Principles of Film Editing

Pudovkin

February 16, 1893 – June 20, 1953.

His masterpieces are often contrasted with those of contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of masses. Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals.

After WW1, he gave up his profesion and joined cinema, he began as a screenwriter, actor an art director an also an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov.

After a few attempts of advertising cinema, he directed in 1962 which was considered as one of the masterpieces of silent movies: Mother. He developed several montage theories which would then make him famous.

His first feature was followed by The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm over Asia.

In 1928, due to the advent of sound film, Pudovkin; Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov signed the Manifest of Sound, which debates the possibilities of sound and always understood as a compliment to the image.

After an interruption of health concerns, Pudovkin returned in 1938 with the films Victory (1938); Minin and Pozharsky (1939) and Suvorov (1941).

At the end of WW2, under criticism  he returned to his earlier work. In 1951, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, which is last work was the Return of Vasili Bortnikov.

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Murch

 12 July, 1943.

While he was editing directly on a film, he noticed the crude splicing used for the daily rough-cuts. He invented a modification which concealed the splice by using narrow but strong adhevise strips of special polyester-silicone tape. He named this invention “N-vis-o”

He started editing and mixing sound with Francis For Coppola’s The Rain People (1969).He also mixed the sound for Coppola’s The Godfather Part 2 which was then released in 1974. Film Clip Example

Unlike other film editors, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to “conducting brain surgery, and short order cooking”, since all conductors, surgeons and cook stand when they work. In contrast, when he writes, he writes laying down. His explanation for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creation process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sitting or standing to separate his editing and creative mindset.

In the book he wrote, The Blink of an Eye, he discusses his experiences and gives advise to aspiring editors. H also explains the Rule of Six which lays out the criteria that Murch believes should be he top list of an editor when they are working.  The list is as follows:

1.       Emotion

2.       Story

3.       Rhythm

4.       Eye-Trace

5.       Two-dimensional plane of Screen

6.       Two-dimensional space of action

The Rule of Six Lecture

Murch believes that eye-trace is important because it directs the audience’s attention to what’s important in the scene, it emphasizes what you really want the audience to pay attention to/ Murch refers to planarity in a two-dimensional plane of screen. He emphasizes however with the rule number 6 that you should make obvious the relationship between the objects within the three dimensions of the action.

The last 3 rules focus more on continuity which are important, Murch says “it’s definitely possible to fulfil all 6 rules…if you prioritize continuity, the most important aspects of your cut, emotion and story will be out the window, and you’ll be unsuccessful

Edward Dmytryk

 

Dmytryk was a film director among the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film proffesionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress furing the McCarthy-era “red scare”. He wrote several books on filmmaking such as On Film Editing where Dmytryk stipulates seven “rules of cutting” that any editor who wants to be good should follow1.       Never make a cut without a positive reason

2.       When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short

3.       Whenever possible, cut in “movement”

4.       The “fresh” is preferable to the “stale”

5.       All scenes should begin and end with continuing action

6.       Cut for proper values rather than proper “matches”

7.       Substance first – then form.

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