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The compiler's first task is to view all available material and make a selection of the shots which are likely to be useful. While gathering his material, he should have a rough idea of the overall shape of the film, if he is to avoid being swamped by thousands of feet of superfluous material which will make his final task more difficult and incur unnecessarily high printing costs.
After overall selection,1 each shot has to be carefully assessed and its exact cinematic content determined. At first reading this may seem a little peculiar — after all, is not the cinematic content of a shot of a house merely — a house ? Well, the cinematic content may be merely a house, but on the other hand it may be a symbol of opulence or of poverty depending on the state of repair or scale of the house. The cinematic content may not fundamentally be that of a house at all but merely the depiction of a season — governed by whether the house be shot in snow or sunshine. This is an absurdly simple case but it will serve to state the principle involved. The deeper the cinematic content of a shot lies, the more difficult it is to perceive, and the more difficult, therefore, does it become for the editor to place it in its correct position. In compiling historical films I have known such shots " roam " over the whole length of production — for while fully aware that these shots " have something," I have been at a loss for some time to discover exactly what that something was.
In the end, like the last piece of the jig-saw puzzle, each shot drops neatly into the exact position where its cinematic content can most effectively make itself felt. The analogy with a jig-saw puzzle, incidentally, always strikes me forcibly when working on such films, because, providing the editor has made his choice wisely in the first place, it is often quite astounding to find what little material there is left over.
This problem of fitting a shot into a context where its cinematic content will be most effective is the crucial problem faced by the compiler. The meaning of a shot is always considerably affected by its context and can often be bent to convey the impression desired from it. For instance, if the shot of the house we have mentioned were to be shown in the course of an attack on the luxury and wastefulness of the rich, the house would quite naturally, symbolise opulence and probably evoke resentment in an audience ; if, on the other hand, it were shown as an example of a particular style of architecture, preceded and followed by other examples, then the emotional meaning given to the shot in the previous sequence would never arise.
Yet in making use of this principle the greatest care must be exercised. The fact that a shot of a house acquires some of its significance from its context, does not mean that any shot would serve equally well. If a clear, incisive effect is to be achieved, the most suitable shot must be selected. No doubt, a series of shots which roughly fit into a sequence thanks to their subject alone,
1 Notes by Peter Baylis.
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