How do you guys edit for continuity?

[harmonica44]

A lot of times producers or distributors want the filmmakers to edit the movie for the final product to fit under a certain time length. But how do you do it and still have continuity. I see movies where the directors cuts, the fight scenes go on longer, yet somehow the editors were still able to cut them down, and the actor were still able to move from here to there, without skipping ahead, or all of a sudden being in different positions.

Same with dialogue. Movies with full paragraphs cut out, and the actors are still in the same position and talking. How?

 

[Zensteve]

Same with dialogue. Movies with full paragraphs cut out, and the actors are still in the same position and talking. How?

Sometimes it doesn't work at all, but it still gets shown. If you ever get the opportunity to watch Pulp Fiction on American broadcast television, do so. Makes no sense at all, the way it had to be cut... yet they did it.

The real question, though...

how do you do it and still have continuity.

Planning ahead. That's probably a huge oversimplification, but it's where it's at.

Commercially viable films are not limited to a single market, so they need to be available to many markets... worldwide, even.

Just another example of planning ahead for a film's potential global release: Audio is delivered in several layers, for distribution. Dialogue on one track, music on another, sound effects on another, and so on. If the film is sold to a foreign distributor, they may want to localise the sound. An example might be a doorbell ringing, or maybe replacing background church bells with a mosque call. Subtle things to make the local viewer more receptive.

I'm starting to ramble a bit, but there's a lot of compromise involved in monetising that film... and that involves having various cuts available for dozens of outlets. A cut with no boobs & profanity for network tv. (Maybe even using pre-recorded PG takes of the more spicy ones).

Definitely ramblin'. Night.

 

[NickSoares]

Just throwing this out there. Editors dont edit for continuity, continuity should be there for the edit. If the director makes a change to the product that effects the continuity, then at times this may call for a reshoot to fix the continuity issues that have come from the new cuts.

But to the original poster, that my friend is called movie magic

 

[knightly]

I once had to edit the opposite direction from what you're talking about... 2 actors in a dialog scene with no dialog memorized... each take was 3 lines of dialog (the middle one was the one I actually was shooting for, the other 2 gave them somewhere to come from / go to, metaphorically speaking, and a reaction before and after the intended line. 3 pages of dialog shot this way and cut together line by line into a scene that doesn't feel quite as choppy as you might imagine.

As an editor, you need to disconnect your brain from both the script and what happened on set. What you have now are the raw materials to build a story. You only have the pieces in your editor, throw the rest out, all of the intentions that weren't met, all of the backstory of the characters that you know in your head from writing and talking to the actors while shooting the thing, scratch all that and focus on what you HAVE. Figure out how to make it work. Use cutaways, use a glance to motivate a cut, add an offscreen sound to motivate a cut, use a chunk of incoming dialog to motivate a cut. If you're watching a dialog and wish you could see the reaction of another character, cut to that reaction... if you didn't shoot it, find a reaction from some other point in the scene and use that, just cut back before the dialog if finished.

Break free from your linear thinking... it is no longer relevant, you're an editor.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. So let's say in the future I made a feature, and someone was interest in distributing it. But it's 120 minutes and they want to cut it down to around 90 minutes, like a lot of movies have. What if they found out it was impossible to edit it down to that short and still have it make sense. What then? It's difficult to come up with a script and a movie, where you can just cut out that much, and have it be still be coherent.

 

[Gonzo_Entertainment]

Similar thing actually usually happens on almost all films during the initial editing process.

The first rough edit of my movie The Island was over 45 minutes long. The final cut was 26 minutes. We cut out whole scenes (without hurting the story), we cut out sections from others scenes (again without major damage). We tightened edits down frame by frame by frame to trim 2 seconds here and 3 seconds there. It can be done.

 

[JoshL]

One thing that it seems a lot of newbies tend not to realize: all that stuff that's "absolutely necessary"? Most of it isn't.

I was there too. It was easier for me to write a 20 minute song than a 3 minute song and thinking the progression was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

To quote the bard, "brevity is the soul of wit", and the more you leave out, the more room there is for imagination. That can't be a bad thing!

 

[don patterson]

I do not have a continuity problem in my footage, EVER. I always use more than one camera, generally three (on tripod never hand held) and always shoot lots of cutaways and CU/MS with minutes of naked, (no dialogue) ambient sound. In some hard to visualize cases, I draw out a story board. I do the camera(s) and all the editing.

So. Know your material. Pre study the environment you will be shooting in and direct cast accordingly. You won't have a continuity problem. Or hire/have some one over see continuity.

 

[shortboy]

Okay thanks. So let's say in the future I made a feature, and someone was interest in distributing it. But it's 120 minutes and they want to cut it down to around 90 minutes, like a lot of movies have. What if they found out it was impossible to edit it down to that short and still have it make sense. What then? It's difficult to come up with a script and a movie, where you can just cut out that much, and have it be still be coherent.

There's ways around it. We recently finished a short that was 20min and had to cut it down to 15min for festivals purposes. The way we cut down our dialogue was to take out non-essential dialogue (little bits do make a difference) or plot points that aren't important for the overall plot. An interesting thing my cousin did was take a fight scene, and in the next scene we had the characters actually talk about what just happened. To cut it down, he had bits of the fight scene shown via flashbacks during the dialogue.

If you have enough footage, use cutaways. If you're good at editing, just rollover certain lines of text while showing the other person, cut out the certain line, and cut back to the original speaker.

 

[WalterB]

Shoot for continuity

- Don't let actors move around too much during dialogues
- if you do anyway: get shots of them moving around when they don't talk: no lip-sync problem when you have to cut down the dialogue
- You don't have to show everything always.

- Fightscenes or actionscenes are often composed with miniscenes: action, reaction, standoff and start again. Or: in carchases: there are multiple corners, multiple streets, etc.
That way it's (sometimes) possible to cut a 'block' out of it. This block can be from action to standoff, but it can be from reaction to action as well.

 

[spinner]

Shoot for continuity

This is what I was going to say.

You can't show something that wasn't shot, so if you need to show someone going out a door, you can decide not to use the action of him going out the door, but if he doesn't do it and you need it, you're screwed.

I am editing a short right now and there are a couple of places just like this. However, if all you are trying to do is to shorten the scene, you can cut down how long it takes for a person to walk across the room. You could (and should) eliminate any "pregnant pauses". Figure out a brief way to make your transitions. Or, God forbid, cut a scene that isn't necessary (aren't they all necessary to us )

I had to do this for a short doc I did, had to cut a whole song. Broke my heart, but had to.

For the short I'm doing, there was a point where one of our characters needed to go out a door. Somehow, we let it go with just going up to the door. The continuity is very short and looks kinda weird to us (me:editor and my director) but we can't fix it now. NEVER LEAVE IT TO BE FIXED IN POST. SHOOT IT RIGHT.

By the way, I'll let you guys know when the short is done, hopefully in a few weeks...

-- spinner

 

[harmonica44]

What about action scenes? Some movies have edited versions to cut down on violence, but how do they keep it continuous and still get from here to there? I am trying to leave out the bad shots of my short film where I got no good takes of, and when it comes to action scenes, it's next to impossible to get from here to there coherently, by leaving out shots. But like in real movies, where they want to cut out whole shots of an action scene, they still manage to do it, and keep it coherent. I guess they shoot two or more versions of the sequence, the short and the long.

 

[shortboy]

For action sequences, usually you'd want to shoot a wider long take and say it's a choreographed fight, some hits don't stack (appear to hit on camera), then you shoot closer inserts to make up for that. What happens a lot of times is that they'll take out a punch or kick because it's not totally needed. If there's a part of the choreography that somewhat matches something later in the sequence, then you can cut out that entire segment.

When you shoot action scenes, rarely, if ever, will you shoot to make sure that certain sequences will connect to a later sequence. You just want to shoot for continuity as you go along. And you'll always want to shoot enough to make sure more connect. I usually shoot at 45 degrees (similar to over the shoulder) both sides to get reactions shots of each character getting hit. If you're lucky, you can still manage to cut out certain parts of the sequence. If you're characters are running all over the place, yes that's going to be a bit of a problem to edit around, but there are always ways around it. Someone mentioned earlier, if it was a chase sequence, you can easily cut out a lot of running parts where you're going around corners (especially if there's a lot), and cut straight to the part where the major parts happen.

 

[harmonica44]

Yeah I was told to cut out parts of a fight scene I shot by a contact I met, but there is too much getting in the way of continuity and you just have to let sections play out.

 

[JoshL]

Viewers have imaginations. You don't need to spell out, for example, every punch and scuffed wall in a fight scene for them to know what happened. If you throw a couple punches, and then cut to a guy on the floor and a broken lamp the viewer will understand a) he got knocked down by the last punch you showed and b) the lamp was broken in the scuffle. They don't necessarily need to see the lamp break.

Obviously there's a limit to how far you want to push imaginations, but I think there's a lot more leeway, particularly when it comes to fight/action scenes. You show the car leaving the house, then on the highway. You don't show him driving through town, stopping for a school bus and then merging on to the highway, you know what I mean?

As you mentioned, there are lots of films where fight scenes are cut down due to violence. Take a few, and compare the shorter and longer edits. See how they do it.

 

[WalterB]

You can use 'the' exitstrategy: shoot an exterior shot of the building: a passing pedestrian hears some noise and moves on.

Besides that: you don't need to show every move.

 

[harmonica44]

I tried a few cutaways to other things going on in the scene, but editing wise, it just doesn't feel like it works. I showed it to a friend so far and she says that it's a bad time for a cut cause it cuts a key moment, when the guy charges at the girl with the knife. Then when it cuts back, he only got as far as five feet in the charge, before the next key moment has to happen for the continuity to make sense from then on. It just feels too long and too awkward of a cutaway during a five to ten foot charge. I have to choose what's better between bad continuity and a bad edit.

 

[Zensteve]

I tried a few cutaways to other things going on in the scene, but editing wise, it just doesn't feel like it works. I showed it to a friend so far and she says that it's a bad time for a cut cause it cuts a key moment, when the guy charges at the girl with the knife. Then when it cuts back, he only got as far as five feet in the charge, before the next key moment has to happen for the continuity to make sense from then on. It just feels too long and too awkward of a cutaway during a five to ten foot charge.

Dude, unless you've already had a distributor tell you to provide an alternate cut, you are waaaay overthinking this thing right now.

Finish your movie the way you want to finish it.

Nothing else matters until you have your film.

Then, you can start worrying about things like this.

Focus!

 

[harmonica44]

Well, one of the actors from my movie mentioned my name to a person producing a feature film currently and who has produced them before. So that would be a good connection. I told him I would have an edit ready for him in a couple of months about, so I am trying to do what's best to make a good impression.