We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
456
Film Editing
result that it was re-issued as a single feature lasting one hour, under tlie title of llie Green Spot Mysteyy.
When I first came to lln'gland, two already-cut pictures were handed over to me for revision. One was Never Trouble Trouble. I cut i.ooo feet out of it. The other was The IV Plan. I relieved this of 2,500 feet.
It is sometimes quite a heart-breaking business. There is an expression in filmland which is genuinely tragic. It is " the face on the cuttmg-room floor." It refers to those actors and actresses who are cut right out of pictures. For one reason or another, it is found, after a picture has been completed, that their part is unnecessary. Thus are dreams and hopes felled with one snip of the scissors.
The film editor can do some extraordinary things with those strips of celluloid. He can even rewrite the whole story by settling down to change all the scenes around ; which is a lengthy but amusing pastime.
One of the classic stories of filmland is that of the film editor who made a complete film without the hero making a single scene for it. What the cutter did was to dig out all the star's old
pictures and from them he obtained sufficient situations to enable him to work this hero into the leading part !
It is by no means unusual to change the stars around after a film has been produced. By careful adjustment, the second lead can be changed into the hero, mainly by cutting short the original hero's scenes and giving fuller length to the sequences played by the second lead.
Sometimes a girl — or a man — will " steal " a picture from the star. Her acting will be so good that she stands out, overshadowing the heroine completely. It is heart-breaking, I know, but unfortunately that girl's part often has to be toned down considerably in the cutting-room for the benefit of the star and the story.
I am happy to say, hovv-ever, that in instances like this the studio executives, seemg the original negative, almost invariably make up for so cutting down the girl's part by giving her a contract and bigger chances in future pictures.
The film editor's job is certainly an interesting one. It is not merely mechanical ; it is intensely human.