Editing fascinates me. It's the last link between what I as a writer put on the page and what the viewer sees. A good editor can help a poor script and a bad editor can ruin a good script. My son is an amateur editor and some of the choices he makes surprise me. They are usually not what I would have done, and they are invariably better choices than I would have made. Perhaps people are born editors in the same way that people are born to be writers. You are what you are. This is an interesting article on Kurosawa's editing choices in the classic 'Seven Samurai'. http://nofilmschool.com/2014/04/how-to-edit-like-kurosawa-analysis-of-se...
Post-Production : Kurosawa by Tony McFadden
Other topics in Post-Production:
Check out Trending Discussions
Register / Log In
Thanx for the article (love this film)...imo, editing is everything ;-)
1 person likes this
As a writer I'm forced to agree.
Writing and editing fit hand in glove. I'm a writer, who learned to edit out of necessity. Editing footage from a one-camera TV show radically changed my thought process. I can't say I was born to either; both came naturally, and I'm still learning. Walter E. Murch's text In the Blink of an Eye is a terrific resource, for writers; really, anyone in the filmmaking sphere. As is John Alton's Painting With Light. Alton speaks heavily to writing for the camera. The younger editors and students I have worked with tend to be bolder, use more jump cuts, quick edits, etc. but there are no absolutes. Truly memorable films are like Dixieland jazz - collaborative creations among the artists, where each knows his/her instrument so well, they've earned each others' trust- and are therefore free to improvise.