Making A Story Move: The Art of Film Editing

As screenwriting continues to establish itself as a discrete discipline in academia, either in alignment with creative writing departments or film and media practice departments, there is a danger that such developments may entrench a distancing of the craft from the cinematic form itself and that such a distancing may ultimately reinforce the screenplay's propensity for dramaturgy and the dramatic, rather than the sensory and experiential of the cinematic.Closely related creative stages in telling cinematic stories include directing and editing and this article seeks to argue, with reference to personal screen practice, that screenwriting, directing and editing are, in fact, three variations of the same thing. The article proposes the notion of the Total Filmmaker who embraces all three aspects of the cinematic storyteller.If the ultimate aim is to create a narrative that fully utilises the unique properties of the cinematic form in telling a story, rather than being dominated by the theatricality of dramatically driven classical narratives, how might one explore the relationship between screenwriting, directing and editing? Can an integrated approach to creating the cinematic blueprint change the way we think of pedagogy and screenwriting?

(Includes my Adventures in... Elitism)

Media Practice and Education

Women and New Hollywood Gender, Creative Labor, and 1970s American Cinema, 2023

Some examples of significant passages of films shaped by women editors of New Hollywood are then analyzed, briefly, to substantiate the argument that their work is creative and intellectual participation in the generation of films and to provide some detail of their specific strategies and actions in making the films on which they worked. In conclusion, I propose that an understanding of the actual work of editors allows us to see a finished film not as an expression of one man’s mind but as the distributed creative cognizing of a community of practice, in this case the community of women editors who may have, by saving various movies, actually “saved Hollywood.”

2019

A phenomenological look on film editing through Merleau-Ponty’s ideas opens up a new way of seeing what editing is and how it affects the spectator. In the classical sense, editing is looked at technically where certain aspects of its use in the film’s language are interpreted and analyzed to understand why and how something is done. In this thesis, the aim is to not dwell on understanding the why and the how. The aim is to view film editing from a different perspective that might lead to another type of thinking outside the limitations of empirical and intellectualist approaches. While the classical approach is able to satisfy most of what a spectator would need to understand, it falls short on what the spectator feels and experiences. In order to try to grasp how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach could be adapted to film editing. First we have to start from the beginning to see how editing came to be and what ideas, approaches and techniques it brought with it. As all the approaches have their own uses; we have to consider them as such and lay out what could be with Merleau-Ponty’s way and see how all the approaches compare in the end. Of course, this does not mean erasing all of film history and disregarding the classical way; it means that we can look at films from a perspective that the classical approach may not be able to see. Keywords: film history, film theory, film editing, phenomenology, perception, experience, body, spectator.

This Dossier is part of the project “Movies about the movies”: insiders’ looks at the world of cinema”. The other Dossiers in the project, which are all available at ResearchGate.net or at www.cinemafocus.eu, are: * A general introduction * The star system: the rise and fall of stars * On the set: watching films being made * The "Hollywood system": behind the scenes of the "dream factory" * "Films within films": viewers watching viewers * Directors on and off the set * "Meta-cinema": when movies reflect on themselves

Includes my essay "Cinema and the Enlightenment to come" Part 1 Published 2009.

Oko Journal of Mass Communication, 2016

Non-linear editing is a film editing technique that occurs within a computer environment. It is a technological improvement on the analog system of film production. Most recent films and television programmes in Nigeria are edited with this technology. This study examined the non-linear editing processes involved in the production of the film, Mission to Nowhere. The study adopted the survey method of research and made use of questionnaire with a sample size of one hundred and twenty professional filmmakers in Onitsha. The researchers used simple percentage method of data presentation and analysis to provide answers to the problems raised in the research questions. The work went into in-depth analytical study of the processes involved in the production of the film and gave insights on the inherent advantages and significance of non-linear editing over the linear editing system. The study work adopted the uses and gratification theory of the mass media in addressing the significance of nonlinear editing in film production. Findings revealed that non-linear editing is the prime of digital movie making; the pillar upon which the basic building blocks (shots) of films are blend to produce a thrilling storyline. The research further showed that non-linear editing contributes meaningfully to the development of the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood). The study is relevant as it contributes to sensitizing film and television programme producers on the need to adopt nonlinear production technique, especially now that the country moves towards a transition from analog to digital broadcasting. It is believed that this work as an original intellectual exercise will contribute to the world of knowledge and existing literature in the field of film production (editing) and programme appreciation.

(Includes my Cinema and the Enlightenment to come. Part 2)

(My Introduction)

Film Education Journal, 2018

The Spectator, 2018

This article investigates how editor Fredrick Y. Smith shaped industrial discourse around the craft of editing from 1942-1977. While not a well-known editor, Smith utilized his organizational service in the Society for Motion Picture Film Editors and the American Cinema Editors to advocate on behalf of the craft to the industry and to a wider public. Smith’s trade writing, occupational booklets, interviews, and personal papers highlight the discursive and practical strategies the editor employed in his promotional efforts and reveal the editor’s struggle to resist prevailing notion of film editing, or “cutting,” as a purely mechanical task. While an exceptional organizational force during this period, Smith’s own precarity as a working editor was evidenced by his negotiation of limited job contracts in television and independent production and his extensive service to the American Cinema Editor’s outreach efforts. The case of working editor Fredrick Y. Smith illustrates the sharp contrast between the ideals of the guild he promoted and the realities of the labor market at the end of the classical Hollywood period.

2018

Auteur-The literary notion of a single author that has dominated writing on film.

After viewing first chosen films and reading the correlating chapters in Kristin Thompson’s 1999 book "Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique," I gained a greater understanding of film narrative. “One of the potential sources of complexity in Hollywood films…is the medium’s ability to move about freely in time and space (Thompson 1999).” Each type of media has developed its own narrative rules and traditions, each with recognizable elements. In film, genres, conventions and effective filmmaking techniques such as the misc-en-scene influence narrative logistics that include logic, aesthetics, and movement.