl1erVV:i~e-F-~Ic~erve·(j- r~irity~
the essence of what we have to say is often sand- w:.o uld r~semble an almost incomprehensible string of
wiched between an introduction and a conclusion. The let~_~ithout word separation or punctuation. ·When-
blink will take place either when the listener realizes we sit in the dark theater, then we find edited film a
our "introduction" is finished and that now we are (surprisingly) familiar experience. "More like thought
going to say something significant, or it will happen than anything else," in Huston's wordsY
when he feels we are "winding down" and not going
16 This can occur regardless of how big or small the "idea" happens
to say anything more significant for the moment.
to be. For instance, the idea could be as simple as "she moves quickly
And that blink will occur where a cut could have to the left."
happened, had the conversation been filmed. Not a 17 William Stokoe makes an intriguing comparison between the tech-
niques of film editing and American Sign Language: "In signed lan-
frame earlier or later.
guage, narrative is no longer linear. Instead, the essence is to cut
So we entertain an idea, or a linked sequence of from a normal view to a close-up to a distant shot to a close-up
again, even including flashback and flash-forward scenes, exactly as
ideas, and we blink to separate and punctuate that a movie editor works. Not only is signing arranged more like edited
idea from what follows. Similarly-in film-a shot film than like written narration, but also each signer is placed very
much as a camera: the field of vision and angle of view are directed
15 Dr. John Stern of Washington University in St. Louis has recently but variable." William Stokoe, Language in Four Dimensions, New
(987) published experimental work in the psycho-physiology of the York Academy of Sciences (979),
blink that seems to confirm this.
DRAGNET 65
seem to come at the "wrong" times. Although you may not notice There is a way of editing that ignores all of these
this conSciously, the rhythm of the actor's blinks don't match the rhythm
questions, what I would call the "Dragnet" system,
of thoughts you would expect from the character he is playing. In
fact, a bad actor is probably not thinking anything like what the char- from the 1950s TV series of the same name.
acter would be thinking. Instead: "I wonder what the director thinks
of me, I wonder if I look okay," or "What's my next line?" The policy of the show seemed to be to keep ev-
ery word of dialogue on screen. When someone had
64
DRAGNET 67
66 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
occur, and for the same reasons. Every shot has po- shot in a different context, where the audience will be thinking (and
noticing) different things.
,I
68 IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE DRAGNET 69
rhythm that counterpoints and underscores the ideas fact, statistically the two rates-Df real-life blinking and
being expressed or considered. And one of the tools of film cutting-are close enough for comparison:
to identify exactly where these cut points, these Depending on how it is staged, a convincing action
"branches," may be is to compare them to our pat- sequence might have around twenty-five cuts a minute,
terns of blinking, which have been underscoring the whereas a dialogue scene would still feel "normal"
rhythm of our thoughts for tens of thousands, per- (in an American film) averaging six cuts per minute
haps millions, of years of human history. Where you or less.
feel comfortable blinking-if you are really listening You should be right with the blinks, perhaps lead-
to what is being said-is where the cut will feel right. ing them ever so slightly. I certainly don't expect the
So there are really three problems wrapped up audience to blink at every cut-the cut point should
together: be a potential blink point. In a sense, by cutting, by
1) identifying a series of potential cut points
this sudden displacement of the visual field, you are
(and comparisons with the blink can help blinking for the audience: You achieve the immediate
you do this), juxtaposition of two concepts for them-what they
achieve in the real world by blinking, as in Huston's
2) determining what effect each cut point will example.
have on the audience, and
Your job is partly to anticipate, partly to control
3) choosing which of those effects is the cor- the thought processes of the audience. To give them.
rect one for the film. what they want and/or what they need just before
I believe the sequence of thoughts-that is to say, they have to "ask" for it-to be surprising yet self-
the rhythm and rate of cutting-should be appropri- evident at the same time. If you are too far behind or
ate to whatever the audience is watching at the mo- ahead of them, you create problems, but if you are
ment. The average "real-world" rate of blinking is right with them, leading them ever so slightly, the flow
somewhere between the extremes of four and forty of events feels natural and exciting at the same time.
blinks per minute. If you are in an actual fight, you
will be blinking dozens of times a minute because
you are thinking dozens of conflicting thoughts a
minute-and so when you are watching a fight in a
film, there should be dozens of cuts per minute. 2o In
itself. If, on the other hand, you wanted to create an objective dis-
tance-to have the audience observe the fight as a phenomenon in
itself-then you would reduce the number of cuts considerably.
A GALAXY OF WINKING DOTS 71
70
72 INTHEBLINK O F A N E Y E
new version was projected in turn, and the cycle was Until now.
repeated over and over until the fit was as perfect as
Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century,
she could make it.
film editing is in the midst of transforming itself from
It's startling to recall that the humble Moviola (that a mechanical process to an electronic one, and the
frog-green machine found in virtually every editing Moviola is increasingly found-if it is found at all-as
room over the last seventy years) was rejected by many an amusing and nostalgic artifact displayed in the foy-
editors of the pre-mechanical age as too expensive, ers of the studio post-production departments.
noisy, and cumbersome+ven dangerous, since film
In 1992, when this book was first published, al-
in those days was made of cellulose nitrate, an ex-
most all films were still being edited mechanically, al-
tremely flammable substance chemically similar to
though the electronic wave was building an unstop-
dynamite. Still worse (if that's possible), the Moviola's
pable momentum. Now, at the beginning of the
main attribute-the ability to study the motion of the
twenty-first century, the situation is reversed: Almost
images, frame by frame-was dismissed as an irrel-
all films are being edited electronically, on computers.
evant crutch that would simply get in the way of the
work to be done. This doesn't mean that film itself--the sprocketed
35mm strip of celluloid-has disappeared. It is still
After an initial attempt to penetrate the industry
(for a few more years) the medium that captures the
in the early 192Os, the machine was offered to the
image in the first place, and it is still (perhaps for a
general public as a way of viewing home movies-
few years less) the medium that delivers the image to
hence the friendly name Moviola, reminiscent of the
the theaters.
then-popular Victrola record player. It probably would
have withered away as a footnote to film history had The electronic systems most commonly employed
not a fortuitous technical breakthrough occurred in today are: the Avid, the most thoroughly developed
1927: sound. and by far the most commonly used system; Final
Cut Pro, a program recently developed by Apple that
Sound-The Talking Picture-was the Trojan horse
runs on Macintosh operating systems; and Lightworks,
that ushered in the rackety Mechanical Age of edit-
which runs only on Windows. There are some func-
ing. No magnifying glass or three-second rule could
tional differences among the three, but they work es-
help the editor lip-read those silent frames, and the
sentially the same way:
"double-headed" (picture and sound) Moviola was
wheeled through the studio gates, where it and its 1) Once the film is shot and developed in the
more sophisticated European children-German lab, it is copied into the computer through a
Steenbeck and KEM, Italian Prevost, and French process of digitzation. This allows every
Moritone-have been ever since. frame of the film to be stored on a hard disk,
78 IN T H E B L I N K O F A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G / 79
in very much the same way that graphics Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, and Alan Parker-still
programs, such as Photoshop, store digitized prefer to edit on film. Spielberg has gone so far as to
photographs. buy a dozen Moviolas with spare parts and secure
2) Each frame of the f h is given a specific the services of dedicated technicians to keep them in
number, or address, in a database. This al- perfect working order for the foreseeable future
lows the editor to play these frames in any In the following pages, I would like to review how
sequence. The software keeps a record of this electronic-digital revolution has come about; why
these decisions, which can be played repeat- it came about despite its complexity and the resis-
edly, and changed at will, very much the tance of influential people; and to examine some of
way text can be "played back" and modi- the long-term technical and artistic implications of a
fied in a word processor. completely digitized film industry.
3) Once the right sequence is decided, the
program will print out a list of those deci-
sions, called an edit decision list. This list Astronomical Numbers
allows the 35mm film to be conformed,
using traditional editing tools, to match what But first I'd like to take a moment to emphasize the
is in the computer. The finished film can astronomical number of ways that images can be com-
then be shown in a theater, on conven- bined in a motion picture. This has always been the
tional projectors. case, no matter what editing system is used: manual,
mechanical, or electronic.
But why would anyone choose to go through these
If a scene is photographed with only two shots-
contortions? Why not just edit the film itself, espe-
one each from two different camera positions (A and
cially since you begin with film and end with film?
B, let's say)-you can choose one or the other or a
Why give up a perfectly good way of making films,
combination of both. As a result, you have at least
one that had been perfected over many years and used
four ways of using these two images: A, B, A+B, and
(brilliantly) to make all of the classic films that we
B+A. However, once the number gets much larger than
know and love?
two shots-and a director might - shoot twenty-five
- Those are good questions. Or at least they were shots for an average scene-the number of possible
good questions eight or ten years ago, and ones that combinations quickly becomes astronomical.
many editors asked themselves at the time.
It turns out there is a formula for this. Here it is:
In fact, some still do: Three of the most celebrated
filmmakers of the last third of the twentieth century-
80 INTHEBLINKOFANEYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 81
"C" is the minimum number of different ways a hand, even such a "small" number as 40 followed by
scene can be assembled using "n," all of the shots the 24 zeros is so huge that a tiny percentage of it (the
director has taken for that scene; "e" is the transcen- potentially good versions) will still be overwhelmingly
dental number 2.71828... , one of those mysterious large. If only one version in every quadrillion makes
constants (like n) you might remember from high sense, that still leaves 40 million possible versions.
school. And the exclamation point after the "n" (the For just one scene. And a theatrical film usually has
one instance where mathematics gets emotional!) hundreds of scenes, which themselves can be (and
stands for factorial, which means you multiply together frequently are) rearranged from their original script
all the numbers up to and including the number in order.
question. So the queasy feeling in the pit of the stomach of
For instance, the factorial of 4 = 1 x 2 ~ 3 ~ = 424. every editor beginning a project is the recognition-
The factorial of 6 = 1 x 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 = ~ 5720,
~ 6so you see conscious or not--of the immense number of choices
the results get big pretty fast. The factorial of 25 is a he or she is facing. The numbers are so huge that
very large number, something like 15 billion billion there is no possibility of turning film editing into a
million-15 followed by 24 zeros. Multiply that by "e" kind of automated chess game, where all of the dif-
and you get (roughly) 40 followed by 24 zeros. Mi- ferent options are evaluated before making a move.
nus one. But electronic editing, more than the traditional me-
So a scene made up of only twenty-five shots can chanical methods, offers more and faster ways to cope
be edited in approximately 39,999,999,999,999,999,999, with these super-astronomical numbers.
999,999 different ways. In miles, this is twenty-five
times the circumference of the observable universe.
If you had fifty-nine shots for a scene, which is
The Electronic Advantages
not at all unusual, you would potentially have as many This is because what you are actually creating in the
possible versions of that scene as there are subatomic computer is a virtual a s s e m b l ~ h images
e themselves
particles in the entire universe! Some action sequences have not been disturbed, only the computer instruc-
I've edited have had upwards of 250 shots, so you tions for what to do with the images (remember the
can imagine the kind of numbers involved: 88 fol- edit decision list mentioned earlier). This is a funda-
lowed by a solid page of zeros-91 of them. mental difference with the mechanical systems, which
Now, the vast majority of these versions would create what is rather dramatically termed a destruc-
be complete junk. Like the old story of a million chim- tive assembly of the film. This simply means that, in
panzees at a million typewriters, most of what they mechanical editing, the images and the information
banged out would make no sense at all. On the other about the arrnngement of the images are one and the
82 IN T H E B L I N K O F A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 83
same thing: You automatically establish the informa- can give an edge on speed will be welcomed.
tion about the sequence of shots by putting those shots The quickness of electronic systems comes
in a certain sequence. If this seems self-evident,well- about -for many reasons, mostly through the
it is! In computer editing, however, this is not the case: instant random-access to the material. In the old
Information about the order of shots is held in a sepa- mechanical systems, a human being (the editor
rate place from the shots themselves. or the assistant) would have to locate and re-
trieve every shot. In a computer, it is only a
What this means is that every time you look at a
mouse-click away.
sequence on a computer editing system, the images
are being magically assembled for you as you watch. Reduced cost because it may eliminate the need
If you want to do something completely different with for film workprint. For certain low-budget films,
a scene, the system doesn't care at all-you are only this might be an attractive option, since you can
changing the instructions, the recipe for this particu- transfer directly from film negative to hard disk
lar dish, not the dish itself. In a mechanical system, at roughly half the cost of making a positive
you have to undo version A before you can create workprint. Once the film is edited, you then
version B (destroying version A in the process). need only print the takes that were included in
the cut, which might reduce your workprint
This crucial difference between digital and me- budget by ninety percent.
chanical systems leads directly to the main selling
points that have propelled electronic random-access Fewer people employed in the cutting room,
editing systems forward and made them now gener- since the computer automatically takes care of
ally accepted over the old mechanical systems. such things as filing trims, making lists, etc., that
are usually handled by several assistants and
Before we go any farther, let me quickly summa- apprentices. As we will see further on, this may
rize these points: not yet-practically speaking-be the case. But
Increased speed is certainly the most important theoretically it is enticing.
(and certainly the most frequently mentioned) Easier access to the material. The traditional
attribute of electronic systems. Pure speed has editing room has a certain medieval "crafts guild"
appeal both to the studios, who want their films feel to it, with a defined hierarchy and long train-
done quickly, and to editors, who are trying to ing periods in obscure crafts-such as coding
pack as much creativity as they can into every and reconstitution-that are reduced or elimi-
hour that the producers will give them. "How nated in the digital domain. Simply stated, the
fast is he?" is frequently the first question that goal of electronic editing is to make it as easy
will be asked about an editor, and any tool that and accessible as word processing.
84 INTHEBLINKOFANEYE DIGITAL FILM EDITING 85
The director can review all the material, in its speaking, to two or three tracks, and these had
original "uncut" state, even though it may si- to be separately and somewhat laboriously con-
multaneously be included in the assemblies of formed to changes in the picture. Also, and sig-
many different versions of the film. Remember nificantly, Avid can vary the loudness of any
that the computer only creates a "virtual" as- section of sound-fade it in or out and change
sembly, not a "destructive" one. In the mechani- its equalization-simulating the final mix. Me-
cal systems, once part of a shot is included in chanical systems can do none of this.
an assembly, the director is no longer able to Integration with electronic special effects:
see that shot in its uncut form. Electronic systems make it convenient to flow
A more civilized working environment free back and forth from the editing process to in-
from the rackety noise and "physicality" of the creasingly sophisticated electronic special effects.
Moviola and film itself. The electronic image you Traditional fades, dissolves, and wipes can be
are looking at does not get scratched, torn, seen and evaluated instantly, of course, as well
burned, and is not physically spliced the way as any repositioning and cropping of the frame,
film is. You can see what you are doing more reversals of action, speed-ups and slow-downs
calmly and clearly, for as long as you care to of action. But this is just the tip of the digital
keep doing it. iceberg.
Preservation of Werent versions of the film.
In breezily summarizing the bright side of the present
Just as there are no trims to worry about, elec-
situation at the beginning of a new century, I am nec-
tronic editing is able to recall every attempted
essarily minimizing the struggle that it took to get here.
version of a scene and then file these for future
Electronic editing did not spring upon the world ready-
reference. By comparison, in mechanical edit-
made and as artfully arranged as it now appears to
ing, there is no easy way to "go back" unless
be. Three decades of development were necessary to
you make the deliberate, expensive, and time-
get things to their present state, and this in turn built
consuming decision to copy the scene in ques-
on the previous seventy years of experience with
tion onto duplicating film or videotape.
mechanical editing. In addition, every one of the ad-
Sophisticateduse of sound: Avid, Final Cut Pro, vantages listed above has its "evil twin"-a flip side
and Lightworks can all carry many tracks of that has the potential to cancel out the good. The prob-
sound along with the image and automatically lems encountered on the way, and the solutions (some
maintain them in the correct relationship to the successful, some not), help illuminate the inherent
picture, no matter how many changes are made. qualities of electronic filmmaking-and its potential
Mechanical systems were limited, practically future.
86 IN THE BLINK OF A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 87
1 Digital: Back to the Future not been a significant amount of money to be made
I
in improving what already exists.
My first exposure to computer-controlled editing came
in 1968 and coincided-appropriately enough-with Television equipment, on the other hand, offers
my introduction to Francis Coppola, who has been a tremendous world-wide potential for profit and in-
an innovator and champion of electronic cinema for novation at both the professional and consumer lev-
more than thirty years. Francis, who had recently els. The present wave of interest in electronic post-
graduated from UCLA film school, and George Lucas, production comes partly from those who envision a
a fellow student with me at USC, were investigating technical merging of the two worlds (film and televi-
an early CMX system down the street from where I sion, professional and consumer), and hence a con-
was working in Hollywood (on a Moviola!). siderable increase in the amount of money to be made.
Avid, for instance, has for some time been delivering
It seemed clear to each of us, in our mid-twenties completely digital TV news stations throughout Eu-
then, that this room-humming with expensive, rela-
rope for around $1 million each, and its yearly turn-
tively cumbersome equipment-was a glimpse of the over in this area is approximately $200 million.
future of film editing. And a few years later, after
American Zoetrope had been launched in San Fran- But electronic editing has not been promoted only
cisco, the three of us put together a proposal for us- by the hardware developers. A strong push has also
ing the CMX system to edit sections of The Godfather. come from the filmmakers themselves: George Lucas,
Nothing came directly from that early effort--computer Oliver Stone,Jim Cameron, Steven Soderbergh, Carroll
storage and access were, at the time, far too primitive Ballard, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Coppola, and
and costly for the amount of footage generated by a many others experimented with different electronic
feature film. systems to edit their films. Lucas went so far as to
become a developer himself throughout the 1980s,
Development of many different competing sys-
with his innovative EditDroid system. And short of
tems-CMX, Montage, EditDroid, E-Pix, EMC, D-Vi-
actually creating marketable hardware, Francis
sion, Avid, Lightworks, and a number of others-con-
Coppola has been one of the leading advocates and
tinued throughout the seventies and eighties. A tre-
users of electronic editing from the mid-1970s to the
mendous amount of research and development was
present. The desire among the filmmakers has been
invested in these systems, particularly when you con-
less about saving money and more to do with in-
sider that, although professional film is an expensive
creasing editing speed and, most significantly, multi-
medium, there is not a lot of professional film equip- plying creative options.
ment in the world (compared, for instance, to medi-
cal equipment). And since the standards and toler- The resistance to electronic editing came mostly
ances of film equipment are extremely high, there has from experienced professional editors and directors
D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 8
as luck would have it, no LucasFilm feature ever ficient, productive, and flexible than their analog pre-
used the LucasFilm system, because by the mid-1990s, decessors. And the editors themselves could digitize
both EditDroid and the functionally similar Montage the film quickly and efficiently from videotapes of the
system had been overwhelmed by technical devel- dailies, rather than sending the film out to professional
opments that were leading to the eventual pre-emi- services to be copied onto laserdiscs or multiple VHS
nence of completely digital systems such as Avid tapes.
and Lightworks. The digital machines were rightly criticized in the
early stages of their development for having poor
Transitionfrom Analog t o Digital image quality compared to, say, the EditDroid
laserdiscs, but as hard-disk memory became precipi-
It was not technically feasible to digitize the huge tously less expensive during the 1990s, the quality of
amount of film generated by the average feature onto the digitized image correspondingly increased, to the
the relatively primitive hard drives of the 1980s. So extent that both EditDroid and Montage found the
the expedient solution was to store the film on con- digital competition increasingly difficult to overcome.
ventional analog media, such as videotape or laserdisc, Despite all these editing system developments,
and use the computers only to manipulate the infor- however, we found ourselves, in the mid-1990s, stuck
mation about what to do with those images: in effect, in a lingering electro-mechanical "transition phasen-
to have the computer control the banks of analog one that lasted years longer than I would have guessed
machines on which the images were kept. EditDroid when I was so dazzled by the CMX back in 1968. After
used laserdiscs as a storage medium and Montage used all, 2001 was only a few years away, the 33l/3 LP was
videotape cassettes, but the operational principle was history, word processors had universally replaced elec-
essentially the same for both systems, which might tric typewriters, and here we were still listening to the
be called "analog-electronic." clattering of the Moviola's Maltese Cross, with scratched
In the late-1980s, because of advances in com- film all over the floor and splicers, tape, trim bins, and
puter memory technology, it became possible to digi- grease pencils filling the editing room. I believe the
tize film images directly onto the computer's hard disk. awareness of this odd technological lag was one of the
This is the central innovation underlying both Avid strongest psychological undercurrents pushing elec-
and Lightworks, which might be described as "digi- tronic editing forward. ?he persistence of the Moviola
tal-electronic." into the last decade of the twentieth century is about
as surprising as seeing an old manual Underwood
Because they have everything-media and infor-
typewriter being loaded onto the Space Shuttle.
mation about that mediel'under one roof," so to
speak, these digital systems were inherently more ef- What was going on?
92 IN T H E B L I N K O F A N E Y E
1 D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 93
tors were comfortable with. There needed to The early video-based electronic systems all
be an easy and immediate kinetic feedback be- ran at 30 frames per second, so there were times
tween the material and the editor's eye-hand when the editor had decided to make a cut on
co-ordination, both in terms of selecting the a "phantom" video frame that had no numeri-
desired frame and making the "splice" itself. cal equivalent in film. The computer then had
Editing is a kind of frozen dance that depends to make an arbitrary decision about which "real"
on engaging as much of the editor's body as frame to select: the one before or the one after
possible. EditDroid, based on the Steenbeck the phantom frame. If only one version of the
model, had the most "film-like" control. film was ever made, this would have been easier
"Worksbest when needed least." Frequently, to resolve. But in the process of editing a film,
when called upon to perform a series of fast changes upon changes upon changes are made,
picture cuts or complicated sound edits, the tape so the computer's decision to come down on
and laserdisc systems would tell you in one way the "left" side of a particular cut for the first
or another that you had overloaded their pro- version of the film might be followed by a de-
cessing ability, and they could no longer show cision to come down on the "right" side of the
you your work in real time. Solving this was same cut in the second version-even if the
(and remains) simply a question of adding editor had made no change in that area.
enough memory and processing speed to do On Godfather 116 which was edited on the
the job. Montage system in 1990, we had to assign an
assistant to manually double-check the edit de-
t'
Reh ility of the edit decision lisk The reli-
ability of the crucial edit decision list, from which cision list with what was actually on the editor's
the film is conformed to match what is in the screen, and to cancel out edits of one frame
computer, was problematic on the early systems. that in fact had not been made at all.
In Europe, where both film and video run at This list above is not complete, but it gives a pretty
25 frames a second, this is not a problem. But in good indication of the major electronic-editing issues
the United States, motion-picture film runs at 24 that were foremost on editors' minds in the early 1990s.
frames per second and video runs at 30 frames, It was enough to dissuade many editors from taking
so a mathematical compatibility has to be the plunge and "going electronic." The advantages just
worked out if the two systems are to mesh. In didn't seem worth the potential troubles, and there
making copies of film to video, six extra "phan- were legendary stories of productions that had gotten
tom" video frames (actually repetitions of exist- hopelessly mired in electronic swamps, unable to
ing frame-fields) are added every second. extricate themselves except by returning to the old
mechanical system.
1 96 IN T H E BLINK OF A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 97
MACHINE DECADE
3
x$
C
U
3 [
~ i l
"
0
s
4
!4
g 3 82
5 2
2) Ttyo or more workstations could now ac-
cess the same set of hard drives on which
the film was stored, which eliminated the
danger of "bottlenecking. "
Moviola '20s M A R
3) The software for a true 24-frame envi-
KEM & ronment had been written by Avid for their
Steenbeck '30s M A L Film Composer program, assuring a one-to-
one correspondence between the frames in
EditDroid
& Montage '80s E A R the computer and the frames of film. This
I
Avid &
Lightworks '90s
98 I N THE BLINK OF A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 99
was the breakthrough that made the crucial ventional mechanical setup: a KEM "8-plate" for me
edit decision list perfectly reliable for the pur- and a Steenbeck for my assistants, Daniel Farrell and
poses of conforming the 35mm film. Rosmary Conte, in addition to the normal rewind
benches and miscellaneous paraphernalia. As usual,
Despite having a few lingering questions and reser- we had my computerized database to keep a log of
vations, I was eager to try digital editing, and English the notes and comments about each take as well as
Patient, with its shifting time structure, seemed ide- the photo duplicating equipment for taking represen-
ally suited for the flexibility that the Avid would give. tative stills of each setup.
However, the producer of the film, Saul Zaentz, However, six weeks into production, my wife,
was trying to reduce the budget (all heads of depart- Aggie (who was preparing to fly to Rome for a visit)
ments were working on partial salary deferments), and called with the news that our son Walter, had had a
renting an Avid represented an up-front extra cost of seizure the day before and been diagnosed with a
several thousand dollars a week-despite the poten- brain tumor.
tial for time savings farther along in the schedule. Also, I notified Anthony and Saul and discussed the situ-
English Patient was shooting in Italy and Tunisia, and ation with them as best I understood it-Walter was
Saul was rightly concerned about logistical support.
okay and recovering from the seizure, but an opera-
Anthony Minghella had edited his two previous tion to remove the tumor had been tentatively sched-
films conventionally, on film, and was concerned about uled for two weeks later. The seriousness of the situ-
making the change to digital. Not only was it unfa- ation couldn't be assessed until the day of the opera-
miliar territory for him, but several of his friends had tion, when a biopsy could be made.
recently had unfortunate experiences with electronic
I told Anthony and Saul that I was flying home
editing: There had been technical problems, and the
the next day, expected to be gone for at least eight
electronic system itself seemed to encourage studio
weeks under the best of circumstances, and that they
interference.
should think about hiring another editor to replace
So the decision was made to edit me English Pa- me. Both Saul and Anthony refused to consider that
tient directly on 35mm film, which was fine with me. possibility and told me that I should not worry about
Perhaps, on second thought, making a film in a for- the film and to update them. So early the next day I
eign country and learning a new system at the same was on my way home to Bolinas, a small town north
time would impose too many variables. There was of San Francisco.
always the next film . . .
So we started production of English Patient at
Cinecitti in Rome in September of 1995 with a con-
100 IN THE BLINK OF A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 101
This kind of extreme crisis, for which you are never Walter's operation went ahead as scheduled, and
prepared, has the effect of hurtling you, so to speak, was successful. The tumor's biopsy was ambiguous,
through the windshield of your normal day-to-day life. and he declined to have chemotherapy or radiation
Some magic agency puts things, blessedly, in a star- treatment. He spent several months at home, through
tlingly clear perspective: What is important stands out the first assembly of the film. The joke went around
in brilliant relief; everyhng else recedes into the muted that, since my wife is English, we had one-and-a-half
background. The event-horizon shrinks to what is "English patients" staying with us at our house in
achievable today or at most tomorrow. "What it?" is Bolinas.
banished, and your role in the unfolding events has a
Walter had been teaching mountain-climbing be-
solidly determined feel. It's some kind of self-protec-
fore all this happened, and his recovery goal became
tive mechanism with very ancient roots.
being able to join a cancer survivor's ascent of Mt.
So the film, which had been my primary focus Denali (we called it "Mt. Denial") in Alaska, the tallest
twenty-four hours earlier, now seemed as if it were a peak in North America. In June of the following year,
curiosity at the other end of a telescope. he was part of a team of fifteen that successfully
Nonetheless, I was conscious that I had a pro- reached the summit. He has now worked with me on
fessional responsibility to people who had put their my last three editing projects-it has been almost five
trust in me. I was going to be away for at least two years since the operation, and his prognosis is good,
months, and shooting was not going to stop: An eight- thank God.
week backlog in a twenty-week schedule has a tre-
mendous force to it.
By the time I landed in San Francisco, it had be- M a n M e e t s Machine
come clear to me what I would propose to Saul and
Anthony: If they really wanted me to continue as the The Avid-which is physically just a powerful per-
editor on the film, we should install an Avid in the sonal computer and some video monitors-was
barn next to our house in Bolinas, ship the dailies to quickly installed upstairs in the barn, and film be-
San Francisco after the unit had seen them, and I gan to arrive from Italy. One problem was maintain-
would start editing at home, able to be close at hand ing communication with my film assistants, Dan and
during my son's recuperation. It would involve a con- Rosmary in Rome, as well as with Anthony and Saul,
siderable extra cost to the film, as well as having the who were shooting in a remote part of Tunisia by
editor 7,000 miles away from the production, but there this time. Luckily, Rosmary had an email account,
didn't seem to be an alternative as far as I was con- and this quickly became the highway on which both
cerned. To Saul and Anthony's eternal credit, they correspondence and database information was
accepted my proposal without hesitation. transmitted.
102 IN THE BLINK OF A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 103
And then there was the considerable puzzle of of me and right below the images-something I could
how to integrate the hour of material I had already never achieve with the mechanical systems. (By some
cut on film into the new system, while moving for- good fortune, eight pages of notes turned out to be
ward on all other fronts. I don't know of another case just the right number for even a fairly complicated
of a film making this transition from mechanical to scene.)
electronic in the middle of production, but the par- I was more than a little dismayed, however, by
ticular circumstances in this case demanded it. All the how degraded the image actually was, relative to film.
credit for making it as smooth as possible should go To save money on storage, I had decided to digitize
to my assistants: Edie Bleiman and Sean Cullen in San English Patient at resolution 4, which yields a rela-
Francisco and Daniel Farrell and Rosmary Conte in tively crude image. As I spent my first few days work-
Rome. ing with this resolution, however, I wondered if I had
On videotape, the entire sixty hours of workprint made a mistake, and whether I should now re-digi-
for English Patient filled a couple of shelves of a me- tize at a higher resolution. Fortunately, while going
dium-sized bookcase, and once Edie began to digitize over some paperwork on the third day, I happened
it onto the hard drives, I found myself editing again- to catch a glimpse of a still frame of Juliette Binoche
exactly two months after Walter's seizure. on the monitor. It was so beautiful, in a kind of paint-
erly, impressionistic way, that I felt more comfortable
Here I was, at home, with everything that I had
with my decision. "This is not the film," I told myself.
asked for. The dilemma now: whether it all would go
"I am working on an impressionist painting of the film."
the way I had so hopefully predicted. How would
Only time would tell whether this was a kind of whis-
my particular style of editing, developed on Moviolas
tling in the dark, but it gave me the courage to con-
and KEM, actually fare now that I had this mountain
tinue as planned.
of backlogged material to get through on the Avid?
I was buoyed somewhat in all this because my
The first thing that pleased me was how easily
panels of still photographs (selected frames) from
the Avid adapted to my method of editing while stand-
whichever scene I was working on were just to the
ing up. With the KEM, it took at least three of us to
right of the Avid console. These images, photographi-
lift an extremely heavy machine up onto reinforced
cally taken directly from the workprint, served as a
plywood boxes. With the Avid, I simply placed the
constant reminder of the true value of the images. --
monitors on the top shelf of a metal storage rack, at *.
eye level, and then pushed an inexpensive adjustable As for the Avid's actual operation, I was very happy
architect's table up against the rack. This setup gave to find that my old system of always cutting "in real
me not only a place for the keyboard and mouse, but time" (i.e., selecting the crucial last frame of a shot by
for spreading out up to eight pages of notes in front marking it "on the fly" while the film is running at 24
104 IN THE BLINK OF A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 105
frames per second) was actually easier on the Avid tracks and synching them up to the picture by code
than it had been on the KEM or Moviola. number. In the Avid, the sound for the film is always
After a first attempt at selecting the "out" frame, running in synch with the image, so choosing to hear
the Avid would tell me, on my subsequent tries, how it or not is as simple as hitting a switch on or off.
many frames I was late, or early, or whether (hope- I was initially suspicious of using the Avid's key-
fully) I had hit the exact same frame. This was ex- board instead of the more-intuitive controls of the
tremely valuable because it immediately quantified a mechanical devices. The Moviola's design is almost
feeling about what had happened on that second try. automotive: It has pedals for forward and reverse
For instance, I might sense that I had cut a little too motion and a hand brake that gives a particularly
early, and a glance at the display would tell me that I satisfying jolt when stopping the film. You can also
was early by, say, three frames. So, under these cir- grab hold of a fast-spinning flywheel with your left
cumstances, with this particular material, I would know hand for additional braking power, and use it for inch-
what being "three frames early" felt like. This would ing the film forward or backward frame by frame. It
make subsequent attempts that much easier and in- is a tactile, whole-body experience in the extreme.
creasingly precise. In other words, exactly what the Avid keyboard
Mechanical systems provide this feedback, al- is not.
though in a slightly more involved way (I developed So I was amazed to find that, for me, this proved
this approach while using mechanical systems), so I not to be an obstacle-I was even comfortable using
was greatly relieved to find that the Avid supplied this my left hand to hit the crucial "cut" command. How
feature-and more quickly and automatically than on quickly I adapted to the Avid's keyboard control is
a mechanical system. I can't stress enough the impor- still a little mystifying. Perhaps 1'm simply at ease with
tance of such immediate feedback: It's crucially im- the keyboard in other situations. It may also be that
portant in the development of, and feeling for, the my habit of editing standing up restores at least some
rhythmic signature of each particular film. of the Moviola's whole-body experience.
I also found that another of my editing peculiari- I also quickly came to appreciate two of the Avid's
ties-making the first assembly of a scene without other features:
sound-was much easier on the Avid. With the Mo-
viola or KEM, I could of course make a silent assem- 1) Its generous ability to manipulate multiple
bly easily enough (in fact, one of the reasons for ex- sound tracks synchronously with the picture,
cluding sound was to make a first assembly as quickly so that even at an early stage I could ex-
as possible), but hearing it would then involve a some- periment with adding music and sound ef-
what tedious couple of hours finding the correct sound fects or multiple layers of dialogue. I was
106 IN THE BLINK OF A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 107
also able to adjust and then establish the them for editing. In fact, it became the first digitally
relative levels and equalizations of the edited film to win an Oscar for editing.)
sounds, something that would be impossible All the advantages of digital editing can give an
in the mechanical systems. intoxicating sense of freedom, particularly to editors
2) The provision of a large third monitor, sepa- who have been filing trims and rewinding reels for
rate from the Avid console's two "working" many years. But that sudden rush of freedom can be
screens. I placed this to the side and across deceiving. As with every tool, the features of digital
the room, so that I had to rotate ninety de- editing can cut both ways, and some of its most ad-
grees to see it. Shifting my physical relation- mired qualities have hidden, dark sides that can hurt
ship to the images frequently helped me to if you are not aware of them in advance.
see things in a different way. Let me explain what I mean with a few examples.
I don't want to paint too rosy a picture-there
were problems, of course. Some of them were trivial,
some of them more serious and "interesting" (which I
Random Access and Speed
will get to in a minute). However, the Avid's advan-
tages outweighed its disadvantages to the extent that One of the things I have not yet solved with digital
I felt comfortable, confident, and excited to be work- editing, ironically, is how to deal most effectively with
ing in this new environment. Even at such an early its central advantage-instant random-access.
stage, the Avid roughly doubled the amount of film I
Computerized editing systems achieve most of their
was able to assemble every week. With the help of
speed by retrieving the requested material instanta-
Pat Jackson, who came on as an associate editor for a
neously, which is what we mean by "instant random-
month, in eight weeks we were able to catch up with
access." This allows the editor to do such things as
the backlog of unedited film an*ave the four-and-
effortlessly compare line readings from different takes.
a-half-hour first assembly of English Patient completed
But random-access ultimately depends on knowing
three weeks after the end of photography. This would
exactly what you want.. . and that is not always the
not have been possible editing mechanicallhand cer-
case, as any editor can tell you.
tainly not something that could be done eas'ly at one's
home. For that alone, if you know how long editors' The Moviola was a random-access machine, just
days can be, I am grateful to digital editing. not an instant random-access machine (unlike the
KEM and Steenbeks, which are linear-access ma-
(As a side note, after all the turbulence and un-
chines). Random-access systems are highly depen-
certainty that we went through during this period,. The
dent on the quality of the notes made at the material's
English Patient went on to win nine Oscars, one of
108 IN THE BLINK OF A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 109
first viewing, because those notes are the key to un- couldn't have articulated it in advance. Picasso used
locking and searching the vast library of material for to say, "I do not seek, I findv-which is another way
each film. They necessarily reflect not only the note- of getting at the same idea.
taker's initial opinions about the material but also
The big selling point of any non-linear system,
about the film itself, a s it is conceived a t that time.
however, is precisely its non-linearity. "Get instantly
As the film evolves, however, its needs change, where you want to go. All you have to do is tell the
and those original opinions may become outdated: A machine and it will give it to you instantly, like the
shot that was considered useless may thus become perfect assistant." Yes, true enough, but that's actually
useful. But unless there is a way of constantly re-ex- something of a drawback because the machine gives
amining the material, questioning those original me only what I ask for, and I don't always want to go
assumptions, some useful material may remain bur- where I say I want to go. Wanting something just gives
ied forever under the original epitaph "No Good." The me the starting point. I expect the material itself to
greater the amount of material, the more true this is. tell me what to do next.
I have mentioned this aspect before, but it bears re-
Now, technically, nothing prevents you from us-
peating in the present context. This constant review
ing the Avid as a linear machine-you can organize
was a crucial part of the mechanical and creative pro-
the material in large blocks and scroll at high speed
cess for me on linear machines (Steenbecks and KEM),
through them just like on a KEM. But it's so easy to
which store the workprint in ten-minute rolls.
use random-access that, by default, it rules your deci-
The human imagination is able to recognize ideas sions. How do you control your impulse to be imme-
more powerfully than we can articulate them. When diately satisfied? I want what I want, so the machine-
you are in a foreign country, you can always under- like the genie in the lamp-gives it to me. But some-
stand more of the language than you can speak. To a thing has been lost. Oscar Wilde's ironic observation
certain extent, every film that you make is a foreign applies here: "When God wants to punish somebody,
country, and first you have to learn the language of He gives them what they want."
that "country." Every film has (or should have) a I should add that there's a subtle but profound
unique way of communicating, and so you struggle difference in how film and digital move at high speed.
to learn its language. But the film can speak its own On linear film machines, like the KEM, you achieve
language better than you can! So, in the mechanical, ten times normal speed by reducing the amount of
linear search for what I wanted, I would find instead time that any one frame is seen by ninety percent. So
what I needed-something different, better, more a frame is on for l/240 of a second, not l/24 of a second.
quirky, more accidental, more "true" than my first im- It's very fast, but it's still there-you can still catch a
pression. I could recognize it when I saw it, but I little something from every single frame. But by the
I
nature of their design, digital systems can't do that. pen. Who among our word-processing writers today
They achieve ten times normal speed at the cost of can even approach such a record? In the 1930s, Jean
suppressing ninety percent of the information. So if Renoir made a commercially successful feature film
you ask a digital machine to go ten times faster than (On Purge B6ba in three weeks-from concept to fin-
normal, it will do so by showing you only one frame ished product. And early in his career, Kurosawa-
out of every ten. It's like skipping a rock across the directing and editing himself-would have the first
surface of a lake. You are not seeing ninety percent of cut of his films done two days after shooting.
the film-whereas when you watch sprocketed film
Instead of "speed" digital systems would be more
at high speed on a KEM or Steenbeck, you see evey-
honest to advertise "increased options." They will al-
thing. I'm always amazed at how perceptive the hu-
low the work to remain flexible longer, which is to
man eye is, even at those high speeds, at detecting
say that the moment of decisive commitment can be
tiny inflections of looks and expression and action.
delayed. This can have creative advantages, but it also
Maybe this is the reason that I have resisted using can get you into trouble. In the 1930s, you had to
A4vidsas linear systems. Technically, I think this is a plan o u t your shots very carefully w h e n the
profound problem, something built into the nature of Technicolor three-strip camera weighed half a ton.
video monitoring: It takes an exact and unchange- With lightweight cameras, fast film, and DAT or por-
able amount of time to scan a frame in video, and table disk recorders, you can change your mind up to
things can't go any faster than they do. Whereas on the last instant. Does it all happen faster? Not neces-
the KEM it's easy to increase the scan rate by simply sarily. A level of complexity is frequently added, which
speeding up the rotation of the prism in the lens. eats u p the time gained. Is it better? That is arguable.
The real issue with speed, though, is not just how The high-water mark of the American film industry is
fast you can go, but where are you going so fast? It still recognized by many as 1939.
doesn't help to arrive quickly if you wind up in the Using the right technology in the right way for
wrong place. And if arriving at your destination also your particular project centers on finding the correct
produces a more complete knowledge of the material, balance of pre-planning vs . spontaneity-su pporting
the linear systems do have a serious advantage to offer. structure vs. seductive surface. The human body is
Ultimately, however, technology is hardly ever the made up of flesh and bone and needs the right pro-
final determining factor in questions of speed vs. cre- portion of both to function the way it should.
ativity. Here we are in the domain of the human spirit: Fewer assistants: This may be achieved some-
what do you want to say and how do you want to day, when 35mm film is no longer used for pho-
say it? One hundred eighty years ago, Balzac wrote tography and exhibition. But at present, movies
eighty classic novels in twenty years, using just a quill
2 IN T H E B L I N K OF A N E Y E
that are edited digitally have in practice required The ultimate aim of computerized editing,
more assistants, because there have to be people however, is "one madone machinen-an edi-
to handle the conforming of 35mm workprint tor working as a painter works, alone in a room
as well as helping with the telecine, logging, with all the material at his fingertips and no need
and database work required by the hybrid pro- for anyone around to help. If this level of isola-
cess of working in a 35mm/digital world. This tion is ever achieved technically, it will be in-
kind of crew tends to stratify along filmhide0 teresting to see the films that result, and to dis-
lines and produce a subtle alienation-which is cover whether the collaboration that is the es-
not ultimately good for the film, the people in- sence of filmmaking is not in some way com-
volved, or even the industry as a whole. promised by this technical advance.
Arguably, the greatest period of creativity Reduced bookkeeping: This is an area where
in European painting occurred at a time when computers shine. Electronic systems unquestion-
painters required assistants to prepare their pig- ably gain a significant advantage by eliminating
ments and canvasses. All of the great painters the filing of film trims-something that on an
of the Renaissance started out as assistants to average feature would become the full-time oc-
established artists-there were no schools as cupation of at least one assistant. For most
such-and moved up the ladder, starting to help lower-budget films willing to take the risks in-
with the actual painting at a certain stage, until volved with entirely eliminating workprint con-
they were ready to work on their own, with formation, there is a real savings to be made.
their own assistants.
On the other hand, for higher-budget films
Not only did this provide real "on-site" train- that are obliged to screen different versions in
ing, free from the fog of theory that can settle 35mm, the need to conform the film and keep
over academic situations, but I'm sure that the it up to date with the current version in the
presence of other people during the act of cre- computer will involve all of the traditional me-
ation kept painting grounded in a way that it is chanical bookkeeping and filing of trims and
obviously not today, when it's done almost ex- lifts in addition to database management for the
clusively in isolation. I can't count the number computer.
of times that feedback from my assistants has
Another related advantage of digital systems
kept me honest about what worked or didn't
work. They are my first audience. And many is the ability of their databases to effortlessly
times they have provided the film with ideas archive different versions of the film for future
beyond what I could have thought up myself. reference. This, however, can be a slightly more
dubious asset because it has the potential to
114 I N T H E B L I N K OF A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 115
Editing is (or should be) prbgressive-you at your film is at normal speed, forward. Since
are moving forward all the time. Even if you this is how the film is going to be seen by an
return to a previous structure, it will not be (or audience, why would it need to be seen any
should not be) exactly as it was, but reflect in other way? For the same reason that painters
subtle ways what has happened to the film as a will frequently look at their work in a mirror,
whole since the scene was first put together. upside down: By inverting the image, it is mo-
By obsessively keeping every version of a scene, mentarily freed of content and can be looked at
you can easily drown in all the variations, feel- as pure structure. Driven by similar impulses,
ing some obligation to look at each of them Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudi would build
and incorporate a little of each in subsequent the models for his structures upside down, hang-
versions. The result is that you may lose time ing them by wires so that he could immediately
and artistic focus in unproductive discussion, see the effect of an imbalance.
and the resulting work may have a stitched-to- In the course of assembling a sequence on
gether, Frankenstein's-monster feel to it rather the KEM, I would naturally and frequently fast-
than being organically whole and alive. rewind the 35mm film while it was still threaded
The key here is moderation. Restrict yourself through the prism. Something in the pure alter-
to archiving significantly different versions of nation of shapes and colors, seen out of the
your film every two or three weeks. (Note that corner of my eye at high-speed reverse, told
this archiving is different from the routine "back- me something about the structure of the mate-
ing up" of your work, which is an invisible back- rial that I couldn't have learned by looking at it
ground process that should be done on a daily "straight on" at normal-speed forward. But un-
basis in case of computer failure.) til I saw that true "backwardness" had disap-
peared from digital editing, I didn't really ap-
No rewinding: With random-access systems, no preciate the unique virtues of reviewing-while-
time is lost going back to the head of a sequence
rewinding. You don't appreciate these kinds of
once you have arrived at the end. This is an- things until they're gone.
other advantage that has a "shadow'' side, since
(as we discussed earlier) digital systems subtract Easier access: On the face of it, this should be a
information at higher-than-normal speeds. Par- good thing, and easier access participates in the
ticularly when playing in reverse, digital systems general drift of technological innovation over
118 IN THE BLINK OF A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 119
I
A film's editing room can be a place of con- i
more quick cuts simply because it's digital and they
I
siderable creative and political tension, and one can be cut faster?" Well, that's true as far as it goes-
of the mechanical systems "hidden" virtues is it's easier to cut quickly on digital machines because
that their very physicality required you to move you have random-access and don't have to make all
around a lot--certainly in comparison to work- those physical splices and file away all those trims.
ing on a computer in front of a video screen. But as a general trend over the last fifty years, the
This could serve as a natural and unconscious editing pace of films has been increasing. This is prob-
means of releasing that tension. ably due to the influence of television commercials,
Although the flatbed systems are more physi- which have accustomed us to a visual shorthand that
cal than the computer, they in turn require less was developed to pack more information into expen-
physical movement than the Moviola. When I sive time slots and to attract and hold the eye in an
first started using a Steenbeck, I developed what environment-the home-where there is much com-
I called "Steenbeck neck"-a tension in the petition for that attention.
upper shoulders that came from sitting at the Sunset Boulevard (1950), for instance, has a rate
Steenbeck and only having to move my fingers of eighty-five cuts in the first twenty minutes, which
and wrists to edit. To combat this, I raised my is typical for its time and about half of today's aver-
KEM, and now my Avid, fifteen inches higher age. The opening twenty minutes of The Sixth Sense
than normal so that I work standing up, as I (1999) has exactly double that number of cuts-170.
had done with the Moviola. And the final twenty minutes of Fight Club (1999) has
I can sit whenever I want (I have an more than double again-375.
architect's chair), but most of the time, and es- However, there are exceptions to this historical
pecially at the decisive moment of making a cut, trend: The ThirdMan, made in 1949, has a beautifully
I will always be on my feet. I want to be able to effective rapid style of 225 cuts in the first twenty
stand and react as quickly as possible-like a minutes. That pace is right for Third Man, which is
gunslinger-and having your whole body en- scripted and directed to accommodate and exploit such
gaged in the process helps immeasurably. brio (compare the words-per-minute rate of narration
for Sunset with the rapid-fire narration for Third Man),
just as certain pieces of music are written and orches-
Digital Editing-Faster, Faster, Faster? trated to be played quickly. There is no "right" or
"wrong" speed, obviously. Problems arise when you
One of the most frequently asked questions about digi- have something that was written largo played
tal editing is, "Are movies getting faster? Do films have prestissimo, or vice versa.
120 IN T H E BLINK OF A N E Y E D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 121
What was implicit in the question about quick What steps can be taken to avoid this problem?
cutting was the feeling that maybe films were now First, be aware that image detail and pace
too quickly cut, and that perhaps some blame could are intimately related.
be laid at the door of digital editing.
Second, digitize at the highest resolution that
I have heard directors say that they were disap- your production can afford, so that you get the
pointed when they finally saw their digitally edited most detail possible on your screen.
films projected on a big screen. They felt that the
Third, print and screen 35mm workprint dai-
editing now seemed "choppy," though it had seemed
lies, if your production can afford it. Once
fine on the television monitor. These directors had to
you've seen the detail in a shot, it's harder to
go back, undo everything, and start again. They felt
forget later on.
betrayed, and blamed it somehow on "digital."
Fourth, conform the 35mm workprint to the
The editor has some immediate control over two
version in the computer as soon as possible,
perceptual issues in the editing room: the amount of
keep it up to date regularly, and have 35mm
detail that is visible in the image and the size of the
screenings of your film as often as possible.
image itself. Both of these can affect the rhythm of
the film. I realize that for many low-budget films it's
unrealistic to be able to do all four, but your
Detail is an issue particularly relevant to digital
film will be better the more of them you can
editing because the film has to be digitally com-
accomplish.
pressed to get it to fit economically on the hard
drive of the computer, and this can significantly As a consolation, the detail in digitized im-
reduce the amount of visual information in any ages has improved tremendously in the last ten
frame. As a result, there may be so little detail years. As long as computers' efficiency and
that the eye can absorb all of it very quickly, speed keep increasing as they have (a dollar
leading the careless editor to cut sooner than if today buys 400 times the storage capacity of
he had been looking at the fully detailed film ten years ago), I expect this to disappear as an
image. issue within a short time.
When the 35mm film is conformed and pro- Image size is an issue closely related to image
jected, however, that latent richness suddenly detail, but is not unique to digital editing. How
blossoms, and the eye now feels that the im- do you deal with the disparity between the small
ages are following each other too quickly to image in the cutting room (on a Moviola, KEM,
fully absorb all that is there-hence the or Avid) and the huge image that will be shown
choppiness that the directors complained about. in theaters? It is the difference between paint-
122 I N THE B L I N K O F A N E Y E
ing a miniature and a mural. With a small screen, be ringing, you might be in a supermarket or
your eye can easily take in everything at once, department store. Television has to make things
whereas on a big screen it can only take in sec- collide within that tiny frame in order to catch
tions at a time. You tend to look at a small your attention because of the much narrower
screen, but into a big screen. If you are looking angle that the image subtends compared to
at an image, taking it all in at once, your ten- theatrical film-hence the quick cuts, jump cuts,
dency will be to cut away to the next shot swish pans, staggered action, etc.
sooner.
There's a completely different aesthetic
With a theatrical film, particularly one in when you're in a theater: The screen is huge,
which the audience is fully engaged, the screen is everything else in the room is dark, there are
not a surface, it is a magic window, sort of a look- (hopefully) no distractions, you are there for at
ing glass through which your whole body passes least two hours; you can't stop the film at your
and becomes engaged in the action with the convenience. And so, understandably, feature
characters on the screen. If you really like a film, editing has to be paced differently than music-
you're not aware that you are sitting in the cin- video or commercial editing.
ema watching a movie. Your responses are very
different than they would be with television. What can be done to help with this prob-
lem of size, the miniature vs. the mural?
Television is a "look-at" medium, while cin-
ema is a "look-into" medium. You can think of First, as with image detail, be aware that the
the television screen as a surface that the eye eye takes in a large picture differently, at a dif-
hits and then bounces back. The trick with ferent rate, than a small one.
electronic editing, of course, is that since you Second, conform the 35rnm film and have
are watching television monitors, you. must as many screenings with as large a screen as
somehow convince yourself that these are cin- your production can manage.
ematic screens: You must make "look at" be-
Third-and this is my own personal solu-
come "look into."
tion--cut out two little paper figures and place
One of the functions of music videos and them on either side of the monitor screen, mak-
commercials is to attract your attention and keep ing them the correct size in relationship to the
it. While watching television, you're usually screen as real human beings will be when the
looking at a small screen some distance away film is finally projected in a theater. So, if I am
for a short period of time. Visual competition looking at a twenty-two-inch-wide screen in the
is all around: The lights are on, the phone may editing room, I will make my little people four-
124 IN T H E BLINK OF A N E Y E DIGITAL FILM EDITING 125
and-a-half inches tall. This will make the moni- One of digital systems' dangers is that, superfi-
tor screen look, with a little imagination, as if it cially, they tarn that Amazon jungle into a video game
is thirty feet wide. Generally, I like this kind of without apparent consequences. If you lose, you sim-
solution because it's simple. You don't think it ply start over again from the beginning! No film has
would amount to much, but this practice helps actually been touched! There are no loose ends to re-
tremendously in solving problems before they stitch together.
occur.
In a certain trivial sense, this is true, but it doesn't
Why don't we just edit in large rooms with mean that a real Amazon isn't lurking behind the vir-
big screens? Well, with digital editing and video tual one, with real consequences should you lose your
projection, we could, very easily, be editing with way. There should always be planning, no matter
a thirty-foot screen. The real estate for the room what-you only have so much time. You can never
would be expensive, however. More expensive explore all the possible versions-there should always
than my little paper leprechauns. be a map. Human memory has its limitations-you
It would be an interesting experiment, how- should always take detailed notes of what you've seen.
ever, to edit with a thirty-foot screen. Theseus needed his thread to get out of the
Minotaur's maze. With no plan, no map, no thread,
film editing becomes just a thrashing about, a slam-
:/ General Observations: me Celluloid
ming together of images and sounds for momentary
effect. But this kind of effect will have no long-term
I Amazon resonance with the film as a whole.
No matter what editing system you are using, you will So, paradoxically, the hidden advantage of edit-
always be confronting astronomical numbers of dif- ing sprocketed film was that the weight and volume
ferent possible versions. (Remember that mathemati- of it encouraged the editor to take things seriously
cal formula with the "!" in it.) When those numbers and to plan ahead before jumping in-to develop cer-
were physically represented by mountains-tonmf tain strategies and defensive mechanisms. For me, this
actual film, you knew instinctively that you had to took the form of my "reverse storyboard" system of
have a plan and be organized from the start. Contem- images and my database system of notation. All of us
plating the thicket of five hundred thousand or a mil- who have grown up as editors of sprocketed film were
lion feet of dailies is like peering into the Arnazon privileged to develop our own strategies for dealing
jungle. Who would go in there without a map and with our own Amazons, and many of these strategies
adequate supplies? should not now be thoughtlessly discarded, but rather
adapted to the digital age that is upon us.
126 I N T H E B L I N K OF A N E Y E DIGITAL FILM EDITING 127
m e Diggtal Future
Sound editors have always thought in what I would
call the vertical and horizontal dimensions at the same
time. The sound editor naturally moves forward
through the film in "horizontal" time--one sound fol-
lows another. But he also has to think vertically, which
130 I N THE BLINK OF A N EYE DIGITAL FILM E D I T I N G 131
It
is to say, "What sounds are happening at the same In the old days, if you wanted to d o a special
I
time?" There might be, for example, the background effect, such as replacing the blue sky with another
sound of a freeway along with birds singing, a plane color, you had to use a special Vista-Vision or 70 mm
passing overhead, footsteps of pedestrians, etc. Each camera to get a large-format negative so that the grain
of these is a separate layer of sound, and the beauty of multiple reprintings wouldn't show. Now, because
of the sound editor's work, like a musician's, is the of the accuracy of digital reproduction, none of that
creation and integration of a multidimensional tapes- is an issue. A tremendous amount of time also used
try of sound. to be spent in shooting special effects-if somebody
Up until now, however, picture editors have flew through the air, they were attached to cables.
thought almost exclusively in the horizontal direction: Consequently, the cameraman had to light the scene
The question to be answered was simply, "What's so that the cables would be as invisible as possible.
next?" As you can tell from my math at the beginning, Now, with digital effects, you make the cables big
that's complicated enough-there are a tremendous and brightly colored, because they then become easier
number of options in the construction of a film. In to see and digitally remove.
the future, that number is going to become even more The Holy Grail, of course, is an Avidhnferno ed-
cosmic because film editors will have to start thinking iting/effects machine that actually produces the final
vertically as well, which is to say: "What can I edit product, not just a sketch of the final product. To some
within the frame?" extent, this has already been achieved in television,
Optical-effects work has become sophisticated but not in features, where the resolution has to be
and subtle, many times not even noticeable as an correspondingly much higher for the big screen.
effect. This permits the director or editor to say, "I While we are at it, here are several predictions
don't really like that sky after all" or "I think this that will probably materialize in the near future, if they
should be winter, so let's get rid of the leaves in this haven't already by the time this book comes out:
shot." In the near future, machines such as the Avid,
The end of magnetic f h . Revolutionary in its
which are good at manipulation in the sequential
own way when it appeared around 1950,
horizontal dimension, will fuse with special-effects
sprocketed magnetic sound film is already be-
machines such as the Inferno, which are good at ma-
ing displaced by removable drives running in
nipulation in the simultaneous vertical dimension.
synch with the projector. We used Jaz drives on
There will be some unforeseen consequences-can
m e Talented Mr. Rzpley. Each of these can be
one editor actually handle all this? Or will the work
copied instantly and is capable of holding the
be divided between two crews, a Vertical Team and
information of forty reels of magnetic film, at a
a Horizontal Team?
savings of more than 40:1.
I
b 132 IN THE BLINK O F A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 133
i
Direct feed from the camera. Some kind of It will be interesting to see Avid's response
beam-splitter device that will allow a digital disk to these developments.
recording to be made alongside the 35mm film. The final product. The day will come when the
This disk recording will be delivered to the edi- editor is dealing with images of such resolution
tor immediately, rather than waiting for the film that they will be projectable in a theater. In ef-
to be developed and synched, screened, fect, the output of the Avid will be the answer
telecined, and digitized. print. As I mentioned, this is already happen-
This will be a temporary solution pending ing in television, and following Moore's Law
the development of all-digital cameras and the (processing speed per unit of currency doubles
elimination of film as a recording medium. every eighteen months), it's simply a matter of
time before the hypothetical Avid/Inferno (or
Competition for the Avid. At the moment, the
some equivalent machine) is capable of real-
Avid system is by far the most frequently used
time manipulation of images with a resolution
professional system, followed by Lightworks,
which has had a difficult few years recently. of 4,000 lines-the equivalent of 35mm film.
For the moment, cinema is caught in a similar As he stops to consider this last question, one can't
"double-chandelier" phase in which we have to deal help but glance over his shoulder at the sight of doz-
with film as a sprocketed, photographic, material me- ens of people in the shop behind him, mostly men,
dium, and with the electronic image as a digital, vir- mostly young, mostly immigrants, with their heads
tual, immaterial medium. But just as surely as gaslight plunged into some kind of mechanism, hands crank-
passed from our daily lives, sooner or later so will ing madly away in a kind of trance. By chance, we
35mm film. have stopped in front of an amusement arcade, and
What, then, are the technical and artistic implica- the men inside are operating Kinetoscopes and watch-
tions of a completely digital cinema? Will it be its ing images of young ladies disrobing over and over
own kind of "fleshless flame" or something else? A again before their very eyes.
difficult question, because we are right in the middle As our fur-collared friend is excitedly anticipating
of furious change, but perhaps something can be a century of high culture and operatic triumphs to
learned from similar situations in the development of make those of the nineteenth century pale in com-
other forms of art. In fact... parison, we-time travelers who know the truth--can't
help suppressing a smile. Imagine our new
acquaintance's astonishment and repugnance at be-
Gesamtkunstkino-Total Art Cinema ing told that the noisy and offensive contraptions be-
hind him would shortly transform themselves into the
...if only we could just stop that gentleman in the top dominant art form of the twentieth century and stage
hat coming out of the Metropolitan Opera-no, no, their own assault on the citadel of Total Art Work;
him, the one with the fur collar-and ask about the and that although his beloved operas would still be
performance of Tannhauser he has just attended. Per- performed in 1999, and lavishly, they would be-
haps, if he were agreeable, we could walk with him up mostly-reworkings of the nineteenth century's pre-
Broadway and let the conversation go where it might, served-in-amber canon, the West's own version of
since this is December 1899, and one's thoughts are Japanese Kabuki.
naturally turned toward the coming twentieth century.
Of course, we won't disappoint him with our in-
What about the stunning production that he has sights, which would seem like typical ravings from
just seen? Truly unbelievable! And perhaps a word the strange-looking creatures he usually takes pains
about the future of opera-specifically Richard to avoid. What is New York coming to these days?
Wagner's concept of Gesarntkunstwerk -Total Art Good-bye, nice talking to you.
Work, the ultimate fusion of music, drama, and im-
age? What wonders will audiences be seeing in a 100 Without much warning, we are back in the New
years time? York of December, 1999. Toy S t o y II has recently
136 IN THE BLINK O F A N EYE D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 137
opened, and the lines have not gotten any shorter. In So let's declare confidently that although film may
fact, at one theater in Times Square they have gotten fade away, there will always be pictures that move.
somewhat longer. The insight that gave rise to motion pictures, Joseph
Strolling by the marquee, we discover why: Toy Plateau's quantization of movement in the 1830s (ex-
St0 y II is being projected digitally, without film. The tended to photography by Muybridge in the 1870s) is
sprocketed 35mm celluloid that serviced our friends as profound in its way as Gutenberg's invention of
at the amusement arcade in 1899 and the expanding printing in the 1450s, and just as independent of the
cinematic dreams of the twentieth century-through medium of transmission.
the arrival of sound, color, wide-screen, three dimen- As astonishing as it is to see digitally projected
sions (for a few years, anyway), Dolby S t e r e ~ h e images--clear or clearer than 35mm film, with none
physical medium that carried all these inventions of the scratches, dirt, or jitter that infects even the most
uncomplainingly on its shoulders is, at the end of the pristine of 35mm prints-the truth is that for fifteen
century, about to put down its burdens and slip away. years, the film industry has been steadily turning digi-
In a few years, film will become a historical curiosity, tal from the inside out. The triumphs of digital visual
like parchment or vellum. effects, of course, were already well known before
their apotheosis in Jurassic Park, Titanic, Phantom
And the three ubiquitous symbols for the motion
Menace, and me Matrix. But the arrival of digital pro-
picture-the reel, the clapstick, and film itself with
jection will trigger the final capitulation of the two
those characteristic little square sprocket holes run-
last holdouts of film's nineteenth-century mechanical-
ning down its edge-will all be anachronistic, refer-
analog legacy. Projection, the end of the line, is one-
ring to a forgotten technology, like the carpenter's adz
the other is the original photography that begins the
and awl.
whole process. The current film industry is a digital
Is this something to be concerned about? sandwich between slices of analog bread.
By way of comparison, Gutenberg's first Bible was Once digital projection makes significant inroads,
printed on vellum, a beautiful and tactile organic sub- however, film laboratories such as Technicolor will
stance, but printing only really took off with the in- find it difficult to operate in the black, since most of
vention of paper, which was cheap and easy to manu- their profits come from massive theatrical print orders,
facture. Gutenberg's concept of movable type tran- sometimes as high as 50,000,000 feet of film per mo-
scended the medium used for the printing itself. Digi- tion picture. When (not if) the laboratories go out of
tal, almost certainly, will prove to be paper to the film business, motion-picture companies will in-
celluloid's parchment. evitably turn to digital cameras for original photogra-
phy. In the summer of 2000, George Lucas dispensed
I
with film entirely and shot the next Star Wars film Or perhaps cinema will have disappeared com-
!
with Sony high-definition digital cameras. pletely, overrun by some technical-social upheaval as
In the almost-immediate future, then-when final unimaginable to us as the Kinetoscope's ultimate trans-
projection and original photography are digitized- formation in 1899. The parallels between the immi-
the entire technical process of filmmaking will be digi- grants cranking their Kinetographs in the amusement
tal from start to finish, and the whole technical infra- arcade and your teenager locked in his room with
structure will telescope in upon itself with great sud- Lara Croft (from the Tomb Raider game) are striking.
denness. Some of the consequences of this we can Of course, as soon as we pose these questions,
foresee; others are unpredictable. But this transfor- we know it's silly even to attempt an answer. But it is
mation will likely be complete in less than ten years. December 1999, after all-the end of a millennium.
Of course, there will be wonders to compensate Why not?
us for the loss of our old friends Clapstick, Sprocket, Is the complete digitization of the art and indus-
and Reel. Of course, the blurring of borders between try of cinema something that will be ultimately good
video, computers, and film will vastly increase. Of for it?
course, digital creatures (and perhaps even actors) will
be born that will make 1993'sJurassic Park seem like To even attempt an answer to a question like that,
1933's King Kong. Of course, channel 648 will be a we need to find some analogous development in the
live transmission of the planet Earth as seen from the past. The one that seems closest, to me, is the trans-
Moon, in stunning detail, occupying the entire liquid- formation in painting that took place in the fifteenth
crystal wall of your media room. century, when the old technique of pigments on fresco
was largely replaced by oil paint on canvas.
But what will c i n e m e t h e habit of seeing mo-
tion pictures in a theatrical setting-what will cinema Some of the greatest, if not the greatest, triumphs
be like in 2099? of European pictorial art were done in fresco, the
painstaking process whereby damp plaster is stained
Will the digital revolution, so intoxicatingly heady
with various pigments that, as they dry, bond chemi-
at the moment, transform cinema into something un-
cally with the plaster and change color. One need only
recognizable to us today, for better or worse?
think of Michelangelo's frescoed ceiling of the Sistine
Will cinema perhaps have ossified by 2099 into Chapel, the pictorial equivalent of Beethoven's Ninth
the twenty-first century's version of Grand Opera? Symphony.
Tuxedo-clad crowds attending yet another projection
A great deal of advance planning needs to be
of 160-year-old Casablanca, unimaginably enhanced
done with fresco. Its variables-such as the consis-
by some technological grandson of today's digital
tency and drying time of the plaster-have to be
wizardry?
140 IN THE BLINK OF A N E Y E DIGITAL FILM EDITING 141
controlled exactly. The artists who worked in fresco the emergence of solitary and tortured geniuses like
needed a precise knowledge of the pigments and Van Gogh.
how they would change color as they dried. Once a The nature of working with film has been more
pigment had been applied, no revisions were pos- like painting in fresco than oil. It's so heterogeneous,
sible. Only so much work could be done in a day, with so many technologies woven together in a com-
before the plaster applied that morning became too plex and expensive fabric, that filmmaking is almost
dry. Inevitably, cracks would form at the joints be- by definition impossible for a single person to con-
tween subsequent applications of plaster. The ar- trol. There are a few solitary filmmakers-Jordan
rangement of each day's subject matter had to be Belson comes to mind-but these are exceptional in-
chosen carefully to minimize the damage from this dividuals, and their films' subject matters are geared
unpredictable cracking. to allow creation by a single person.
It should be clear that fresco painting was an ex- By contrast, digital techniques naturally tend to
pensive effort of many people and various interlock- integrate with each other because of their mathemati-
ing technologies, overseen by the artist, who took re- cal commonality, and thus become easier to control
sponsibility for the final product. by a single person. I can see this already happening
The invention of oil paint changed all of this. The in the sound-mixing work that I do, where the bor-
artist was freed to paint wherever and whenever he ders between sound editing and mixing have begun
wanted. He did not have to create a work in its final to blur. And this blurring is about to happen in the
location. His paint was the same color wet as it would further integration of film editing and visual effects.
eventually be when dry. He did not have to worry So let's suppose a technical apotheosis sometime
unduly about cracking surfaces. And the artist could in the middle of the twenty-first century, when it some-
paint over areas that he didn't like, even to the point how becomes possible for a single person to make
of reusing canvasses for completely different purposes. an entire feature film, with virtual actors. Would this
Although painting in oils remained collaborative be a good thing?
for a while, the innate logic of the new medium en- If the history of oil painting is any guide, the
couraged the artist to take more and more control of broadest answer would be yes, with the obvious
every aspect of his work, intensifying his personal caution to keep a wary eye on the destabilizing ef-
vision. This was tremendously liberating, and the his- fect of following too intently a hermetically personal
tory of art from 1450 to the present is a clear testi- vision. One need only to look at the unraveling of
mony to the creative power of that liberation-and painting or classical music in the twentieth century
some of its dangers, which found ultimate expression to see the risks.
in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with
D I G I T A L FILM E D I T I N G 143