The Editblog

Yesterday I saw a couple of links (via FresHDV) to the love them or hate them (I guess that depends on what side of the “gun” you are on) web site thesmokinggun.com. There is an article posted in the archives there called The Tinseltown Money Trail. The site got a hold of detailed budgets for all of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies. I thought that they posted this to play on the Friday release of Lady in the Water but it is dated February 2006, right around Oscar time, and made the rounds on the blogosphere yesterday. No matter as it is a fascinating look at where the money goes and who gets paid what on a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. The FULL budget, a 79 page monster, is viewable for The Village (it was then known as The Woods). Being that this is a blog about editing and post-production I dug right in to find that section. I won’t go into the details as I don’t know exactly how to read all the line items of a Hollywood budget but it looks like the lead editor made some $350,000 + on that particular job. That’s probably the better part of a year of work so not a bad freelance gig!

I did find a couple of things interesting. There is an allowance for both Avid systems and Kem rentals. Even in the non-linear world, many movies still screen dailies and cut negative to watch scenes projected on to the big screen … on film. Sure that was 2003 but film is not dead. Not yet anyway. The other thing I noted was the total post production budget was 8.4 million. That’s only some 8-odd percent of the total budget. The movie wasn’t very visual fx heavy so that seems like a relative bargain. As important as the editorial is to the mood and tone of a Shyamalan movie … maybe they should give the editor a raise!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a little entry about Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. At that time it wasn’t playing in his home town of Nashville but now it is! And I saw it yesterday and I have to say that is the first film I’ve ever seen where a piece of computer software is the star. That software is Apple’s Keynote, available as part of the iWork package. Maybe I shouldn’t say that it is the “star,” more like an uncredited cameo or a really great character actor. Now I haven’t really used Keynote any more than just messing around with it a bit but if it did the majority of his presentation then it is a very powerful piece of software.

I was most interested in seeing how many of the different formant cut together. The studiodaily.com article talks about how well the intercutting of 16mm and the JVC HD-GY100U looked and I have to say that I really could not tell the difference. I’ll watch it closer when it hits dvd and see if I can tell a difference then. I’m sure there was some heavy color correction involved in the final grading but that is to be expected. As for the science…. it’s very intriguing but I’m sure the truth lies somewhere between Gore’s research and the guys over on the right. But isn’t that where the truth lies in most political issues anyway?

Of course I saw Cars over the weekend… it’s a Pixar movie. And it’s about cars. Sure I personally would have loved a few more sports car characters, and at least a small nod to the Indy car series, and maybe a killer POV driving shot that lasted a while … or even a motorcycle character (I’d love to see them model that one). But those few gripes aside I have to say I loved it. Certainly in my top 3 of Pixar. I’ve seen some mixed reviews. And Cars is the typical fish out of water story that has our hero finding the error of his ways just in time to be triumphant. But we all knew that would happen. I have also wondered if a movie about cars might have a limited appeal to women and young girls. Judging from the weekend box office, I guess not. One of the things that struck me most was while watching the trailers. There were the usual previews of CGI talking animal and bumbling human movies, but then came a trailer for Pixar’s next release Ratatouille. Something about it just felt totally different than Meet the Robinsons and Open Season and another one I can’t even remember. If there is one thing that a Pixar movie is not it is thrown together and cheaply animated. There is a care and a craft to a Pixar movie that I think I really only see in some of my favorite independent releases these days. There were certain little things that put Cars a click above most other computer animation out there. The amount of movement in all the race track scenes, the breath taking vistas in the canyon driving (you too can make you own with Bryce!), the amount of sheer “hair” detail in Guido’s multi-color clown wig at the dirt track. All of these little things add up to one great movie experience.

Of course the technology is supposed to advance from CGI film to CGI film and I think I have seen that with every new Pixar release. I had early reservations (especially after the release date change) that they would be able to make a car express such emotion, but they succeeded. I will never question again.

There is an interesting article over at studiodaily.com on Al Gore’s new documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Everyone calls it Al’s movie but in truth it was directed by Davis Guggenheim. And no doc is complete without mention of the “2nd director,” actually the editor, Dan Swietlik. Editors are so vital to a documentary’s final form and the story it tells that to talk about a documentary and not mention the editor is doing a diservice to the film. I have not seen the doc yet as it hasn’t arrived in Nashville, even though we all know that Washington Nashville is Al Gore’s home town. (What gives there Al?) The article is a great read as they talk about all the different formats they deal with in making the film. HDCAM, HDV, 16mm film, 35mm film, 8mm film, VHS, DV, stills, 24p, even VHS. That’s a whole lotta formats but that’s nothing unusual in documentary filmmaking. In the current doc that I am editing I even had to use these!

One thing that struck me as interesting was that they used Avid to cut this picture. We all know that Al is now on Apple’s Board of Directors and even uses Final Cut Pro himself, so I would have thought that maybe he insist that the film be cut on Final Cut. Truth be told, while Al and his global warming lecture is the star, it should be the filmmakers who choose what they use to make the film. I’m just proud that were able to shoot some actual film when making the pic. I can’t wait to see how all the mixed formats came together. So Mr. Gore, if you are reading this, please bring your picture to Nashville… we know you’ve already had a private screening here for yourself and Harold Ford Jr. … so let the rest of us see it too.

I recently saw Thank You For Smoking. The film is a hilarious satire telling the story of a tobacco lobbyist in Washington DC. I think it is very interesting editorially due to its use of a lot of post production tricks to bring across a proper mood and feel to frame this story. So often movies are told with only cuts and dissolves. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and in fact many times movies go so over the top in their flashy edit style that I often wish they would use only cuts and dissolves!

In Thank You For Smoking we get fun little things like when the main character, Nick Naylor, dines with a couple of lobbyist friends little icons pop up above their heads when their respective lobbying clients are described. When Nick describes his job as “talking” for a living there is a fun ramp speed of his talking head as automatic machine gun fire is heard in the audio. There is a lot of fun graphical treatments that are employed a number of times that Nick talks about various things pertaining to his career choice. When his colleague, who lobbies for the firearm industry, is being described there is an effective use of flash frames as we get to meet this gentleman. An effective use of flash frames is nice to see since they are very often overused. The film is a great example of effects being used to enhance and supplement the story without taking away from it. I think it takes a movie of this type where you have a somewhat skewed view of a normal reality where you can use tricks like this without it seeming odd and out of place. Examples that pop to mind are in Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman tells John Travolta not to be a “square” and as she draws a square with her fingers it is draw onscreen in outline. Another recent example is in my current favorite Old Boy as the hero is looking at a man he has beaten on the floor and a line is drawn onscreen from the eyes of the two men. I wonder how much of these little tricks were devised by the editor and how many were the directors vision….

Effects are usually of the otherworldly type like we see in Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. You see them and you know instantly they are special effects since nothing you are seeing is real! And then there are those effects that want to blend seamlessly into the real world to make the impossible seem possible or to enhance what is already there. James Cameron is a master of this. True Lies utilized these “real” special effects first and then they were perfected on Titanic. And I think finally there is this third category… like we have in Thank You For Smoking. I’m not sure of their proper technical name but I would like to see more movies like this, but only if they make the film better. They should be used cautiously but if they are used right they can make all the difference in the world.

Every now and then a movie comes along that when the end credits begin to roll, I can’t help but just sit there and smile; to take a few moments and bask in the afterglow that only a finely crafted piece of cinema can give. When writing, directing, editing and all the other elements that make up a good movie come together, it is a fine feeling indeed. It’s not necessarily the kind of feeling I get after watching some of my favorite cinematic achievements like Apocalypse Now or Dr. Strangelove but someting that comes from an intricately plotted, finely crafted, over-the-top work like Trainspotting, Fight Club or Run Lola Run.

The latest film to give me this feeling is the 2003 flick Oldboy. This Chan-wook Park film is a South Korean thriller that tells the story of a man who has been mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years. When he is finally released he sets out on a mission to find out who has done this to him … and to punish them accordingly. Now, movies like this certainly could not happen in real life. They rely on a hero being almost super-human and specific coincidences that must happen in order for the plot to move forward. These things can be easily overlooked when a movie is this well made. Park stages set pieces that are very deliberately paced and very specific in their purpose. His camera is often looking down on the action for a unique view. You can feel the rage that Min-sik Choi’s character feels after being set free in the most unique prison release since John Goodman broke himself out in Raising Arizona. There is a fantastically edited scene in which the main character chases his younger self around the grounds of a schoolhouse. From each cut to the next you’re never sure who you are going to see and where they are going. There is a massive fight scene that is staged down a long hall that has almost no editing. Not cutting can be just as effective as an edit. And the wonderful orchestral music only adds to the mood.

The sad thing about a foreign movie as good as Oldboy is that Hollywood will want to remake it. There’s an IMDB entry for the remake, to be directed by the man who is bringing us The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. A movie like Oldboy is so much a product of the director and his creative team that to remake it is criminal. Sure the original is subtitled and we all know American’s don’t like to read, but see the real thing as the real Oldboy is out on dvd now.

On Saturday I saw a locally (Nashville) produced motion picture called The Second Chance. It was directed by Christian industry veteran Steve Taylor and was the first starring role for contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith. The film was most certainly a “religious” movie as the story revolved around a suburban mega-church and an inner city ministry the big church funds. The movie was well made and the themes were certainly universal enough that Christian and non-Christians alike should be able to enjoy the movie.

The thing that I find most interesting is the movies release. We all know that we live in a world where all Hollywood cares about is box office baby! Movies live and die by their opening weekend and even the most casual moviegoer can see weekend box office scores on Monday morning in the CNN crawl at the bottom of the TV screen. There are the occasional break-outs that slowly build success by word of mouth, Crash and What The Bleep Do We Know are two recent examples, but they are the exception, not the rule. The Second Chance was released by Sony’s Triumph label. I don’t ever remember hearing of Triumph but we all know of Sony. Now I’m not under any illusion that marketing and promoting a major motion picture is a cheap thing to do. There can be magazine ads, tv time, newspaper space, internet resources and many other things that go into movie promotion. Not a cheap proposition. But Sony is apparently relying on the ‘word of mouth’ idea in the promotion of The Second Chance. In Nashville, which would be the most ideal market for the movie, I haven’t seen a single advertisement anywhere! I’m sure Sony is counting on the “Christian” market that made Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ a mega-hit but even with the word of mouth in full force, that movie had huge marketing muscle and the media behind it. I guess we will see as the weeks unfold how successful the picture becomes. I saw the movie during its second weekend and the theatre was pretty full. The home video market can always help recoup some of the costs but the theatrical box office is always looked at as the main example of a films success. I do hope The Second Chance is successful, not just because it grew out of the local filmmaking community that I am a part of, but because it is a good film that has something meaningful to say. Now I love sex and violence just as much as anybody, but those types of films are a dime a dozen these days and movies with a message, be it a religious, social, ethnic, or anything else, are becoming increasingly rare, and unless they are successful, there will be even less of them.

My wife brought up a point about the “Christian” market that the movie is partly trying to reach. She said there are a lot of Christian “believers” (like her own mother growing up) who don’t go to the movies at all or even partake of popular culture and entertainment because they don’t see it as glorifying God or furthering his kingdom. I was quite puzzled by what she said and do not really understand that thinking at all. It seems to me that entertainment that does a positive thing and furthers one’s beliefs should be embraced and supported by the group that it is targeting. But that is coming from a guy who is equally happy watching either a 9 hour socially redeeming PBS special, a G-rated documentary about the migratory pattern of birds, or a teen slasher flick about half naked co-eds (of fully naked) getting killed in the woods! Content is vitally important to a movie (or any other form of entertainment) but there are always people who should not see and cannot handle certain things. In the case of a movie like The Second Chance, “believers” and “non-believers”, young and old, Christian, Jewish, Catholic, whatever…most should be able to find something about it that they enjoy. Go see it before it goes away. It fell by 43.1% this second weekend so there may not be much time left.

With the start of criminal trial of the Enron liars, cheaters, thieves, ex-executives, I think it is worth taking a second look at the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I saw the piece last year and it is now available on DVD. It’s a great piece that does what would seem like the impossible; putting ultra-complex (and quite boring) accounting practices into something semi-understandable. According to the doc and every news report on the downfall of the company, Enron’s executives used serpentine accounting methods to pump up their stock while lining their own pockets and stealing millions and millions from the employee’s pensions… or something like that. I’m sure it’s still “allegedly” at this point but that is the shorthand of what I understand about it all.

The thing I want to talk about is the documentary genre itself. Docs have long been associated with boring, educational programs that nobody wanted to watch. They were the ultimate niche market product in that the majority of viewers who watched any particular program had to be interested in the subject. Ken Burns came along and made documentaries, not to mention history and PBS, cool and fun to watch. Michael Moore then kicked everything into overdrive and showed the world that docs can be successful at the box office. After that we get Morgan Spurlock, Mad Hot Ballroom and a bunch of penguins making out and having babies! The most financially successful docs are usually more of a novelty or “stunt-filmmaking” as I once saw Super Size Me called.

But these days a doc can do so much more. In 1988, Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line helped get a convicted man a new trial. This feat was equaled in 2005 when Keith A. Beauchamp’s documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till was cited by the U.S. Justice Department when they reopened a decades old murder. Try that with a song or a painting. There is Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” though. I also heard a story on NPR a few weeks ago about a teacher who assigned his class the project of making a doc on a local unsolved murder. It was directly responsible for the local authorities making an arrest. I can’t remember where this happened though… so a lesson was learned. When writing a blog, make a note of every good story you hear. The “relatively” low cost that a doc can be made for has open up the market to rebuttal movies as well. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was answered with a slew of other movies trying to counter Moore’s film and discredit him in the process. The recent exposé Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices saw the big-box mega-retailer finance it’s own positive image piece. While neither of these films has seen major theatrical distribution, the former has been playing in small theatres, bars, public venues and even peoples homes for a year. This “underground” distribution method saw success with the Rupert Murdoch bashing Outfoxed. That adds one more channel of distribution and as any filmmaker knows, there can never be enough avenues for distribution because a filmmakers always wants his/her work to be seen. And if films get seen then there is a chance at that elusive holy grail of movie making … profit.

I always love to look over my movie ticket stubs for the year that was as I begin to sort my receipts in preparation for tax time. I’ll always lay them out all over the floor and attempt to put them in some kind of order from my least favorite to the best of the year. It’s always interesting because #1: Some of the movies are from 2004 since in Nashville it will always be after January 1 when we will get some of the year end releases. #2: These kind of lists are usually bogus anyway since outside of the top 5 or 10 or 12 I kind of like most all of them the same. So even though I’ve seen both Munich and Brokeback Mountain and King Kong, I have to stick by my own rules and wait until some time in 2007 to see where they fall on the 2006 list even though some of them came out in 2005!

1. Crash (I still think about it today)
2. Murderball (Tour de Force documentary making)
3. Batman Begins (Everything a comic book movie should be… fun, fun fun)
4. Hotel Rwanda (powerful beyond words)
5. Million Dollar Baby (great ending!)
6. Hustle & Flow (It IS indeed hard out hea’ fo a pimp)
7. Capote
8. The Constant Gardener
9. Vera Drake
10a. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
10b. The Chronicles of Narnia (it was just fun too despite the Jesus lion named Liam)
11. Syriana (though I didn’t understand half of it)
12. Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (viva film festivals)
13. Jarhead
14. Star Wars: Episode III. Revenge of the Sith (my childhood comes full circle)
15. Missionary Positions (viva film festivals again)
16. Brothers (viva film festivals a 3rd time, we’d never be able to see of these movies with out them!)
17. Walk the Line (Would be higher if we’d have seen some of the more important events in Johnny Cash’s life)
18. Finding Neverland
19. North Country
20. War of the Worlds
21. Broken Flowers
22. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
23. Zathura
24. Gunner Palace
25. Sin City (a technical wonder but something was missing and I’m not sure what)

I finally saw Brokeback Mountain … On Sunday no less! No matter what your thoughts or politics or feelings about a “gay cowboy” movie, if you just look at it as a dramatic love story, there’s no denying it’s a powerful and moving portrait. But I like to talk about the editing.
It has often been said that the best editing is never seen. It is unobtrusive and serves only to move the story along and not to call attention to itself. While this may not be entirely true anymore in this age of MTV and the 10 cuts per second mentality of many action flicks (hello Joseph Kahn … well, mainly Torque), the well edited drama is still a nice thing to behold. There are a lot of things to consider when editing drama. The pacing of the cuts in a scene can totally change the mood. Who does the viewer see and when? Who should we be focused on at any given moment? We don’t always need to see who is talking for their whole delivery. Sometimes the reaction of everyone around is more important than seeing who is saying it. Maybe we see something totally different and just hear the currently talking character for a bit. Is voice over appropriate? Can you take on camera recorded dialog and make it into a voice over? Of course there are some people who say that voice over should always be the last option to bring a story together. Now, Brokeback Mountain, didn’t have any voice over so I will get back on topic.

The movie is very deliberately paced. It kind of meanders along like one of the streams that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s characters camp besides. There are great long shots of mountain vistas and herding sheep. There are slow dissolves that take us from one scene to the next. SPOILER AHEAD!!! There’s even one “quick” edit that comes out of nowhere when we learn the true fate of Gyllenhaal’s character. I put quick in quotation marks because a cut is always quick. It you think about it … A cut is one shot that instantly changes into another shot. One frame is shot A, the adjacent frame shot B. So it’s not that the cut where we learn Gyllenhaal’s fate is quick, it’s that the shot after the cut is very short and it “quickly” cuts back to the preceding scene. I often laugh with fellow editors when we get notes back on a job that ask us to “make the cut quicker than it is!” I can make the shots around the cuts shorter and make the edits happen faster by shortening these shots and adding more edits around…. but I really can’t make a cut any “quicker” than 1 frame. I digress….

The movie was edited by Dylan Tichenor who has done some great work with both Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. I wonder if that is just a coincidence? Tichenor’s first editing credit is for a Robert Altman piece which must be where he met the other editor Geraldine Peroni. She was a longtime collaborator with Altman and I first took notice of her on one of my personal favorites Short Cuts. I say was because she passed away in 2004. I didn’t know this and after a quick Google search I see there was some controversy surrounding her death. It’s sad that I didn’t know of her death until writing this blog entry but if there is one thing that editors have to deal with it is that we often work in anonymity, which is a real shame because if there is any one part of the collaborative filmmaking process that is the most vital… It’s the edit. But that’s a debate for another blog entry!