The technique of film editing (1958)

DOCUMENTARY REPORTAGE " The skill of the artist . . . [i.e., the director] . . . lies in the treatment of the story, guidance of the actors in speech and gesture, composition of the separate scenes within the picture-frame, movements of the cameras and the suitability of the settings ; in all of which he is assisted by dialogue writers, cameramen, art-directors, make-up experts, sound-recordists and the actors themselves, while the finished scenes are assembled in their right order by the editing department."1 This is how Paul Rotha has summarised the nature of the creative work which goes into the production of the normal story-film. It is perhaps an over-simplification : the " treatment of the story " is a phrase which embraces many functions ; and the continuity of shots which the director has planned on the floor and which the editor interprets in the cutting room, may — and often does — entail a more positive attitude to editing than Rotha implies. But on the whole the picture is fair. The maker of documentaries is concerned with a different set of values. His attitude to film making " proceeds from the belief that nothing photographed, or recorded on to celluloid, has meaning until it comes to the cutting-bench ; that the primary task of film creation lies in the physical and mental stimuli which can be produced by the factor of editing. The way in which the camera is used, its many movements and angles of vision in relation to the objects being photographed, the speed with which it reproduces actions and the very appearance of persons and things before it, are governed by the manner in which the editing is fulfilled."2 Here, then, one is dealing with an entirely different method of production, a method in which editing is the film. It is important 1 Documentary Film by Paul Rotha. Faber, 1936, p. 76. 2 Ibid., p. 77. 123