Re: What's an Editor?

When a director cuts his own feature, he IS the editor. The seat doesn't just sit empty.

While I agree that many indie directors can and do cut their own features, lets face it, features are the easiest thing to cut. I'm generalizing here, sure but butting big clips together with cuts hardly makes an editor. 300 events with 12 layers in thirty seconds may more define that position.

Excuse me, but that is one of the most ludicrous posts I've seen on the cow. If you think the more "MTV" a piece is the better the editor is, then you have a lot to learn about the craft. I've cut a wide variety of stuff -- features, docs, corporate promos, trailers, commercials -- and by far the most difficult is the feature film. The sheer scale of it is the challenge. How you cut scene 3 affects how the viewer sees scene 83. But you may not see how for a while, until you've been able to wrap your mind around 20-80 hours of footage.

The challenge IS different than a :30 with 300 shots, multiple layers and all that. But working that feature length time so that the audience isn't thinking about how much their butts hurt or wondering what the hell is going on but is actually engaged in the story -- that's a real trick. Bad editing can ruin a performance, can make the DP look like a hack, can make the director look clueless, make the script seem obvious, dumb or confusing -- even though the editor was "butting big clips together with cuts." Good editing you usually (but not always) don't even notice -- you're just wrapped up in the story.

I would imagine that if you picked a few films you really liked, looked up the editors on IMDB, and then looked at their other films, you would probably like most of them. That attests to the editor's subtle craft that isn't about razzle dazzle, isn't about AfterEffects dexterity or the latest, neatest plugin, isn't about making the piece about the editing -- it's about serving the story, whether it be a horror movie or garden drama.

Erik