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Book Reviews

Of Montage & VFX, A Pedagogical Analysis

by Betsy McLane August 1, 2016

written by Betsy McLane 9 minutes read

Editing and Special Visual Effects
by Charlie Keil and Kristen Whissel, Editors
Rutgers University Press
Paperback, 256 pages, $27.95
ISBN # 978-0813570815

by Betsy A. McLane

The number of books dedicated specifically to motion picture editing is not large. There is a steady supply of how-to guides, often geared to specific technologies, from The Language of the Cutting Room: A Primary Reference Manual for the Assistant Editor of 35mm Film by Bernard Balmuth, ACE (1980), to a new edition of Avid Editing: A Guide for Beginning and Intermediate Users by Sam Kauffmann and Ashley Kennedy (due February 2017). Noted filmmakers have shared their ideas and experiences from one century — The Technique of Film Editing, written and compiled by Karel Reisz (1953) — to the next — the iconic In the Blink of an Eye from Walter Murch, ACE, CAS, MPSE (2001).

Cut Print(RGB) There also are books on editing theory; Jay Leyda famously collected, translated and edited Sergei Eisenstein’s writings on montage from the 1920s and 1930s into Film Form: Essays in Film Theory in 1949. Auteur theory of the 1960s and ’70s relegated editors to the background, especially for masters like Hitchcock, nine of whose major films were edited by one man, George Tomasini, ACE. Editing largely escaped the Ontological, Phenomenological, Structuralist, Post-Structuralist, Lacanian-Freudian and other abstract analyses that plagued American film studies in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Fortunately, cinema studies turned in a different direction in the 21st century. Sound theory, including sound editing, has become a specialization on its own, and there is an emphasis on solid historical documentation, especially of American production. Editing and Special Visual Effects, edited by Charlie Keil and Kristen Whissel, is one of the newest examples of this trend.

Like many texts, this book is an anthology of related essays, often specially commissioned and featuring a lengthy introduction by the editors. Editing such anthologies is one traditional way that academics achieve tenure and promotion. Keil, a cinema studies professor at the University of Toronto, authored Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style and Filmmaking, 1907-1913. Whissel is the author of Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema and a Professor of Media Studies at UC Berkeley. Their approach to film is greatly influenced by prolific and influential scholar David Bordwell, who with his wife, Kristin Thompson, can take much of the credit for the critiques mounted against the theoretical “isms” and “ists.”

Keil and Whissel present the idea that film picture editing and special visual effects are historically linked and can be fruitfully considered together. This may seem obvious, but Editing and Special Visual Effects is the first major book to deeply explore the connection. To do this, the book’s editors gathered 11 other university film scholars, each of who writes in a specialized area. The material is organized chronologically with one essay on editing and one essay on special visual effects paired in each of six historical periods from “The Silent Screen, 1895-1927” to “The Modern Entertainment Marketplace, 2000-Present.”

These chapters echo some of the generally accepted periods of American film history, but are arbitrary. One can argue that what Keil and Whissel term “Classical Hollywood” — more generally referred to as “Hollywood’s Golden Age” or “The Studio Era” — lasted beyond the end date they choose, 1946. The editors elect to call 1947-1967 “Post-war Hollywood,” which stretches the term; it ill-serves films made after 1960 to clump them together with the Hollywood movies produced immediately after the war.

The book also defines 1968-1980 as “The Auteur Renaissance” and 1981-1999 as “The New Hollywood.” There is nothing inherently wrong about this; however, once years are so finitely limited, such labels tend to stick. Film editors’ careers cover many years — include many personal, artistic, economic and technical influences — and rise and fall regardless of the calendar.

The primary research and emphasis on factual accuracy that most of the contributors bring make Editing and Special Visual Effects a worthwhile effort. The book’s hundreds of notes include valuable, too seldomly consulted sources, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ oral histories with people such as former Editors Guild President Ralph Winters, ACE, editor of over 70 films and best known for his Oscar-winning work on Ben-Hur (1959); Margaret Booth, ACE; and Rudi Fehr, ACE (who each comment on the Warner Bros. and MGM practice of assigning editors to the set of first-time directors), among others.

Articles from contemporary trade magazines are well referenced – “Film Editors Organizing Own Section in Academy,” Film Daily, 1932; “The Butt Splicer: Editor’s Aid or Gimmick,” CinemaEditor, 1962; “The Return of Editdroid,” Millimeter, 1994; and “Editors Spliced in Two: Rivalry Splits Biz into Avid, Final Pro Camps,” Variety, 2011, are only a few examples. The Editors Guild itself appears in “The Auteur Renaissance” section, wherein critic Peter Rainer asks, “Do Film Critics Know What Editors Do?” in the January-February 1995 issue of Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter, the forerunner of CineMontage. The popular press is consulted as well; Paul Monticonne, in his essay covering 1928-1946, quotes a 1940 article in The Los Angeles Times, headlined “Lady Film Cutters: A Vanishing Profession,” in which the Secretary of the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors (predecessor of the Editors Guild) comments, “Women cutters are resented by their male colleagues.” It is unfortunately left to the book’s reader to decide if the Secretary found this to be a good or a bad trend.

Use of primary research sources and a historical perspective is a hallmark of Bordwell/Thompson’s approach to cinema studies. This influence in Editing and Special Visual Effects makes it more relevant to working editors than previous books on film theory (Eisenstein excepted). While academic, the writing is for the most part logical, and pairing studies of picture editing with special visual effects seems particularly sensible within a historical overview. For instance, the magical appearances and disappearances of sprites and devils, seen in many early silent trick films, was accomplished by editing in the camera or with a substitution splice. The dissolves and superimpositions provided by optical printers were another way to make transitions, and even specialized montage sequences, à la Slavko Vorkapich, were sometimes regarded as special effects. The matchup of editing and effects holds up today when moviemakers at every level possess technology that allows them to create cuts, transitions and effects digitally.

Editing and Special Effects includes sources such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ oral history with Ralph E. Winters, left, shown with fellow editor John D. Dunning being presented with their Oscars for editing Ben-Hur (1959).
Bison Archives

Unfortunately, some contributors offer generalizations that may make statistical sense, but go against industry experience. A major example of this is an extrapolation of Monticone’s conclusions that leads the Keil and Whissel to state in their introduction that the complexities of shooting sound films “…meant that editing had to begin while production was still occurring so that a rough cut would be ready virtually as soon as filming was complete: One byproduct of this change in editing timelines was the elimination of the director as part of the editing process.” A change in timelines, yes. Greater influence of studio heads and major producers on the edit, yes. The development of larger post departments with supervising editors who exerted levels of control, yes. But elimination of directors from the editing room, NO! The book also makes the claim that directors of this era had far less involvement in pre-production — a notion that might have surprised Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles.

The Directors Guild of America fought for directorial control from its beginning in 1936, and at one point had invited picture editors to join its ranks (they declined). John Ford famously did not get involved in editing. He was an exception, however, known for shooting so that his films could be edited in one way: his. Virtually every other major Hollywood director of the studio era retained involvement in post-production. They might be prepping or shooting their next picture, but most often directors were working on the same lot at which their previous movie was made.

Then, as now, producers and directors sat in small screening rooms and gave editorial notes based on various cuts. At the very least, a lunchtime visit to the editing room would be normal. It is difficult to imagine anyone preventing Frank Capra, Raoul Walsh, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Rouben Mamoulian, William Wellman, Josef von Sternberg, Henry King, William Wyler or King Vidor from looking into a Moviola monitor. As the DGA website states, “At the end of 1935, on the heels of a Paramount edict that its contract directors would be fired if they didn’t accept the pictures that were assigned to them, 13 directors met at Vidor’s house.” What they had been fighting for individually now became a common cause, including “…freedom from interference from micro-managing producers and studio executives; the right to be in the editing room and deliver their own cut of the film that would bear their name.”

Editing and Special Visual Effects is an important step in rightfully positioning the art of editing within the academic canon. While it suffers a bit from being written by observers from the Ivory Tower, it also benefits by offering the outsiders’ view. There are many important facts, useful examples, good ideas and provocative questions to ponder.

August 1, 2016 0 comments

Forget It, Jake

by Betsy McLane June 1, 2016

written by Betsy McLane 7 minutes read

Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles

by Jon Wilkman
Bloomsbury Press
Hardback, 326 pages, $34.00
ISBN # 978-1-62040-915-2

by Betsy A. McLane

At a preview screening of the film Chinatown in summer 1974, an official from the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is reported to have remarked, “It’s totally inaccurate! There was never any incest involved!”

That anyone employed by the DWP might quip that the corruption and villainy portrayed in the film is true reveals how deeply the history of Los Angeles is tied to its endless demand for water. The film is set in the late 1930s, and the events that inspired it — the so-called California Water Wars of the Owens Valley — actually took place primarily between 1902 and 1928. Such mixing and mashing of facts and fables, timelines and personalities is what makes Hollywood myths, and Chinatown, produced by Robert Evans, written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski, offers the screen’s greatest mythic vision of Los Angeles. All were nominated for Oscars and Towne won Best Original Screenplay. Behind the neo-noir atmosphere and twisted characters of Chinatown is a true story, even more complex and deadly than Towne’s, but few remember it today.

In Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles, Jon Wilkman does a masterful job of culling fact from legend. His focal point is the St. Francis Dam break of 1928 and the resulting floodwall that swiftly and terrifyingly killed hundreds in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. Few people now think about the disaster, although the former dam site is not far from the thousands of vehicles traveling every day on Interstate 5 near Santa Clarita. The dam was masterminded and supervised by self-taught engineer William Mulholland — Hollis Mulwray in Chinatown, portrayed by character actor Darrell Zwerling as a champion of good who is murdered because he wants to stop the building of another dam that might also break.

FloodpathCoverFinal(RGB) The real Mulholland was far more complex, more of a combination of the Mulwray and Noah Cross (John Huston) characters in the film, sans the incest. He not only designed and supervised the building of the “monster” San Frisquito Canyon dam, he was directly responsible for envisioning the entire water supply for a booming Los Angeles, including Lake Hollywood and the revolutionary, gravity-driven Owens River Aqueduct. LA still uses his aqueduct.

Mulholland arrived in Los Angeles at age 22 in 1877, worked initially cleaning ditches and ultimately became the Chief of the Bureau that became and remains the all-powerful LADWP. His rise parallels that of the city from small town to major metropolis. The ballyhooing of civic leaders, then and now, who promote a sun-filled, shiny future as they profit from real est
ate speculation — from Hollywoodland in 1923 to Playa Vista today — could not exist without Mulholland’s passion for water. He and the movie character Mulwray share that passion, and it proves to be the undoing of both. Mulwray is found drowned in one of his own reservoirs; Mulholland publicly accepts the blame for the Saint Francis disaster and is forever shattered. It is no wonder that in Polanski’s anamorphic vision, local history is obscured by layers of smoke and the low-key Oscar-nominated lighting of cinematographers Stanley Cortez, ASC, and John Alonzo, ASC.

Just as the sound design in Chinatown uses a finely mixed refrain of dripping, bubbling and running water, Wilkman’s research is thorough and meticulous. He carefully organizes and presents thousands of details. An off-screen comment about Mulwray in Chinatown (“The guy’s got water on the brain”) certainly applied to Mulholland — and can also be said of Wilkman, an experienced chronicler of Los Angeles history. He is the co-author of two pictorial books about the city and is the producer/director of several historical documentaries, including Moguls and Movie Stars, a TCM series about American movies.

The often-disputed facts and colorful tales surrounding the dam failure have obviously been an obsession for Wilkman for years. Was it an earthquake, angry ranchers with bombs, faulty dam design, or low-grade, cheap cement that created the disaster? He considers these theories and, along the way, makes valuable contributions to California history in the form of interviews with some who remembered the flood, including Mulholland’s granddaughter and biographer Catherine. Those interviewees are dead now. W
ilkman allows them to speak and counterpoints their personal stories with research from newspaper archives, official reports and government documents, books, articles and scholarly theses. He also recruits expert observations from the sciences of engineering, water management, geology, seismology and dam building. All of this makes for fascinating reading that only occasionally — primarily in the book’s last quarter — becomes more dry than entertaining.

While Wilkman is excellent at painting portraits of the many men who both supported and decried Mulholland and his plans, their names and changing titles sometimes get confusing. A useful map of the flood area brackets the book on the insides of its cover, but a list of who’s who among these characters and when they did what would have been a useful addition. It is sometimes necessary to refer back and forth to be precise about events. The final chapter, “After the Fall,” in which Wilkman reveals the most current computer-modeled theories about why the dam collapsed (do not peek ahead and spoil the story), becomes a bit preachy, but this in no way detracts from the excellent research or the page-turning drama. There are also enough photographs to provide visual context.

The author uses his vast array of primary resources to make several observations about the St. Francis Dam disaster that resonate today. One is that water and energy have always been and remain chief concerns in Southern California, and that our need for these has radical impact on the environment and on people’s well-being. Another is that haste and pressures to save money may be in the interest only of certain individuals; in other words, we need always be on the lookout for possible corruption. A third point is that it is the poor and people of color who bear the greatest misfortune in a disaster — man-made or otherwise. In 1928, many of the flood victims were Mexican farm workers who lived in low-lying camps along the Santa Clarita River; many remain among the unknown dead.

As private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson in an Oscar-nominated role written expressly for him) investigates Mulwray’s murder, he is drawn under the dry LA River’s Hollenbeck Bridge. Here lived a local drunk, who died from drowning, providing a clue about the mysterious presence of water during a drought. In today’s Los Angeles, it would be the thousands living in homeless encampments that die in a torrent. And in perhaps the most timely point, the unchecked hubris of one individual and his political supporters (whomever they may be) can only lead to tragedy.

Looking back to understand the present may not be a strong point of Southern California’s culture, but Wilkman makes its history meaningful in a way that demands our attention today. He may regret the obfuscation of fact by the compelling mythmaking of Chinatown, but the film is brilliant in its historical complexity. Wilkman painstakingly dissects the debate between populists and private corporations over government-sponsored public works projects in the 1930s. Polanski and company capture the essence of that debate in a courtroom scene in which a giant portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt looms as Gittes listens while city leaders rousingly endorse the new dam, and Mulwray refuses to build it.

Floodpath and Chinatown each offer insight, and the reader is well advised to experience both.

June 1, 2016 0 comments

Book Reviews

Settling the Score

by Betsy McLane November 1, 2015

written by Betsy McLane 4 minutes read

by Betsy A. McLane

Steven Saltzman’s fine book might well be subtitled “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Music Editing.” “The Art and the Process” is just as apt a subtitle, however, because in addition to every technical nut and bolt of music editing with Avid Pro Tools, it gives ample attention to the artistry and personal character required to master this specialized profession.

The author has been a music editor for 18 years and, as a certified Pro Tools instructor, has created and taught many music editing courses. The book’s core is  a thorough understanding of the detailed ins and outs of Pro Tools. It clearly explains what appears on a monitor screen and illustrates what buttons need to be pushed to move from coding a cue through conforming to data delivery of media.

Music Editing for Film and Television is  a recommended text in any type of sound  or picture editing training, and is also a  must-read for film or TV music composers. Joining the large catalogue of Focal Press’ books on every aspect of filmmaking, this  book should be part of every post-production library. Readers not already following it might consider checking out the publisher’s website, www.masteringfilm.com, where real-time tweets mix with video tutorials and views from the field.

It would be a mistake to consider Music for Film and Television Editing as a manual; let Avid supply that. Saltzman incorporates extensive interviews with various people who are key to all phases of pre-production, production and post. These insider insights are provided by post-production supervisor Christopher Kulikowski, music supervisor Bob Bowen, composer William Ross, re-recording mixer Gary Bourgeois, CAS, music editors Joseph S. Debeasi, MPSE, and Carli Barber, and picture editors David Rennie, ACE, and Kevin Tent, ACE, among others. There is also a timely Q&A with sound editor/designer Scott Gershin, MPSE, along with several relevant essays by other professionals.

These interviews follow the same general format, an approach that provides an array of opinions on the same topic. A music supervisor says, “A music editor’s main function is to help sculpt the tone and direction of the music by cuttings songs and score to picture under the guidance of the music supervisor, the composer, the director, the picture editor, the producers and the studio.” While a film editor remarks, “What a music editor presents [in a temp track] so often is what winds up being in the final film. It drives some composers crazy, I know. They often hate having the music figured out before they show up.”

Another issue considered in Music Editing for Film and Television is the shifting position of music editors (and all post personnel) as film and television budgets shrink and people are expected to take on increasing workloads.

Saltzman emphasizes why it is critical that a music editor must carefully and professionally navigate the intricacies of many demanding “masters” at the same time while doing the best work possible. Acknowledging that every production situation  is different, he emphasizes the importance of building working relationships with every member of the team. Rennie comments,

“It’s not necessarily going to be the music “editor’s place to decide whether it’s a collaboration, any more than it’s the editor’s place to decide whether it’s a collaboration with the director — they lead the dance… and you hope that you have a picture editor who doesn’t have an ego problem.”

So central is creating a harmonious workflow to the music editor’s role that Saltzman provides sample scenarios for various stages of post-production. One example is the pressure-laden task of fixing sound edits on stage during the final dub of a movie — possibly while the entire mix comes to a standstill and everyone listens to the edit. Various technical solutions to such problems are described along with great personal advice: “Keep calm. Keep quiet… How you handle yourself on that stage shows all your peers and bosses and future colleagues how professional you are.”

Another issue considered in Music Editing for Film and Television is the shifting position of music editors (and all post personnel) as film and television budgets shrink and people are expected to take on increasing workloads. Saltzman consistently makes points about the differences between big- and low-budget productions, and tries to reconcile how artistry and economy can co-exist. Underlying these facts of 21st-century moviemaking, he subtly points out what is lost in the rush.

Few welcome circumstances such as composers who are asked to edit their own score, picture editors who must create their own temp track (when they would prefer not to do so), the slashing of post-production schedules to make up for production delays, and the time demands of producers who want changes made right up to and occasionally even after release dates. He compares these current trends with older studio practices, but does not dwell in any nostalgia.

Someone else should write a history of film and television music editing, but for the present, Steven Saltzman has written the book that defines his field.

November 1, 2015 0 comments

Book Reviews Columns

How-To Advice from Award-Winning TV Editors

by Betsy McLane September 1, 2015

written by Betsy McLane 8 minutes read

Cutting It in Hollywood: Top Film Editors Share Their Journeys

by Mitchell Danton, ACE
Introduction by Michael Kahn, ACE
Hollywood Adventures Publishing
Paperback, 377 pages, $49.95 color;
$29.95 black and white
ISBN # 978-0984030125

How to Avoid the Cutting Room Floor: An Editor’s Advice for On-Camera Actors

by Jordan Goldman, ACE
EditorsAdviceForActors.com
Paperback, 133 Pages, $14.99
ISBN # 978-0692789162

by Betsy A. McLane

Contrary to the popular adage about achieving success in Hollywood, building a career as an editor definitely includes “what you know” as well as “who you know.” Mitchell Danton, ACE, makes this very clear in Cutting It in Hollywood: Top Film Editors Share Their Journeys. Moreover, if some aspiring actors think they should rely on the “who you know” part of the saying, Jordan Goldman, ACE, can help set them straight with How to Avoid the Cutting Room Floor: An Editor’s Advice for On-Camera Actors. These books offer practical advice, how-to examples, personal stories and inspiration from two Editors Guild members who made their own ways through the trenches to attain notable careers as picture editors.

A member of the Homeland editing team since the show’s beginning in 2011, Goldman won an Emmy Award (with David Latham) for cutting the pilot. He is also known for his work on the miniseries 24: Live Another Day and has cut over 70 episodes of television during 20 years in the business.

cut-print-goldmancy For Goldman, a key part of his job is helping actors create great characters — ones whose thoughts and emotions pull viewers into their stories. Speaking directly to his actors/readers in the book’s introduction, he writes, “I don’t want to cut you out. I want you to shine. I love actors and the amazing work that you do.” The first-person style continues throughout, which makes reading the book feel like sitting down for a cup of coffee and some serious advice with a professional who truly cares about you.

Editors will themselves enjoy this quick read, recognizing (perhaps with a chuckle or a grimace) the situations Goldman explains. His caution to actors, “If your scene partner is late on their cue, don’t break demeanor,” is exemplified by an anecdote of a performer who begins making faces on camera when a stuntman is late on the cue to plow into him. The actor gets tackled anyway, but because he broke character before he was hit, the entire take is unusable. Experienced actors may know how to react in such situations, but anyone starting out in a screen-acting career should buy this volume and memorize its rules.

Goldman also creates a valuable tool to help actors avoid needless mistakes. Describing how he approaches editing, he states, “Throughout the process, I’ll do whatever I can to bolster all of the actors’ performances. My personal opinion is that performance is the most important thing in a scene, so I will always choose an average shot of a great performance over a beautiful shot of a bland performance. Sometimes, I will even use a take which has slight camera-focus problems if the performance is really incredible.” This bold declaration may give actors too much to hope for when an executive producer or director dominates the editorial choices, but if performers — or anyone who appears in front of the camera — follow the very useful guidelines outlined in How to Avoid the Cutting Room Floor, they will be much more likely to wind up onscreen. For more information, see EditorsAdviceForActors.com.

Similarly, Danton’s tome is a must-read for everyone who aspires to get into, or move up the ladder in, post-production. His book is a modern, personal story, also relayed in the first person. It is punctuated by many photographs, giving it the feel of a personal album. It may be a jolt for some to realize that his “Top Film Editors” are mostly people who entered the business after 1990, but the 25 years that have passed since then were ample time for them to hone their skills and win awards.

Danton himself won an ACE Eddie Award and a Primetime Emmy in 2007 for the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11. For those who feel the need for a bit more eminence grise, the legendary Michael Kahn, ACE, offers a charming introduction with his own essay, “My Life as a Film Editor,” in which he credits Steven Spielberg (with whom he edited 25 films) for “inviting me to share his magic carpet.”

cut-print-dantoncy Danton, like Goldman, is primarily a television editor, and although each has also worked on features, the sensibilities, aesthetics and time demands of editing television dominate both of their books. In Cutting It in Hollywood, chapters are devoted to subjects such as Editing the Zip Code (Beverly Hills, 90210) and Surviving Survivor. Danton comes from a Hollywood family — father Ray Danton was a director and mother Julie Adams is an actress, best known for her starring role in Creature from the Black Lagoon — and he was able to soak up filmmaking from an early age.

Hanging out at NBC while his dad directed Quincy M.E., he soon was observing in the editing rooms and eventually found himself hanging trims for Geoffrey Rowland, ACE. A chance meeting with producer Barney Rosenzweig led to a post-production PA job on Cagney & Lacey, where he cleared the hurdles to become an apprentice and jumped at the chance to join the Guild in 1982.

Danton is proud of his family and his Guild membership, but never lets those privileges diminish his own personal drive to succeed. Leaving a good union job as assistant editor on Cagney & Lacey, he decided to enroll as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, hoping eventually to be accepted into the School of Cinema Television. Even when offered a job as second assistant editor on the Eddie Murphy feature Raw, Danton chose to take a chance on USC, not even knowing if he would make it into the film school.

Fortunately, he was accepted on his second try, based in part on a documentary he made for an anthropology class. Danton’s film school tales are among the most interesting of his reminiscences, partly because it was there where he met people who became lifetime friends and colleagues — and whose stories fill the last quarter of his book — but more importantly, because students then were among the first to shoot both film and video. Danton’s and his contemporaries’ careers span the shifts from film to video to digital, from the Moviola to KEM to Avid and beyond. For this historical record alone, the book deserves praise.

He also features younger editors on the rise, outlining the inspirational career paths of these newcomers, as well as established editors. Mark Jones, assistant editor on films like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, made his way from western Kentucky and, without knowing a soul in Hollywood, worked odd jobs, took Avid classes at night and was hired on The Path to 9/11 after meeting editor Rowland at the driving range where Jones worked. Editor Lise Johnson took the film school route at NYU, then made it into the ACE intern program, going on to great success with NCIS: Los Angeles. Danton also profiles editors who transitioned into directing, such as Norman Buckley, ACE, and Chris Peppe.

Each of the 20 or so career paths Danton outlines presented challenges and rewards. Every person offers his or her own insights into why and how they edit. Billy Fox, ACE, who rose from editing videotape news, promos and sports: “You don’t edit with your eyes, you don’t edit with your brain, you don’t edit with your finger; you edit with your gut.” John Axelrad, ACE: “Emotion and heart — that’s what draws audiences into characters.”

Danton sums up his own take on editing: “The journey to becoming a professional editor is not always an easy one, but for those who stay the course, the reward is a career that offers unlimited creative possibilities.” Cutting It in Hollywood celebrates the hard work, perseverance, willingness to take risks, luck and the determination to edit whenever possible — all of which are necessary to fulfill those creative possibilities. For everyone who dreams of becoming an editor, it is an essential read. For more information, visit www.CuttingItInHollywood.com.

September 1, 2015 0 comments

Book Reviews

When Movies Opened Their Mouths

by Betsy McLane August 1, 2015

written by Betsy McLane 8 minutes read

Adaptations in the Sound Era: 1927-37
by Deborah Cartmell
Bloomsbury Publishing
Paperback, 166 pages, $28.45
ISBN # 978-1-6235-6878-8

by Betsy A. McLane

The technical, artistic and economic tumult that roiled through Hollywood with the coming of sound sometimes led to wildly unusual experiments and partnerships. The widespread adoption of literary works and stage plays was one product of the beginning of the talkies. In Adaptations in the Sound Era 1927-37, Deborah Cartmell presents this phenomenon through innovative research and a non- judgmental eye, producing a book that is both scholarly and accessible to the general reader. Her exploration relies on not only the films and their sources – popular criticism from the era, box office figures and later reassessments – but also and primarily on analysis of original press kits, which in those days were better known as press books. This ballyhooing and purple-prosed primary evidence supports her ideas and her writing gives an authentic, occasionally amusing voice to a relatively lost period of film study.

As they brought in sound technologies and the experts who knew how to use them, the studios demanded visible (or audible) results from their investments, and audiences were, at least initially, captivated by Hollywood’s latest novelty. This meant words; and where better to find words than in the non- copyrighted writing of English literature’s classics? Such sources abounded and Cartmell categorizes her study of them into chapters on William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Gothic (Horror), Biopics and Films for Children, with an emphasis on the differences between pre- and post-Hays Code – the set of industry moral guidelines established by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) that was applied to most US films released by major studios from 1930 to 1968.

Literary adaptations were nothing new for the movies. Some of the very first experiments in filmmaking involved Shakespeare, and approximately 200 film versions of his plays had been made by 1914, mainly in Britain, France and the US. Silent film of course allowed Shakespeare’s hallowed English to be translated into intertitles of any language, but with sound, film could at last capture the poetry’s magic – at least theoretically.

One of the era’s big unknowns was whether silent movie stars would be able to retain their box office power once given voices. Immortalized, if over-simplified in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), and more recently serving as the storyline for The Artist (2011), this very real problem was tackled head-on with Shakespeare by no less than Hollywood’s reigning couple: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. They were paired in Taming of the Shrew (1929), directed by Sam Taylor, which was Hollywood’s first sound Shakespeare adaption.

The case study of this Shrew is representative of Cartmell’s meticulous approach. She notes, “This film marks an important point in the history of screen adaptation and in Shakespeare and screen studies.” Although released in both silent and sound versions, it was touted in publicity materials as “the first to bring Shakespeare to the screen,” apparently wiping out any trace of the entire silent Shakespearean oeuvre. It was actually not even the first attempt at a Shakespeare talkie. The earliest is a 1900 French version of Hamlet, starring Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, often cited as one of the first examples of sound and moving image synchronization created with the Phono-Cinema-Theatre system.

While the Shrew press materials take great pains to point out that Shakespeare’s original words are now available to the masses (“not one bit of the glorious Shakespearean dialogue has been sacrificed”), an even greater selling point is the debut screen pairing of real-life wife and husband Pickford and Fairbanks. Behind the scenes, their marriage was almost over, but, as Cartmell observes, the fan magazines were mad for “real-life” Hollywood romance, and so the film’s tagline declares, “The big three – Mary, Doug, and Bill,” the last being the Bard himself. The film was a box office flop and Pickford, somewhat embarrassed by her own performance, soon retired from acting to run United Artists.

Shrew‘s failure stopped Hollywood’s attempts to sell Shakespeare until 1935, when Warner Bros. risked Max Reinhardt’s opulent version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, co-directed with his former pupil William Dieterle. Even with James Cagney in “The Greatest Role of His Career,” Dick Powell, who as Lysander “Sings His Way into Your Heart,” and, most famously, Mickey Rooney as Puck, among a cast of stars, the film did not find a popular audience. The soundmen, Charles David Forest (whose first credit was on the aforementioned Shrew) and Nathan Levinson (who had worked with Sam Warner to bring sound to the movies with 1927’s The Jazz Singer), received no screen credit. This film too failed to make much money. Cartmell argues that while Hollywood tried to position filmed Shakespeare plays as cultural opportunities for those who thought him too highbrow, early sound films did not succeed in this, and they generally served to alienate critics and the intelligentsia who revered the playwright.

The author also provides fascinating tidbits about many seemingly absurd promotional suggestions, particularly with Dickens adaptations. The MGM pressbook for Charles Conway’s 1935 A Tale of Two Cities is typical in its suggestion, “Addressed especially to those theatres that cannot afford the expense of a Dickens float…” that they should employ people dressed as Dickens characters wearing sandwich boards in the shape of giant books featuring the movie’s posters as covers. These walking books should then be deployed to “school and college locations” to emphasize the film’s literary credentials. Cartmell also indicates that Dickens’ portrayals of Victorian poverty were appealing to poor Depression-era audiences and that his work was more “popular” than “classic.” Her research demonstrates that at least for the studios, these suppositions were true.

A Tale of Two Cities. MGM

More success was found in the horror genre. Early sound adaptations of gothic novels, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (directed by James Whale), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Tod Browning) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Reuben Mamoulian) – all from 1931 – continue today as classic films, themselves considered as source material to be referenced and parodied. Some of these films are also part of the halloween movies list that are cherished by movie lovers. Cartmell ascribes this timelessness to two factors: 1) the fact that they stressed the horror genre over the original writing, and 2) the filmmakers recognized and used the power of silence. She cites the brilliance of the three directors and their understanding of mise-en-scène, editing and careful use of sound. Cartmell’s analysis confirms that the marketing departments continued to stress original authors, but a poster shows that Universal’s “Carl Laemmle presents Dracula,” while Frankenstein is “A Chilling Thriller based on a Novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” Cartmell notes that in the latter, silence replaces dialogue “…as the increasingly articulate monster of Mary Shelley’s tale becomes a mute in Whale’s film.”

The studios were still very much ready to claim legitimacy through literary heritage when it served their purpose. In responding to the pressures of the Hays Code, the MPPDA’s Head of the Studio Relations Committee apparently felt that Paramount could exploit Hyde’s horrors in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde “since it was built upon a literary classic.”

Cartmell also makes a case for the influence of the Code in creating the cycles of often-derided biopics, in which stars become conflated with historical personages. She focuses on The Private Life of Henry the VIII (1933) as playing on audiences’ prurient interest in “private lives” of movie stars. Charles Laughton’s Henry became a standard popular image of the king, while Elsa Lanchester (Laughton’s real-life wife) plays Henry’s fourth, Anne of Cleves.

In the later 1930s, when the Code was in full effect, advertising for adaptations of children’s films emphasized purity and morality. Shirley Temple vehicles such as John Ford’s version of Rudyard Kipling’s Wee Willie Winkie and Alan Dwan’s film of Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, (both 1937) relied on the child star’s innocent image. Heidi‘s pressbook unites the novel’s character with the star, “In the Beloved Story Millions Wanted Her to Make” and offered bookmarks with pictures of the novel surrounded by fan letters begging Temple to take on the role.

In Adaptations in the Sound Era, Cartmell provides fascinating tidbits about these and other seeming absurdities. Without overplaying obvious ironies, she investigates a little-studied area, wisely leaving it to readers to find their own enjoyment in the details.

August 1, 2015 0 comments

Book Reviews

Knockin’ on History’s Door

by Betsy McLane June 1, 2015

written by Betsy McLane 8 minutes read

The Authentic Death & Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah’s Last Western
by Paul Seydor, ACE
Northwestern University Press
Paperback, 408 pages, $29.95
ISBN 978-8101-3056-2

by Betsy A. McLane

Sometimes a title can be misleading, but in the case of The Authentic Death & Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah’s Last Western — the title, including ampersand — is part and parcel of ACE member Paul Seydor’s exactingly told story. The notorious history of acclaimed director Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); its decades-long gestation, multiple script versions, casting changes, troubled location shoot in the Mexican desert and, most controversially, its nightmarish post- production are detailed by Seydor in a way that is both excellent and excruciating.

The author is an expert not only on this film, Peckinpah and the Western genre, but on film editing. He is a working Guild editor and teaches the craft at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange County, California. He authored Peckinpah: The Western Films – A Reconsideration (1997) and was nominated for an Oscar (with Nick Redman) as producer for Best Documentary Short for The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage (1997), which Seydor also directed. These bona fides coupled with a 30-plus year devotion to the subject make this book an unequaled revelation of Peckinpah’s singular way of creating — and disowning — his art within the changing Hollywood studio system of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. These are the excellent and exciting elements in Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife. The excruciating part is the challenge to get through this saga’s thousands of details, knowing that the outcome is a soul-draining collision of personalities and economic forces that make Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid a classic film maudit.

Seydor starts at the beginning of the “true” Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid story. Chapters One and Two are comprised of a thoroughly researched introduction to this mythic tale of the American West. The book is full of the same reliable scholarship, appended by almost 50 pages of notes, footnotes, bibliography and filmography. It also incorporates many unique interviews with Peckinpah’s collaborators, friends and antagonists conducted by the author. Brightest among these are the conversations with editor Roger Spottiswoode.

There is no one alive to interview about the Lincoln County, New Mexico cattle/business wars of the 1870s and ‘80s, which led to Garrett’s killing The Kid, so Seydor probes many recountings of this legend. He starts with “penny dreadfuls” published almost before Billy’s body was in the ground, and settles on the account written by (or as told to) Garrett as the most accurate. This is The Authentic Life of Billy – The Kid, the full title of which continues: “The Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Made his Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico by Pat F. Garrett, Sheriff of Lincoln Co., New Mexico, by whom he was finally hunted down and captured by killing him, A Faithful and “Interesting Narrative” (inconsistent italics included).

Respected novelist Charles Neider did a similar study for his fictionalization, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones (1956), raising the story from pulp Western to serious novel. Study of this novel’s genesis and continuing influence comprises Seydor’s Chapter Three. Admired and adapted into a screenplay by Peckinpah in 1957 with Stanley Kubrick the intended director, Neider’s book and the screenplay are compared character-to-character and almost sequence-to- sequence in The Authentic Death. This screenplay never was filmed, but it eventually morphed into One Eyed Jacks (1961), starring and directed by Marlon Brando, and written by Guy Trosper. The original Peckinpah screenplay begins his long attachment to the Billy and Garrett material, and leads Seydor
to further detailed comparisons as he explores what became the shooting script for Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, written by Rudolph Wurlitzer and given to Peckinpah in 1970-71. Originally written for director Monte Hellman (whose Two Lane Blacktop was Wurlitzer’s first screenplay), this version was titled simply Billy the Kid and sold to producer Gordon Carroll at MGM.

From the moment Wurlitzer and Peckinpah began to work on the script and the film moved into pre-production with Carroll, there was trouble. Peckinpah was still shooting The Getaway (1972) and given that commitment and his ever-increasing alcoholism and erratic behavior, Billy the Kid received less than full attention. A nightmarish atmosphere was created by studio boss James Aubrey, a television executive who had no sympathy for film as art and was under pressure from MGM to produce big- name box office winners to generate quick cash for the studio’s new venture: the MGM Grand hotel casinos.

Peckinpah’s film was not the only one to suffer from this misguided policy, but Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid became the most notorious. Seydor offers details of the complicated casting (the studio wanted big name stars, but would not budget for them — even Brando got involved again for a while), equipment malfunction (a days’ worth of footage rendered useless because Aubrey would not authorize money for a camera tech, resulting in a cracked lens-mounting flange), debilitating flu that hit many of the cast and crew (including Peckinpah), and the sometimes violent clashes of personalities that characterized a Peckinpah shoot. He also chronicles the successes, such as the spectacular cinematography by John Coquillon and a consummate performance by James Coburn as Garrett.

The production sections of Seydor’s book are the least satisfying. What Authentic Death needs is a list of everyone involved: real people, the names their characters have in the novel, the various screenplays and the films; identification of the actors who played them, and the key crew members and executives. There are so many different names that the narrative becomes labyrinthian. The problem is made more acute by lack of an index. A good addition would be a chart like ones used to keep the names in War and Peace straight.

Understanding the book also demands knowledge of the film — and the Peckinpah mystique. Seydor appropriately refrains from repeating sordid rumors of the director’s behavior both on and off set, but many will not have heard those wild tales. This is especially frustrating when Seydor repeatedly mentions Peckinpah’s misogyny, but never provides a concrete example. Fortunately, the book creates a desire to watch more Peckinpah films and learn more about the man himself.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. MGM

Authentic Death is best in describing the tortuous post-production process. The schedule for post was reduced, and reduced again by trouble on the set, to only 13 weeks, with a first cut to be delivered one week after shooting ended. The picture editors were to be Bob Wolfe and Spottiswoode — the team that worked successfully on Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971) and The Getaway. For unknown reasons, Peckinpah replaced Wolfe with Gareth Craven, who at that point had edited only sound. Nastiness abounded among Aubrey, Peckinpah and Carroll, who fought for Peckinpah’s vision, but was under the thumb of the studio. Extra editors were hired and work went on around the clock.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that composer Jerry Fielding walked off the picture because he despised Bob Dylan’s song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” playing over an important scene. Dylan, who also acted in Pat Garrett, had never worked on a score, but ended up as the default composer, with little input from Peckinpah, who felt loyal to Fielding. This left Spottiswoode in charge of every aspect of post, an impossible load. Peckinpah’s own behavior became more erratic. His contract allowed two previews of his director’s cut, but by the time that came around, his animosity toward Aubrey and (unjustly) Carroll, was so great that he did not even bother to attend the previews, a true slap in the face to the editors. Eventually, Peckinpah simply walked away from the film.

Spottiswoode — the white knight of the story — and team delivered a theatrical version, released with little success. Seydor devotes two chapters to dissecting the various “original” and reconstructed versions of the film. Here he excels; he is probably the only person who has seen every version available and he was key in creating the 2005 Special Edition DVD. He meticulously reviews each, even his own work, from a 2015 perspective. These chapters speak directly to readers who want to understand what editing can and cannot do. The comparisons offer extraordinary lessons in how material (good, bad and mediocre) can be edited in many ways to achieve various emotional, artistic and narrative results.

Seydor concludes with deft personal and professional opinions: “Ten Ways of Looking at an Unfinished Masterpiece and Its Director.” If anyone can speak authoritatively about Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, it is Paul Seydor. His knowledge illuminates a strange and fascinating story that should interest everyone who makes and loves films.

June 1, 2015 0 comments

Book Reviews

Post Moderne: A Resource and Reference Tool

by Debra Kaufman February 1, 2015

written by Debra Kaufman 6 minutes read

Modern Post: Workflows and Techniques for Digital Filmmakers
by Scott Arundale and Tashi Trieu
Focal Press
Paperback, 297 pps., $49.95
ISBN: 978-0-415-74702-8

by Debra Kaufman

When nonlinear editing systems first appeared nearly 25 years ago, a lot of people scratched their heads. Who could edit with a picture you could barely see and a hard drive that couldn’t hold even a reel of images, on a new-fangled personal computer that was likely to crash? The advent of nonlinear editing was just the beginning of a cascade of digital advancements that would dramatically change the tools, practices and workflows of the entire production and post paradigm.

Putting today’s post-production workflows, pitfalls and opportunities into the bigger picture is no easy task, but that’s what authors Scott Arundale and his co-author Tashi Trieu have set out to do in Modern Post: Workflows and Techniques for Digital Filmmakers.

“This book is the result of my teaching editing and post-production for many years and discovering that there is a deficit of books on the subject from both an historical and forward-thinking point of view,” says Arundale, who is an assistant professor at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “While the Internet offers many bits and pieces about new technology alongside the history of film, we felt that a compendium devoted to the big picture would be helpful to both the young filmmaker and the old pro — that they might form a better mental image of the post-production process. The book aims to serve as a resource for the changing landscape of post- production. While best practices will continue to evolve, we’ve done our best to document the transition from film to digital, and the requisite changes in workflow.”

Trieu, a Chapman alumnus, is a freelance DI artist and post workflow consultant. Arundale’s background includes a BFA in Film Production from New York University, an MFA at USC’s Peter Stark Producing program, and hands-on experience in editing and producing. He is an Apple Certified Trainer for Final Cut Pro and an Avid Certified Trainer for Media Composer. He is also an associate member of the American Cinema Editors (ACE).

The book is written in a style familiar to readers of Focal Press publications. Each of the nine chapters is divided into sub- chapters designated by decimals. The Chapter 1 on Retrospective of Traditional Filmmaking, for example, is sub-divided into 1.1 on Retrospective of Traditional Filmmaking (with further sub-heads on everything from developing and processing to color timing) and 1.2 on Evolution of Video Editing. This style makes it easy for the reader to zero in on a specific topic.

Placing the history of production and post squarely in the realm of celluloid, Arundale and Trieu begin their book with a look at traditional film practices in both areas. Perhaps more unusual for a book about post-production, the authors also devote pages to film, digital and DSLR cameras, as well as “best practices for production.” But Arundale defends the choice. “Production and post have come together,” he says. “So camera selection, setting up cutting rooms and planning for deliveries are all included.”

In today’s post-production environment, editors are being called upon to know more and do more, and Modern Post can fill in the blanks there as well. “The average picture editor may not understand everything that goes through the process,” says Arundale. “Assistant editors may know more of the technical side but not know everything about deliverables. Visual effects have also proliferated and we talk about the role of the visual effects editors, which would work for an assistant interested in becoming a visual effects editor or an editor who’s never done visual effects.”

Each chapter focuses on an area of importance to that big picture. Chapter 4 focuses on editing and post-production, with sections on offline editing, online conform, color grading/DI and dirt, fixes and adding/removing grain. The authors include material that covers territory from Equipment Rental versus Purchase to Why Not Color-Correct in an NLE? and ACES [Academy Color Encoding System] Workflow.

Visual effects and titles — everything from rig and wire removal to visual effects editorial — is covered in Chapter 5, while Chapter 6 focuses on Sound Design and Final Mastering. The authors also devote a hefty chapter to Restoration and Archiving, which have become passionate topics for Arundale as a result of his research and study. Part 8 looks in depth at budgeting and scheduling for post, and the last chapter consists of two case studies from 2013: the theatrical feature Don Jon and the documentary Tim’s Vermeer.

One of the book’s strong suits is its reliance upon first-person interviews and case studies; letting actual practitioners speak for themselves is definitely a solid addition. The authors also include examples of such documents as a full deliverables contract and more techy information on chroma sub-sampling and other such topics. There is a welcome glossary as well, and Modern Post has a fairly comprehensive one. In fact, any word that appears in bold type throughout the text means its definition can be found in the glossary.

Sidebars are used to explain certain key concepts, add a historical footnote or offer a helpful tip. Those who want a deeper dive into the technology can even find data tables at the back of the book.

Who should read Modern Post? “This book is intended for film professionals, educators and students alike,” says Arundale. “While it is not meant to be a ‘how-to’ guide for the DIY filmmaker, it documents the best industry practices currently in place — the very latest technologies — and sheds light on emerging trends in digital filmmaking. Our goal is to demystify many of the underlying concepts and philosophies behind those topics so that the reader can apply them to future innovations.”

Arundale says the book also has a place on the professional’s bookshelf. “More often than not, a producer, director or even working film editor may have questions that need answering,” he says. “This book is the first desk reference that they should reach for.” With its emphasis on both old and new, Modern Post would make a great addition to the reference tools of anyone who works in post.

February 1, 2015 0 comments

Book Reviews Columns

To Protect and Preserve

by Betsy McLane November 1, 2014

written by Betsy McLane 6 minutes read

The Past Is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film
by Janna Jones
University Press of Florida
Paperback, 212 pps., $18.95
ISBN: 9780813060378

by Betsy A. McLane

Almost everyone in the business has heard the statistics: Only 10 percent of films made between 1910 and 1920 still exist; 20 percent of the films made in the 1920s survive; and only around half of the films made before 1950 remain — some only in part. The majority of these still need restoration. No one is able to calculate how many documentaries, shorts of all types, independent films, television programs, industrials and home movies are gone, since there is little or no record of their fates. Today, most major studios and TV channels preserve their own product, but the early films and the “orphans” (as the field calls titles that don’t have clear rights owners, or because those owners cannot or will not pay for preservation) continue to disappear regularly. This means that many Guild members’ achievements are gone forever, and that sound and picture work of today’s members could conceivably vanish.

These facts alone should prompt readers to pick up Janna Jones’ book The Past Is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film, but there are yet more enticements to read it. Instead of a dry recitation or polemic, Jones offers access to our film archives via a solid intellectual framework made vivid with stories of the field’s leading players, institutions and film titles. Many of the champions of preservation are included — from Iris Barry, the first head of the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, to Martin Scorsese’s high-profile efforts. As its title states, the book is devoted to the first 100 years of cinema preservation and restoration. Although acknowledged, the book does not dwell on analog video or digital developments. Lest this emphasis on the past seem to make the book an academic exercise, consider that none of the classic moments of sound and picture editing would be available to emulate and inspire without the work of archivists and restoration experts.

The Past Is a Moving Picture clearly outlines the development of the United States’ archival institutions and poses important contemporary questions with a jargon-free chronological examination. Jones considers film archives as active participants in creating a particular 20th century history. She talks about the pre-1980 period, a time when a “scarcity paradigm” prevailed. This was the era when few cared about older films (even less about video) and parts of studio libraries. The few archivists who knew what was going on frantically tried to save and store everything they could.

This mindset is rightfully still at work, even though it is impossible to save everything. No one can accurately predict what might be important in 100 years, just as no one in 1914 knew how vital films made that year would become. That was the year in which Charlie Chaplin made dozens of Keystone shorts and became filmdom’s first great star; Winsor McCay created the animated Gertie the Dinosaur; Paramount Pictures was founded in Los Angeles; and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man became the first feature produced in Hollywood proper. The fact that all but one of Chaplin’s Keystone comedies still exist is due to their enormous popularity.

The earliest efforts at collecting and preserving films were, according to Jones, often driven by a sense of patriotic duty to explain and enshrine collective ideals about America. The first attempt to establish a nationwide collection was begun by Will Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, the precursor of today’s MPAA. Best known for enforcing Hollywood censorship, Hays lobbied the federal government for 11 years to establish a collection of sound and image recordings to form a cultural, commercial and patriotic legacy that would, not coincidentally, enhance the status of his constituents — the studio bosses. His proposed site for the archive was the basement of the White House. Hays’ goals included free screenings for immigrants traveling in steerage, through which he hoped to acquaint them with American customs. Hays’ aims were not realized, but his work did help lead to the inclusion of film in the National Archives in the 1930s.

Problems of archiving changed over the decades and continue to multiply. Unlike the “scarcity paradigm” of the last century, many archives now have far too much material to sort, catalogue, store, digitize and make available. In most places, only a small fraction of the holdings have been “processed.” Access has become a priority, with different policies of the archival community providing various levels of public access. The existence of some films is due to restrictions on their use that were placed by rights holders. Also, some were acquired and stored by collectors who often did not own copyrights, prompting some archives’ reluctance to screen or even acknowledge certain holdings. That approach is dissolving in the 21st century, although legal questions of donations, bequests, deposits and a myriad of linked concerns remain.

Trying to determine what is most “authentic” is one of the great quandaries in restoration. Although a director’s cut might make for good DVD/download sales, how is that discoverable when a director is long dead? And is it more responsible to restore and preserve a filmmaker’s (or a studio’s) favorite version, or the one that originally reached the public? Taking into account (or perhaps ignoring) the sensibility of today’s audiences is also important in restoration.

Many Guild members’ achievements are gone forever, and the work of today’s members could conceivably vanish.

Jones details a few famous restoration projects. Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), with its iconic Slavko Vorkapich montage of Mr. Smith’s first tour of the Capitol’s monuments, would not be accessible in its original form without the Library of Congress’ efforts. When the project began, there were six different versions of the film, each with its own running time from 119 to 130 minutes. Research from paper documents pointed to 119 or 120 minutes as being the version most likely approved by releasing studio Colombia Pictures. That variance might be as simple as including (or not counting) the minute when the curtain on the theatre screen was drawn. An unknown someone had done restoration work on the film in 1959 — probably for a 20th anniversary re-release — but three minutes of critical shots leading up to the montage had been replaced on the original negative by a dupe negative blow-up made from a 16mm print. The contrast of jumping from 35mm to the poor image of 16 was a shock even to the untrained public eye. The solution was to make a fine grain master from the original negative, then strike a dupe from that fine grain and use parts of each negative for the restored picture.

Restoring history is always hard work. If history does belong to the victors, then film history — and the cultural history embodied in movies — rests with those films that survive and with those who make the choices about what to preserve, restore and make accessible. Now readers have The Past Is a Moving Picture to better understand those films and those choices.

November 1, 2014 0 comments

Book Reviews

Learn the Craft, But Don’t Overlook the Art

by uncredited July 1, 2014

written by uncredited 5 minutes read

by David Tarleton

For the novice editor, learning all  the basic principles of the craft  side of cutting and the conventions of  editing terminology can be a challenge.  Filmmakers employ a shared visual  grammar, and many editors follow  common editing rules and working  practices. That’s where Grammar of the Edit, Third Edition, by Christopher  J. Bowen and Roy Thompson, comes  in. The book is an update of the 2009  second edition, which was Bowen’s  rewrite of the 1993 editing text by the  late Thompson. This book for beginning  editors is an overview and introduction to basic concepts and rules of editing, and  presents a number of what the authors consider to be best working practices.

The book contains a very useful overview of shots, types of transitions, and a craft-and technical-based exploration of ways  to solve editing problems, including using cut aways, matching action and knowing when to use a close-up. For a novice editor, these concepts are foundational. The book is helpful for situations where an editor has a cut that doesn’t quite work, and is trying to figure out how to solve it technically. The book isn’t about software use or the hands-on side of the work at all. It also isn’t a book on storytelling, aesthetics or art. It’s about the building blocks of  film grammar. It also offers technical considerations on how to determine whether a shot or cut works, like focus and matching eye lines.

There are a number of helpful additions to this new edition. Focal Press has set up a website with companion videos, exercises, projects and quizzes. You can find it at www.focalpress.com/ cw/bowen.This third edition also has expansions and updates throughout, along with new photos and drawings to illustrate the ideas in the book, and quizzes at the end of each chapter.

The book’s structure is mostly a reworking of Thompson’s original text. I’ll acknowledge that I’m not a huge fan of the original edition, principally because of the tone. Thompson’s original book lists lots of rules, without adequately explaining the underlying principles behind why editors should follow those rules. In the  first edition, he actually wrote, “Sometimes the reason why the practice exists is not clear, especially to a beginner. In such case ‘blind acceptance’ might be required.” This is simply an appeal to authority and means that the novice editor is mindlessly following instructions rather than being a creative artist who actually understands the medium. A lot of times, if a filmmaker really understands the inherent ideas behind things like, for example, eye trace and what draws the eye, then a half-dozen of the specific rules laid out in these books become obvious, because they are derived from underlying principles.

Editing is the invisible art, and as an art form, the artist must think and feel deeply about what he or she is creating.

Luckily for us, in revising the book, Bowen explains many of the rules and practices better than Thompson originally did. You can still see the DNA of the original book in there, but it has been updated and made more useful as a contemporary introductory editing text. Some of the principles seem universal and useful for all editors, like understanding shot sizes or not crossing the line. But, particularly in Chapter Six, “Working Practices,” the list of priorities for editors feels a bit arbitrary and focused mainly on technical imperfections. While the tips are useful, the book’s focus drifts away from the things that are actually important for narrative editors — how to tell a story, how to engage an audience emotionally and how to connect the audience to characters.

While the book includes rare sentences like “Edit for the emotion, and you will win over your audience” (p. 220), it never explores how to do this; rather, it spends most of the book listing specific continuity-type errors not to make.

One challenge of a book with such a narrow focus is that it can be easy for a novice reading it to get caught up in following these basic grammatical rules, and lose sight of the big picture. It really is a grammar book, much like a book for budding novelists that focuses on spelling and sentence construction. I have a concern that after reading this, beginning editors might see themselves as technicians who merely need to follow this cookbook, rather than as storytelling artists who need to understand what they are trying to communicate, and how to connect to the audience emotionally.

It’s not that Grammar of the Edit is wrong. It is just incomplete. The information contained in it is quite useful, but  it stands in contrast to a book like Walter Murch’s In The Blink of an Eye. According to Bowen and Thompson, the most important considerations in making a good cut are information, motivation, shot composition, camera angle, continuity and sound. For Murch, the most important considerations are emotion and story. The focus of the book privileges technical considerations above storytelling and artistic ones.

Roy Thompson’s original book lists lots of rules, without adequately explaining the underlying principles behind why editors should follow those rules.

Editing is the invisible art, and as an art form, the artist must think and feel deeply about what he or she is creating, and not just mechanically follow a set of rules. My recommendation would be for a new editor to read this book in parallel with something like Murch’s in order to understand the centrality of emotion and story when evaluating a cut. The risk is that novice editors might learn only from Grammar of the Edit, put all of their attention and focus on making technically perfect edits, and make cuts that leave audiences feeling emotionally unaffected.

This edition is definitely an improvement on past editions. I do, however, have reservations about its narrowness  of focus. Perhaps future editions could contextualize the role of grammar within the art of editing more, to help new editors clearly understand their priorities.

July 1, 2014 0 comments

Book Reviews

The Magic of Cinema Sound

by Betsy McLane May 1, 2014

written by Betsy McLane 5 minutes read

by Betsy A. McLane

There is something of the occult in the job of creating sound for film. It is an art as well as a craft, and when superbly executed, sound design can make a film soar. As author Kevin Donnelly points out in the beginning of this book, occult need not refer to satanic or mystical; it also means unapparent or hidden from view.

With this definition in mind, it is easy to understand how sound in films can be considered occult. Sound is invisible. Movie audiences do not usually think about how the sounds that they hear are achieved. Sometimes audiences know that they have been surprised or frightened by loudness or effects and may notice when music draws attention to itself, but generally the public questions what they are hearing only when the sound is mistakenly out of sync with the image. The many people who create sound, especially those who edit, are likewise invisible to the public — even as their contributions are central to making onscreen worlds. They too are part of the occult magic of cinema.

If the above description seems too artsy or abstract, Occult Aesthetics is not for your bookshelf. If you like the idea of exploring the sometimes harmonious, sometimes problematic relationship between sound and image from a non-technical, historical perspective, then this book — with its murderous cover image from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — is a provocative addition to your library. Donnelly is an academic based at the University of Southampton in England. He is the author of three other books about sound and film: British Film Music and Film Musicals (2007), Film and Television Music: The Spectre of Sound (2008) and Pop Music in British Cinema: A Chronicle (2008). Knowing this and that the publisher is Oxford University Press, you might expect Occult Aesthetics to be dry and impenetrable. It is quite the opposite.

Donnelly is obsessed with analyzing the way that sound and image play with and off each other. His premise is that when merged onscreen, audio and visuals build a special synergy in human perception, and that this effect is lost when one becomes aware of its existence and how it is made. This fairly simple idea — “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” — is here treated with such concentration and detail that it becomes fresh.

Occult Aesthetics is based in theory and, through extensive use of footnotes, offers a good overview of previous discussions of the philosophy of sound and music. Donnelly draws upon writings of silent film genius Sergei Eisenstein as well as Pierre Schaeffer and his protégé Michel Chion, both French avant-garde composers and writers about sound. (Walter Murch provided the introduction to the English translation of Chion’s book Audio Vision: Sound Onscreen, 1994).

Sound is invisible. Movie audiences do not usually think about how the sounds that they hear are achieved.

Like these writers, Donnelly does not rely  solely on speculation or  imagination to make his  points. He states in the  preface, “As psychological  underpinnings and inspiration, this study  uses scientific, functional,  neurological and  psychophysical ideas about  human beings and sound to  develop its argument about  the perceptual primacy of  cinema’s dynamic interplay  across synchronized and  unsynchronized sections of  film.” This sentence is typical of the author’s style, and although  it may initially seem dense, Donnelly goes on to explain what he means by noting the learned, Pavlovian expectations of audiences: “For example, the sound of wood blocks clashing together is the accepted conventional sound of someone being punched or kicked in an action film, whereas the actual act of doing this involves no such sound.” In another example, he applies scientific data such as the fact that differences in synchronization of less than 20 milliseconds do not register in the human brain.

The chapter titled “Isomorphic Cadences” is specialized  and rather obtuse, unless one is a fan of experimental cinema. More accessible is “Visual Sound Design: The Sonic Continuum.” This looks at technical and aesthetic developments as Donnelly develops his historical approach. He cites an article that explains how, in William Friedken’s The Exorcist (1973), the scary sound from the attic, the source of which is never revealed, was achieved by mixing sounds of guinea pigs running on a sandpapered board, a band saw flying through the air and scratching fingernails. The author then compares this to the original score by Edmund Meissel for Battleship Potemkin (1925) in its use of music combined with noises to point out that noise/music/sound experimentation has been a part of film at least since the 1920s.

Innovative sound in a train station scene in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932) is illustrated with a series  of frame enlargements. These make clear how innovative this  film was, at a time when many were struggling to adjust to sound  pictures, in its contrast of lateral movement within the frame,  close-ups of its stars and the tolling of the station bell. A similar  close analysis of the use of the seemingly innocent jingle of an ice cream truck to portend death in John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) explains one of the reasons why this film is so haunting.

With examples such as these and many others, Donnelly creates a convincing argument for his theories in Occult Aesthetics.

May 1, 2014 0 comments

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