Shutter Speed

[Keith Loh]

I don't find editing fun at all. I think I'd find it more fun if I hadn't been the shooter. I guess I'm impatient.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

To me, editing is the real art of moviemaking. It is the only part unique to motion picture arts. The rest comes from writing, photography, painting, architecture, theater, music.

But cutting together moving images to create impact, even if you are in camera editing or juxtoposing images (e.g. "Timecode") or even a single take (pointing the camera one direction, framing, then moving to another frame (e.g. "Rope") is also editing.

Editing is the essence of filmmaking and the real joy, if you ask me.

[Frank Granovski]

The real art is to shoot well, while using your heart and "inner eye," and doing it with care. Shooting is the art. You can always fix things up later, if it's required. But the more you shoot right, the less you will have to fix things up later. NLE has it's place, though, and I think it depends on the intent of the final output. Oh, and NLE is an art too (and so is LE).

I don't know any photographers who shoot with the intent to repair later---perhaps to add effect or something---but then I'm comparing apples with oranges, and every project is different, requiring different methods. Cost is also a factor.

[Blake Haber]

<<Editing is the essence of filmmaking and the real joy, if you ask me.>>

Yes, well no doubt, but can you replace the word "Editing" in the above with "Rendering" and still feel as joyful about it?

Imagine a still camera that only goes down to 1/60... and imagine the joyful time in the darkroom trying to fix your shots. Now replace that cam with the same thing, but it goes down to 1/4 or 1/8.

Which brings more joy? There's no question.

: )

b

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Blake:

If 1/4th shutter speed is the be all and end all to a camera purchase, the DVX100 is probably not the camera for you. It's not an important feature to me.

That's why different cameras exist. People have different priorites.

Frank:

Editing has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with "shooting well". Editing is the art of arranging moving images in a timeline, regardless of if they are well shot.

Everytime you stop and start the camera, even change tapes, you are editing. So, it's a fact and the essential core of motion pictures.

Editing is the same, in-camera, flatbed, moviola, splicing block or linear tape.

[Blake Haber]

Stephen,

1/4 is definitely not the be- and end-all. I don't even have it!

The be-all-and-end-all are rich warm beautiful lifelike colors, and frame- or progressive mode!

Everything else is a bonus, especially slower shutter speeds and wider f-stops.... resolution, wide gray scale, all that's nice too. Warm colors is the numero uno. Frame/Progressive numero dos. Everything else is somewhere below diez.

I don't know if it's the camera or not for me until I've determined one way or another that this thing can do PD150-quality warm colors, even in 60i. I believe it can't until I see one single unretouched frame grab that proves otherwise.

Thanks,


b

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Blake:

I don't have screen grabs yet, but the camera has color temp, gamma, matrix, and chroma level & phase controls.

I ran it through the gamut of very desaturated to not warm, but way too hot.

It will do beyond PD150 and XL1 warm.

[Blake Haber]

<<It will do beyond PD150 and XL1 warm.>>

Thanks, Stephen. I'd love to see it. The PD150 is like looking at the sun when you record yellows with it. 100% of the frame grabs from the Pana on the net so far are washed out and dull in the warm end (and frankly throughout) of the spectrum. Strange.

Looking forward to your grabs of yellow curtains, yellow flowers, suntanned people on the beach, fields of sunflowers...!

Best,

Blake

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Blake:

That's because they are posted use CineGamma, Cine Matrix, reduced Chroma (24p presets).

[Blake Haber]

<<That's because they are posted use CineGamma, Cine Matrix, reduced Chroma (24p presets).>>

No doubt true, though I've seen plenty of washed-out 60i grabs.

Some day someone will turn off the CG, the CM and boost the Chroma, and then we'll find out. I hope!

Movies are very colorful. The idea that washing out all the colors to expand the detail at the ends and reduce contrast for film transfer is probably all very valid. But movies are loaded with color, ultimately... if we have to put it all in in post, that's a lot of rendering! : )

Best,

b

Hmm. I like the philosophical debate here over what the essence is of movies.

I think that, like all arguments about essences, this one can only go around and around and depart in myriad directions only to finally undo itself in the process (e.g. the "film look" argument)--which is not to say it is an uninteresting question.

To me there is obviously an art to editing and something very particular about it's role in making movies. But it is not that thing which distinguishes movies from all other art forms--editing in writing, after all, is just as much about sequence and arrangement. There is certainly also an art to the photography of making movies, as well as to script writing, story boarding, directing, sound, acting, interviewing, special effects and all the more and less dominant elements of making movies.

One of the things that interests and stimulates me especially about movies is what a montage of techniques they employ. None of them are essential (I think the movement of the camera and actors in a single take is closer to choreography than to editing). Yet all the techniques can be used brilliantly.

I also think the often highly collaborative nature of making movies (who really is the author of a movie in which hundreds of people have participated?) is one of the notable (though not essential) elements of making movies.

[Joe Carney]

I have to agree with Steve on the editing process. Thats where the actual film gets made. Through the editing process you usually end up with a completely different film than you first intended. Thats true for just about every film made. The way you cut can completely change the atmosphere and purpose of a scene.

Case in point...
I recently read a book that discussed how the film
'All the presidents men' was made. Originally it was supposed to
be a detective style thriller about Watergate. Thats why they brough in Hoffman and Redford, to give a boring detective story some star power. By the time they finished editing the movie, they dicovered they'd made a movie about why people talk to the press. without passing judgement or even attempting to answer the question. Better movie for it.

So Steve is right, the editing process is what is unique and vital to film making.

I agree that editing is a vital part of film making (in just about every film). I just don't agree that it is the "essence" of film. It is possible to make films without editing (even if it is rarely done these days).

To clarify, I take "essence" here to mean: The one thing without which film would absolutely no longer be film. The idea of editing as the "essence" of film making suggests that all the other elements could not be there, except the act of editing, and it would still be a film. Editing purely on its own would make for an interesting John Cage like peformance--someone sitting there without any actual film stock or video tapes or digitized files literally editing nothing, just going through the motions--but I wonder if we would really want to call that a movie?

I also don't agree that editing is "unique" to film making. Again (to repeat the example I used above) with writing, editing is all about sequence and arrangement. Any serious piece of writing is radically rearranged from first drafts to last. The considerations that go into the process of editing and reworking a piece of writing are in some respects very similar to editing a film. Indeed, there is a long history of innovation in writing (flashbacks, establishing the scene, etc.) that influence the way films are edited and vice versa. So I don't think the category of those things in which editing is a vital part of their creation narrows down to just film.

I further don't agree that editing is "where the actual film gets made." Editing (again with most but not all movies these days) is a very signifcant moment in the process of creating the final movie (as significant as any other--and certainly all too often not given its due). But shooting the film and the acting and the script and directing are at least as much part of where the "actual" film gets made. There would be no "actual" movie, if film hadn't been shot, actors hadn't been put in front of cameras, words hadn't been written for the actors to say, and directions hadn't been given to the actors, camera people, etc. Without these things, the editor would be sitting in a dark room, with nothing--as in my imagined John Cage-like editing performance piece.

In the end, again, I think that trying to name the one "unique" thing or "essence" of an art form is an hapless enterprise. It's like when people debate what art "is." Questions like that can't be answered. Interesting things about an art form or art itself are illuminated in the process of the debate. But as soon as you make a claim about what art "is" or what the "essence" of film is, someone comes along and proves you wrong (not by clever argument, but by doing exactly what you said couldn't be done or doing without exactly what you said is essential). What makes film, film, or what makes art, art, are a whole host of elements, none of which are essential, yet enough of which eventually add up to a film or art.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

<<<-- Originally posted by donking! : I agree that editing is a vital part of film making (in just about every film). I just don't agree that it is the "essence" of film. It is possible to make films without editing (even if it is rarely done these days).
-->>>

In fact, it is impossible to make a film without editing. When you start the camera, that is your first cut. When you stop it or run out of film, that is cut # 2.

Every film must have at least two edits.

[Joe Carney]

donking, I have to respectfully disagree with the analogy to writing. Rarely does the editing process in writing make radical changes to the story itself. Mostly spelling and grammer correction. The writer may want to re-write the story or change the ending, but that is more like reshooting scenes than editing.

This is not the case for video/film. Instead of getting into a long debate I would like to recommend a great book for beginners and those interested in the effect of the editing process from a scholarly and high level point of view.

Making Movies Work by Jon Boorstin.
The book covers the different viewing experiences the audience goes through and how to achieve them (as well as mistakes to avoid). I beleive it's available at amazon. I got it at Barnes and Noble.


He is definitely a hollywood insider, with out being a cheerleader.
He goes into great detail about how certain editing techniques affect a film. More than most of us realize.

btw, this is the book I was referring to in a previous post about editng. Boorstin was personally involved in 'All the Presidents Men'.

He is a bit tedious in his writing style and tends to rely too much on Hitchcock for examples, but for anyone wanting to get a better understanding of the importance of the editing process this is a very good book. The issues covered are equally valid for film or video.

Toward the end of the book, he talks frankly about how timid and scared hollywood is and why the only real change comes from the independent/avant garde film community.

good reading everyone.