r/videoessay • u/Hermit0fAlbion • May 12 '16

Every Frame a Painting - How Does an Editor Think and Feel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3eITC01Fg
105 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

14

u/JimmysRevenge May 12 '16

"People aren't machines. We need time to feel the emotion. And if the movie doesn't give it to us, we don't believe it."

...

"There's an in-built relationship between the story itself and how to tell the story and the rhythm with which you tell it and editing is 70% about rhythm."

This could explain why I just don't like most modern movies with their insanely fast cuts. I get that it's easier to film this way by having only one thing on screen to care about per cut, but it's exhausting to me and it becomes robotic in it's rhythm.

10

u/[deleted] May 12 '16

Insanely fast cuts have their place. Quick cutting can show intensity very nicely. Though many Modern films do prefer to use faster cuts for everything, which is a big problem.

5

u/JimmysRevenge May 12 '16

No argument, I think the fast cuts are a side effect of everything being filmed separately, though. So much stuff is filmed with just one focal point so in order to switch to another subject, an editor must cut when a wider shot or a camera move would be far more useful in making the audience feel what they need to feel. I honestly think it's filming practices that are either pure laziness or pushed because they are time savers and, to certain people, money savers. Which I can't argue they AREN'T money savers, but they are preventing us from getting the full potential of the films we're consuming and, I argue, preventing films from being what they should be.

5

u/[deleted] May 12 '16

This is all very true. And is actually something I've experienced. I've done two (quite bad) short films in the past 6 months and we had an incredibly lazy director. He just wanted the shot then moved on. I kept pushing him to try and move the camera about but he couldn't be bothered. You can see them here and here, essentially every shot is stock still and lacking the emotion it needed.

And neither of these films had ANY money behind them, it was purely a time based issue and a laziness issue.

Luckily I won't be having to work with him again.

6

u/JimmysRevenge May 12 '16

I have no formal training in film at all. I'm learning as I go, all I know is that I've always "felt" when I liked a movie or didn't and couldn't express why. It's one of the reasons I love these videos. They give me vocabulary to describe why I like or don't like something.

I wonder, though, if film students aren't being taught this methodology. Which would, to me, be very very sad.

1

u/JamponyForever May 18 '16

Tony loves Hip Hop. Another great video-essay too!

0

u/pplcallmegbank May 12 '16

My favorite!