I think I have a copy in my office. Publishers send me books all the time--and I can order just about any text, so I pick up other texts for the hell of it.

I use Bordwell and Thompson's Film Art, which is sophisticated, perhaps too sophisticated for my students, but the bad students don't read the book anyway.

Here's a site that has the basic concepts illustrated with both stills and clips:

http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/

I'm not sure how you illustrate concepts without showing clips. Seems like a weird restriction. How the hell would anyone discuss film sound--or editing and rhythm for that matter? "Okay, class, let's imagine the sound in this frame enlargment."

Hey JC -

Have you seen this documentary on NFI - The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing? Might be good to show (at least parts of) to a class...

I agree that editing is what makes the film complete, but hearing it from James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino is a disaster. Sure, they are better for this conversation than Peter Jackson, but I would much rather hear it from Michael Bay, tbh.

WTF? Michael Bay? Boy, you got some 'splainin to do.

Hobby,

I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it. I think it comes with the special edition of Bullitt.

fu

Have you seen that other documentary they mention in the review - Visions of Light? I want to watch that one too...I'm going to try to buy that book you use for your class if I can find a cheap copy at a used bookstore.

John - I assign certain films for the students to watch each week, then we discuss them. This is like a remedial film class, so it's really these students first introduction to the idea that film is art and can be analyzed.

Half the class didn't believe me when I explained that the actors do not, in fact, make up their dialog while shooting, and that a film is shot out of sequence. :-/

thanks for that link, I'm going to use it!

Visions of Light is amazing... I want check out that editing film

I want to see if Kathy Bates gets naked. Dominic, you should probably get all your students to do a day of extra work, but then again, that may cause film schools to shut down.

wtf? The ability to shoot the hell out of a scene, to make a good-looking movie, is directly reliant on editing. You have to see each cut in your head before you set up the shot. You picked a filmmaker with perhaps the most notorious cinematic mind in popular filmmaking as an example of someone with no authority on editing. QT shoots to edit like nobody's business.

And then Michael Bay? double-wtf. His theory on editing/filmmaking is: shoot a thousand angles and make a million fast cuts.

I re-watch this every three months or so. It's good for inspiration, although I'm sure it's far more interesting to editors. It's available on Netflix Instant Watch if you're into that technology thing.

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch is the definitive book on film editing. He's a fascinating guy with a deep-rooted thinking process. It's exciting to listen to his theories on cinema, accumulated from 35 years experience, presented so well. Based on reactions from some of my non-filmmaker friends, it's equally as interesting to people who have never made a cut in their life. It's very personable and you get a good sense of what kind of man Murch is and his philosophy of the world -- which contains its own unique sort of wisdom. There are also fun little tidbits about his work on some of the more famous films in cinematic history. For example, did you know when he cut Apocalypse Now they averaged only 1.5 cuts per day? Also, it's a quick read..under 200 pages I believe.

EDIT: Oh, I see...NFI = Netflix Instant Watch....

Lies.

The only director who uses one shot is Clint Eastwood. Tarantino has hoghly elaborate set ups and needs to take many shots with a stationary camera. Micheal Bay would have to be highly difficult to edit because his camera is constantly moving. Sorry to say it, but it takes far more thought to edit constant movement without the scenes being too jolting, and he is the master of that, since most people don't seem to notice without me pointing it out to them.

Quick cutting is very easy. All the more so when you don't really care where the lens lands, as is typical today, when shaky cams give you odd split second shots of elbows and half a head and a light washing out the frame around some random featureless silhouette. Handling longer scenes while still remaining dramatically interesting takes far more skill. Put masters of the long shot like a Welles or a Wyler or a Renoir or even a Scorcese or Hitchcock against today's quick cutter and it's obvious who has put more thought and value into a frame.

Oh. Absolutely. Editing of old is never going to be revived. There is some instances, like Zhang Yimou (Hero), and heck even John Woo was very thoughtful in his artistry. Constant cutting gives the appearance of the movie going quicker. Scorcese never cuts his own film, but has always used the same editor, and Hitchkock shot in a way that his movies ~couldn't~ be edited. I think that is the big difference. Back in the older days, a director was a director, and actor was an actor, and an editor was an editor. A director editing is akin to an artist doing graphic design. Yes, they are in a similar medium, but an expert at one is rarely an expert at the other. If I am going to watch editing analysis, sure, keep Kathy Bates narrating, but give me a ****ing editor to talk about it. Just because Leonardo Di'Caprio is a movie star, it doesn't mean he should talk about directing a film. That's why I tossed in Michael Bay out of sheer sarcasm. Then I had to ay Devil's advocate for a post.

Hitchcock said he never began a movie without every shot already being framed in his mind's eye. Not much improv on his sets.

There are far more editors who could cut Michael Bay with the same effect than there are who can cut the Coen bros (who edit their own films). Quick cutting is so, so easy -- I can't stress this enough. The only thing remotely challenging about it is that it takes more shots to complete a scene. In movies there is something called a "dump truck director". This is someone who shoots massive amounts of coverage -- often with multiple cameras -- with the intention of "figuring it out in the editing room". This is a man who should be producing movies, at best, not directing them. The Coen bros, on the other hand, control every frame from the inception of the project. To achieve this they must first think like editors.

Hitchcock was so meticulous in his pre-production that legend has it he slept through the shooting of the shower scene in Psycho. He already told everyone exactly what to do...why stay awake for it?

Scorcese has used the same editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, since 1967. In 1981, she won the Academy Award for editing Raging Bull. She is notorious for crediting this award to Martin Scorcese, to the point where she claimed she felt awkward accepting it. She may have been the editor, but it was his vision of those cuts in the first place that made them so successful.

This is not true. If you're a competent film director, you will likely make a competent editor. The reverse is seldom true though.

Thinking of the list of directors who edit their own, I vehemently disagree. Editing is more than chopping film. It is also being able to drive into the heart of the story and take away the excess, and all too often, the story is far too close to the director to have a discerning eye. Film-making at it's best is a collaborative medium. As great evidence of people that ought to keep their paws off the editing machine, I present Peter Jackson, Michael Mann, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, George Lucas, and David Rodriquez. I am not saying these directors make terrible movies per se, but they are way too guilty of too much story masturbation, and it is plainly obvious that the concept of "director's cut" should be held to the realm of dvd extras, and not on the big screen.

Dave, I have to disagree with you about some of your directors...Jackson is a wonderful director and knows how to tell a short, concise story - just look at Heavenly Creatures. Lord of the Rings demanded epic story-telling...when you have $300 million to tell that story, you tell it! Granted, King Kong was a bit long.

Michael Mann;s films are amazingly edited and usually short. Heck, I thought Last of the Mohicans could have used a longer cut, IMO...Miami Vice is a hell of an action film and there's not an ounce of fat on it.

Tarantino's films are always dialog driven...but are still incredibly cinematic...never once have I come out of one of his films thinking they were too long.

There are five jobs on the set that are equally important, IMO: director, writer, actor, cinematographer and editor. All five are integral to the creative and artistic vision of a film. Look at the famous story of the editor for Annie Hall being responsible for the cut of the film we see - Woody Allen credits him with the success of movie.

Action directors like Michael Bay are very good at what they do...sure, he's useless when you're talking about story, but he's very technical capable. But if you think he's planning anything beyond set beyond a basic action sequence, you're crazy. He's the epitome of the "shoot the **** out it and create the sequence in the editing bay" kind of director. There are sometime upwards of FOURTEEN cameras rolling on certain shots. That's why his films are edited so ridiculously. You'd have to be an idiot not to be able to edit a scene with that much coverage.

Back to Hitchcock, he famously only shot what he wanted so the studio only had one choice on how to cut a film - they way he intended. THAT'S a director.

Oddly, you sort of argued for my point. I was saying that a director should not cut his own work and over-editing is bad as well. Speaking of Miami Vice, Mann pushed back the release date several times because he couldn't get the editing right, so essentially you called him a moron for nit figuring it out without massive struggle. I wouldn't call Vice a very good movie, considering how hard the audience laughed at the scene where the villain is killed. Yeah, LOTR had tons of fat in it.

lol...a director's not an idiot because he wants to make the best movie he can...but i guess we're arguing the same thing

Peter Jackson: What Dom said.

Michael Mann: Lean, mean action machine (although personally I'm not a big fan of his).

James Cameron: Only directed and edited the top grossing movie of all time -- probably twice now.

Quentin Tarantino: This man can put his paws on whatever movie-making machine he wants.

George Lucas: The scope of the Star Wars prequels was too big for him. In my opinion, he's a small film director. As crazy as it sounds now, A New Hope was a small film. He came into his own directing outside of the Studio system, but by the time Episode I came around, he was the studio. That hilarious youtube documentary that was floating around the Lounge before summed it up best in the last ten minutes.

Robert Rodriguez: He'll always exist in Tarrantino's shadow, but the man understands movie-making.

The only two directors on your list who actually edit their own films are James Cameron and (I think you mean) Robert Rodriguez. It's a little confusing what we're really arguing here, but your main point seems to be that director's shouldn't cut their own films. There's an old adage in movie-making -- There are three times to get the story right: when you write it, when you shoot it and when you edit it. The best editors are great storytellers. So are the best directors. If a director really understands how to tell a story on screen (and a surprisingly high number of directors don't...however every single one on your list certainly does) that skill will transition directly into the editing room. After all, on set every time you set up a new shot, you're making a cut.

As far as the story being to close, I hear this argument made often, but does that mean there should be no writer-directors either? Why is it an advantage for a director if he wrote the script, but a disadvantage for an editor if he directed the movie? I never understood this concept. Personally, I've worked in all three positions. I've written, directed and edited for other people and done all three for my own films. I don't think my cut on my own film(s) would have been different if I were cutting them for another director, and it's impossible for me to know if another editor would have done something better. I don't think I've ever been guilty of leaving something in that doesn't work because it was so expensive or we had such a good time shooting it. Or that I've let a scene or shot linger longer than it should because of some line of dialogue or lighting effect I loved. I take an editor's eye (which means to me: Just Tell The Story) to everything I cut, no matter if I was directing the shot or not.

I'm not adverse to forming a creative partnership with an editor down the road (perhaps the most difficult marriage in all of filmmaking), but I can't understand how a director would be unable or unwilling to edit their own film. Editing is where the film is made -- after working with it for so long, and taking it so far, how could you put that responsibility into the hands of another person? Most of what I've learned about directing (and there's still much to learn), I learned through editing. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest difference in the two skill-sets is that a director also needs people skills. As storytellers though, they're one in the same.

...Sorry, this is a very long post for the NC thread...got carried away.