Archive for November, 2010
As the footage accumulates, the editor assembles it into a rough cut—the shots
loosely strung in sequence, without sound effects or music. Rough cuts tend to run long. The rough cut for Apocalypse Now ran seven and a half hours. From the rough cut, the editor, in consultation with the director, builds toward a fine cut or final cut. The unused shots constitute the outtakes. While the final cut is being prepared, a second unit may be shooting inserts, footage to fill in at certain places. These are typically long shots of cities or airports or close-ups of objects. At this point, titles are prepared and further laboratory work or special-effects work may be done. Until the mid-1980s, editors cut and spliced the work print, footage printed from the camera negative. In trying out their options, editors were obliged to rearrange the shots physically. Now virtually all commercial films are edited electronically. The dailies are transferred first to tape or disc, then to a hard drive. The editor enters notes on each take directly into a computer database. Such electronic editing systems, usually known as nonlinear systems, permit random access to the entire store of footage. The editor can call up any shot, paste it alongside any other shots, trim it, or junk it. Some systems allow special effects and music to be tried out as well. Although non-linear systems have greatly speeded up the process of cutting, the editor usually asks for a work print of key scenes in order to check for color, details, and pacing.
Once the shots are arranged in something approaching final form, the sound ed-
itor takes charge of building up the sound track. The director, the composer, the picture editor, and the sound editor view the film and agree on where music and effects will be placed, a process known as spotting. The sound editor may have a staff whose members specialize in mixing dialogue, music, or sound effects.
Surprisingly little of the sound recorded during filming winds up in the finished
movie. Often half or more of the dialogue is rerecorded in postproduction, using a process known as automated dialogue replacement (ADR). ADR usually yields bet-
ter quality than location sound. With the on-set recording serving as a guide track, the sound editor records actors in the studio speaking their lines (called dubbing or looping). Nonsynchronized dialogue such as the babble of a crowd (known in Hollywood as “walla”) is added by ADR as well.
Filmmakers call the assembly phase postproduction. (If something goes wrong,
someone may promise to “fix it in post.”) Yet this phase does not begin after the
shooting is finished. Rather, postproduction staff members work behind the scenes
throughout shooting. Before the shooting begins, the director or producer probably hires an editor (also known as the supervising editor). This person catalogues and assembles the takes produced during shooting. The editor also works with the director to make creative decisions about how the footage can best be cut together. Because each shot usually exists in several takes, because the film is shot out of story order, and because the master-shot/coverage approach yields so much footage, the editor’s job can be a huge one. A 100-minute feature, which amounts to about 9000 feet of 35mm film, may have been carved out of 500,000 feet of film. For this reason, postproduction on major Hollywood pictures often takes up to seven months. Sometimes several editors and assistants will be brought in. Typically, the editor receives the processed footage from the laboratory as quickly as possible. This footage is known as the dailies or the rushes. The editor inspects the dailies, leaving it to the assistant editor to synchronize image and sound and to sort the takes by scene. The editor meets with the director to examine the dailies, or if the production is filming far away, the editor informs the director of how the footage looks. Since retaking shots is costly and troublesome, constant checking of the dailies is important for spotting any problems with focus, exposure, framing, or other visual factors. From the dailies, the director selects the best takes and the editor records the choices. To save money, dailies are often shown to the producer and director on video, but since video can conceal defects in the original footage, editors check the original shots before cutting the film.
productions coordinated effort, involving perhaps hundreds of workers, results in
many thousands of feet of exposed film and recorded sound-on-tape. For every shot
called for in the script or storyboard, the director usually makes several takes, or versions. For instance, if the finished film requires one shot of an actor saying a line, the director may make several takes of that speech, each time asking the actor to vary the delivery. Not all takes are printed, and only one of those becomes the shot included in the finished film. Extra footage can be used in coming-attractions trailers and electronic press kits.
Because scenes seldom are filmed in story order, the director and crew must have some way of labeling each take. As soon as the camera starts, one of the cinematographer’s staff holds up a slate before the lens. On the slate is written the production, scene, shot, and take. A hinged arm at the top, the clapboard, makes a sharp smack that allows the recordist to synchronize the sound track with the footage in the assembly phase . Thus every take is identified for future reference. There are also electronic slates that keep track of each take automatically and provide digital readouts.
In filming a scene, most directors and technicians follow an organized procedure. While crews set up the lighting and test the sound recording, the director rehearses the actors and instructs the cinematographer. The director then supervises the filming of a master shot. The master shot typically records the entire action and dialogue of the scene. There may be several takes of the master shot. Then portions of the scene are restaged and shot in closer views or from different angles. These shots are called coverage, and each one may require many takes. Today most directors shoot a great deal of coverage, often by using two or more cameras filming at the same time. The script supervisor checks to ensure that details are consistent within all these shots.
For most of film history, scenes were filmed with a single camera, which was moved to different points for different setups. More recently, under pressure to finish principal photography as fast as possible, the director and the camera unit might use two or more cameras. Action scenes are often shot from several angles simultaneously because chases, crashes, and explosions are difficult to repeat for retakes. The battle scenes in Gladiator were filmed by 7 cameras, while 13 cameras were used for stunts in XXX. For dialogue scenes, a common tactic is to film with an A camera and a B camera, an arrangement that can capture two actors in alternating shots. The lower cost of digital video cameras has allowed some directors to experiment with shooting conversations from many angles at once, hoping to capture unexpected spontaneity in the performance. Some scenes in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark employed 100 digital cameras. When special effects are to be included, the shooting phase must carefully plan for them. In many cases, actors will be filmed against blue or green backgrounds so that their figures may be inserted into computer-created settings. Or the director may film performers with the understanding that other material will be composited into the frame.
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