The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

October. 12,2004      
Rating:
7.7
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Trailer Synopsis Cast

Documentary about the art of film editing. Clips are shown from many groundbreaking films with innovative editing styles.

Martin Scorsese as  Self
Quentin Tarantino as  Self
Jodie Foster as  Self
Steven Spielberg as  Self
James Cameron as  Self
Sean Penn as  Self
Wes Craven as  Self
George Lucas as  Self
Paul Verhoeven as  Self
Kathy Bates as  Narrator (voice)

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Reviews

SnoReptilePlenty
2004/10/12

Memorable, crazy movie

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Listonixio
2004/10/13

Fresh and Exciting

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Aubrey Hackett
2004/10/14

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

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Ezmae Chang
2004/10/15

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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Woodyanders
2004/10/16

This excellent, engrossing and extremely illuminating documentary covers the evolution of the crucial craft of film editing from the silent era to the modern age. Editors initially started out as key, but anonymous contributors to motion pictures who in the 40's and 50's had to staunchly adhere to certain strict guidelines. D.W. Griffith played a substantial part in developing editing as a significant component of movies. The Russian filmmakers of the 20's and the French New Wave directors of the 50's further revolutionized editing by willfully breaking certain established rules. Many different aspects of film editing are extensively covered in fascinating detail: montage, juxtaposition, jump cuts, creating a rhythm, the challenge of cutting chase sequences, the importance of sound, the powerful fusion of sound and image, fragmenting time and space, the difficulty of cutting sex scenes, and the contemporary style of rapid-fire fast cutting. Moreover, we learn that the editor is the most objective person to work on a movie, plays a major role in telling the story, and often works very closely with the director in the post-production process. Such famous directors as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, and James Cameron discus the necessity of editors in the whole film-making process. Editors Sally Menke (who was specifically hired by Tarantino to cut "Reservoir Dogs" because he thought a female editor would be more nurturing), Dede Allen, Mark Goldblatt, Zach Staenberg, Craig McKay, Michael Tronick, Donn Cambenn, Alan Heim, and especially Walter Murch all relate great stories about editing various pictures. Kevin Tent in particular has a choice anecdote about how he paid director Alexander Payne 75 dollars to cut a specific sequence in "Election" a certain way that wound up being used in the finished feature. George Lucas hits the nail right on the head when he describes editing as "visual poetry." Kathy Bates provides the perfectly sober and respectful narration. Essential viewing.

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T Y
2004/10/17

This documentary is seriously odd (More on that below). It's a study of the power of film-editing. None of the information these subjects share is offensive, in fact it's all pretty interesting. Some terrific examples include the dumping of two entire reels from the climax of Lenny with one edit. Snipping five short vignettes from a longer Martin Sheen improvisation in Apocalypse Now. And a love scene assembled very cleverly in Out of Sight (Never heard of it myself) via moving the audio track around, short frame delays and non-linear time sequencing. A personal problem I have with this, is that director Wendy Apple shows you the inventor of a basic editing technique; and then (nine times out of ten) cuts to some loud, superficial action/effects movie that uses it. More than a few times, a technique that would be much better highlighted in a well-chosen clip where the edit can be studied almost in isolation, is instead buried under explosions, green screen razzle-dazzle, car-chases and gratuitous knife.gun.martial arts battles, where a fraction of the impact can be credited to the edit.The larger problem is that this approach continually results in Eisentein, Reifenstahl, Griffith clips sitting in close proximity to, and introducing things like Terminator 2, Scream, Gladiator, Titanic, Top Gun, The Matrix, Star Wars. !??! Equating originators who believed in what they were doing to the depths of their soul (and devised these techniques themselves), with modern filmmakers who frequently just want to increase viewer stimulation to increase their payday with a tried and true technique, is obtuse if not completely grotesque. Jumping from the ingenuity of a filmmaker devising an editing trick to rally people to a political viewpoint, to popcorn movies about surface stimulation and box office receipts is so reductivist as to be offensive. Which is I suppose a back-handed tribute to the meaning that editing can cause. This may be appropriate in one case; as when WW2 propaganda films are used to introduce Starship Troopers, because it's director (Verhoeven) is knowingly riffing on propaganda. But I was not watching this thinking "Thank God Eisenstein invented X so that it could be used in Basic Instinct." Instead, I frequently had a pained expression on my face. One can imagine this dilemma arose out of the need to cut to living, breathing editors who pick up the story, but it imposes some real arrogance on those involved. It almost never chooses to cut to calm, modern art films by thoughtful directors where the spare use of gimmickry allows you to appreciate what the editing tool actually does. In doing so it jumps almost completely over the middle years (60s-70s) where an astonishing burst of rebellion and experimentation occurred, from a second wave of originators. Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Kubrick, Resnais, Truffaut, Polanski..? All missing, to make room for people like Joe Dante and James Cameron.

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donf
2004/10/18

This is a remarkable documentary, informative, interesting and successful in clarifying what is, for many, something of a mysterious process. The contributions to film making of directors, actors, designers, cinematographers and sound recordists is self evident, but the film editor's role has seldom been understood nor its importance fully recognised. This documentary is the first to give directors and editors an opportunity to explain exactly what goes on in the editing room and they have done it superbly. What a pity then, that references to the history of film editing woven into this story are cursory, inadequate and in some instances completely wrong. Martin Scorsese refers to Edwin Porters' 1902 film, Life of an American Fireman, as the very first film to be edited using crosscutting as a structuring device, and the commentary supports this view, despite convincing evidence to the contrary that was discovered in 1978. In fact the earliest discovered examples of this practise date from 1906. Equally mistaken is the assertion, made several times in this prize-winning documentary, that D.W.Griffith originated the important editing practise of action matching. In fact there is clear evidence of action matching in a British film made as early as 1903 and Griffith's first film was not made until 1908. There is considerable evidence that Griffith considered action matching to be of very little importance, and when used in his films it is often ill judged and clumsy. All this is curious in a documentary that seeks to explain the history and practise of film editing. One might have expected research on the topic to be as well informed as the comments made by most of the contributors, particularly given that the scriptwriter is Professor Mark Jonathan Harris of the School of Cinema and Television, University of Southern California.

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Julio Luzardo
2004/10/19

I'm a film director/editor from Colombia with more than 45 years in the business and this film is absolutely the best essay on film editing that I've had the good luck of seeing. The examples are great, the explanations on the "unseen" or "hidden art" of editing are perfect, the pacing is just right, etc., etc. The only thing I felt was that it was too short, but then I'm biased on the subject. This should be a MUST SEE FILM for everybody starting out in the business (and not just those who want to be editors).This is a solid "10" for me and I can't understand how anybody would consider it less, except for those mediocre joes who just can't cut it...

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