Production Blog
ARCHIVES FOR January 2008
POST-PRODUCTION HAS BEGUN
January 7, 2008 1:02 PM
Hey, Family—
First, all of us at Team Cohen wish you a happy New Year! I am back in rainy L.A. warm and dry in my editing room cutting the million feet of film I shot together. My editors, Joel Negron and Kelly Matsumoto, and I meet each morning to discuss the plan for the day’s attack. Sometimes I like to go in scene order, sometimes we strike at scenes more randomly, and soon I will have a good first pass through the entire movie.
Editing is one of my favorite phases of the film making process. This is my 30th movie and the elasticity of the medium is still constantly illuminating. There are “the rules” of matching, screen direction, etc., but all of those can be broken to good effect at the right time. Editing is rhythm, modulating the storytelling at the proper pace like a conductor setting the time signature for the orchestra. There are passages of your story you have to slow down for nuance, performance, and information. There are times when the narrative must have more attack. Scenes need to breathe—but not too much or the movie might drag, seem too long, too obvious. It is so much like music, dependent on rhythm, and storytelling melody.
There are thousands of cuts in a film and each cut represents a thousand considerations: go to Brendan who is speaking the line or to Maria who is reacting to it? Show the full scope of the set or build up a unique location in pieces? Actors are the main driving force of the edit and performance is the highest value. A film might move along so fast that the humanity is lost; it might be wallowing in humanity and the narrative excitement is lost. It depends on the nature of film and the inner voice of the film and how well a director and his/her editors respond to the urgings that actually come from inside the movie itself.
Film is plastic in the best sense. It is pliable to a degree difficult to explain. It’s almost mystical. Editing software is readily available and I urge all of you who are interested to experiment. Shoot a simple scene giving yourself a number of angles with which to work and cut it. After your first few cuts, the portal to this creative process will open and, once you pass through, you may find what I’ve found—an addiction.
I took part in an excellent documentary a few years ago along with Scorsese, Spielberg, and many other fine directors called “THE CUTTING EDGE: The Magic of Movie Editing” which I highly recommend to all of you.
Todd Grossman and I have another video, which should be posting shortly, taking you inside our wrap night and the mighty fireworks display that our Chinese and American effects team put on to commemorate the end of shooting. I hope you enjoy it.
800 visual effects, music, sound design, and dubbing all lie ahead so I will keep you abreast of my pilgrim’s progress. Until then, bye bye, for now….
Rob