Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1952)

13 HOW ONE AMATEUR EDITS FILM editing should be easy, smooth flowing and, as far as your footage permits it, a truly creative part of picture making. And yet how many movie makers seem to regard it as a tedious and uncertain chore. Our guess here is that some system, any system, is largely what's needed. Our own editing arrangements stem from a visit some time ago with our good friend Julian Gromer, a well known photographer-lecturer here in the Midwest. From him we borrowed the tab-and-rack combination which you'll see pictured, and then added on from there. We make no claim for our setup as the only efficient arrangement. But it works smoothly for us. So, if you've been sidestepping the editing process from lack of system, the suggestions which follow may put you on the path to success. Let's block out the basic tools of the trade first. Essential to our setup (see Fig. 1) are the sorting rack A, the viewing and assembly table B and a box of numbered paper tabs, C. On the table, to be sure, you'll see quite a clutter of rewinds, big and small, splicer and viewer, but for the moment just count these in as part of the table assembly. It's the editing system I want to make clear first. The basic aim of any editing operation, of course, is to cut up, classify and then reassemble in effective order the film footage one has to work with. Sounds simple. But once you start cutting, the chaos begins. Where will you put the cuts? How will you classify them? And, worst of all, how in the world can you remember what they are and where they are when you start to reassemble? Supplying answers to these questions is the aim of any editing system. Mine works as follows: The sorting rack A is the answer to question 1 — where you will put the cuts. In my version of it (I'll give the dimensions later) there are 5 rows of 18 slots each, for a total of 90. Each slot is LEON F. URBAIN, ACL a 100 foot projector-type film reel. You should get a pretty clear idea of this setup from the closeup in Fig. 2. All right. We are now ready to start cutting. Put a full 100 foot reel of film on one of the small rewinds, thread it through the viewer and feed the film end into an empty 100 foot reel on the opposite small rewind. Crank the scene (or connected scenes) through the viewer until you reach a point where a cut is indicated. Snip the film off and rack away the partially filled reel in slot 1. You've stored that scene for ready reference when needed. But you can't refer unless you classify; so we come now to the answer to question 2 — how to classify the cuts. The answer is given quite easily by the small box of tabs. These are, in my present arrangement, 1 by 3 inches in size, homemade on light cardboard and numbered in order to correspond with the slots in the sorting rack. I have made them, further, in five different colors, to correspond with the five racks and to facilitate classifying cut footage for several different sequences at a time. In use. as soon as reel 1 has been racked up, tab 1 is selected and a very brief description of the cut footage noted on it. The same procedure is followed in numerical order throughout the footage being edited. Now, referring to the tabs only, the individual cuts or scenes are potentially rearranged by rearranging the order of the tabs. The result, in a hypothetical sequence, might read: No. 23 — moonlight; No. 4 — sunrise; No. 19 — seashore; No. 20 — dog on seashore; No. 26 — fisherman on shore, etc., etc. Now, and only now, need you touch a foot of film during this editing process. There occurs no fumbling with forgotten footage to see again what it is all about. The tabs tell you what and then, via the numbers, they also tell you where. No. 23, the moonlight shot, is on reel 23 in the rack. So you reach it [Continued on page 28] A numbered rack and reference tabs are the center of numbered in order, and each will accept this sorting system. The extra rewinds may be optional FIG. 1: The author's complete editing setup, above, centers around the rack A, assembly table B and reference tabs C. Twin rewinds are optional. FIG. 2: The sorting rack, right, accepts ninety 100 foot reels in rows of 18 each. Ordinal numbers correspond to those on the reference tabs.