Making a Great Film that Connects with Audiences Part IV: “How do I edit my film?”

Introduction

In Part I to III, you developed a story for your film, planned your shoot of your film and then you shot the film. You're almost there! Now, you need to edit it.

But before we get to editing, I want to introduce you to Walter Murch. He edited some of the greatest films of all time including The Godfather I and II and Apocalypse Now. In addition, he has won multiple Academy awards for his work. He is widely considered one of the greatest editors of all time.

He said, “By manipulating what you hear and how you hear it – and what other things you don’t hear – you can not only help tell the story, you can help the audience get into the mind of the character.”

As an editor, these are your two main tasks: To tell the story well and to get the audience inside the character’s mind. So let’s see how we can make that happen.

We are going to look at the film “Will You?” by Erin Gould one more time to talk about editing.

And before we talk about the specific techniques, it’s important that one of the main things we need to keep in mind is what is the genre and tone of the film you’re editing. In the case of “Will You,” he was making a gentle coming of age/romance film. In his editing, Erin needed to make all of his decisions support this genre and tone.

Transitions

Erin uses only one specialty transition. He fades in at the beginning and fades out at the end. This matches the tone of the story by easing us into the narrative and then easing us out.

But the rest of the cuts in the edit are just normal cuts. It's important to remember you do NOT have to get fancy with transitions. I see a lot of students use too many of the fancy transitions and it's often distracting.

Pacing

Overall, the pacing of the cuts matches the gentle tone of the film. Erin cuts the film with a careful attention to keep it moving but not too briskly. A good example of this is in the way Erin's editing works with the music.

In the short montage of the boy walking down the hallway, we cut from the shoes walking to the hand carrying the note to the boy's face walking. The gentle guitar strumming plays under this montage and Erin has edited so that the music and the images match each other's rhythm. This synching of sound and image creates a truly immersive experience and is a highly effective to get the audience into the story and the character's state of mind.

Action and Reaction

Good editing tracks the story of the film by showing us how the character's actions impact the world and other characters. Think about each edit from one shot to another as "action and reaction."

In the opening of the film (as seen above), the boy crosses to the end of the frame and then Erin cuts to the feet walking. Here we establish the relationship from the boy moving to the walking feet. Even though we don’t see the whole movement, it’s effective because the audience does the work by filling in the blanks. This is effective editing.

Then, there is a great sequence (seen above) where we see the boy give the invitation to the dance to the girl. She holds it up and looks at it. We see the invitiation. Then, we see the boy looking at the girl to see what her reaction is. We see the girl thinking. And then, we see the boy waiting for the response. And then, she decides to go and says yes. And we see the boy’s face half smiling.

This sequence is masterful because it shows each action and reaction very precisely and lets the audience follow the story without getting confused and in addition, they can feel the boy’s emotional state as we follow the actions and reactions.

The beauty of great editing is that it clearly tells the story and clearly tracks the emotions of the characters in the story. When done well, it will cause the audience to fully immerse itself into the story.

Suspense

Another part of good editing is to build tension or suspense in a sequence. I want to draw your attention to the sequence where the girl is deciding on what to do about the invite to the dance.

Erin decides to cut back and forth between the close ups between the girl and the boy without anything obvious happening but he does so because he wants to show the characters thinking.

The girl is thinking if she should go or not.

The boy is thinking if he is going to get turned down.

This is keeping the audience in suspense and it’s a great moment because we hope the boy will get a yes but we aren’t sure, and so our hearts are racing like his.

You can imagine a bad version of this scene where the boy gives the invite to the girl and she says yes right away. There would be no suspense and it’s not very realsitic. People have to process events and think about them before reacting. Make sure you take this in account in your editing.

Music:

The music is simple but it’s clearly evoking the style of the piece and doesn’t distract from the narrative but enhances it.

The opening of the film has the guitar strumming in a gentle rhythm and this music helps gives us a sense of moving towards something.

Then, when we cut to his face walking towards the girl the theme slides in. It’s a gentle piano melody and it illuminates the character’s feelings of hope and romance.

This theme continues through the whole piece highlighting his feelings as he asks this girl to the dance. And finally, in the final shot of the film, the music has a nice ending moment that perfectly coincides with the boys celebration of his “victory.”

If you missed my last blog post re: editing, click here.

Final Words

So that's it. You're done. Congratulations!

I hope you enjoyed this blog series and learned a lot. Next time, we’re going to go into the exciting world of acting with dialogue!