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VII
Film Editing
Admitted a master oj his particular branch of film making,
Otto Ludwtg. who worked tor a year at the A.R.P. Studios
at Ealing, and has atso edited American and German films,
contributes this study of " cutting."
by Otto Ludwig
THE highbrows call it " montage." The film executives technically call it " film editing." And the workers in the studios call it " cutting."
It is all the same, whatever you call it. Each term signifies that chapter of a film's history in which it goes into the film editor's hands — very much in tlie way that meat goes into a sausage machine — and eventually comes out as a finished article, just as the sausage does.
It is a complicated business. The first time I went into a cutting-room I was appalled. But, like most difficultlooking things, it was not so hard to master as I at first thought, and I have now been a film editor for many years — ^in America first, then in England, and now both in England and on the Continent.
But to the uninitiated my job is rather hke a jigsaw puzzle. I have to gain order out of chaos. Thousands of feet of film are handed over to me to be sorted out. The scenes are in no order whatever. I may receive the last scenes first ; the beginning of the picture last.
From tliis medley of film sequences I have to make a colierent story, smoothly-running, interesting, and witli correct film technique. By film technique I mean that due consideration must be given to those thousandand-one items which make all the difference between a good picture and a bad one. Too many close-ups, with faces looming large upon the screen, would be disastrous, and in the same way too many sequences with the
stars a long distance from the camera would be just as bad.
Every filmgoer must have experienced those pictures in which long " tracking shots " of a motor-car are shown. A " tracking shot " is one in which the camera is kept on the move • — in the case of a car, running parallel with it, or ahead of it, or behind. In other words the camera travels with its subject all the time.
This type of " shot " is apt to make you feel dizzy if you're sitting in a darkened cinema.
It is bad editing. The " tracking shot " should be cut after a few seconds, then a close-up of the car shown for a moment or so. After this, the " tracking shot " can be joined on again. In this way the cinema-goer gains the sensations both of being a spectator and of actually being with the driver of the car, and is given a rest from that sickening sense of vertigo.
Similarly I saw a British film a little while ago in which two or three minutes were wasted while the camera followed a servant girl across a hall, up some stairs, through a door, and right up to the side of her mistress's bed.
It was an unnecessary' waste of time. It struck me as being tedious. It would have been quite sufficient to have shown the girl leaving the servants' quarters and immediately switched over to the scene in which she entered the bed-room.
Tlie term " film technique " covers such things as these, as well as a multitude of others. There is the accentuating of action and cuttin" out of