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The Postproduction Concentration
The Postproduction
Concentration offers a unique opportunity for study in the Film and
Video Department of Columbia College. With a large array of courses
and possible areas of specialization in Narrative Editing, Documentary
Editing, Digital Optical Effects and Sound Editing, students will benefit
from a dedicated and knowledgeable staff and faculty along with an unrivaled
20, 000 square foot post-production facility.
Students studying
in the undergraduate postproduction core can feel confident that they
will have access to the finest equipment, faculty and staff to guide
them to their goals.we are determined to provide an environment which
allows students to prepare for careers in the areas of editing for picture
and sound and digital optical effects for film and video through training
which stresses the aesthetics and techniques along with its function
in structuring a film or video work.
OUR
LONG-RANGE OUTCOMES FOR STUDENTS STUDYING IN THE POSTPRODUCTION CONCENTRATION
Upon completion of the Advanced Editing Seminar (after taking 24 core
curriculum hours and 36-38 hours in the editing concentration), students
will be able to demonstrate abilities in technical, conceptual, and
aesthetic elements of picture and sound editing and digital and optical
effects through the process of written exams and a sample reel of their
work. Upon completion of the core editing required classes, students
will be able to:
- understand beginning
film and video editing and digital optical effects concepts and practices;
- Impose a successful
structure on given material including the effective arrangement of
time within the work;
- control the
rhythm, transitions of sound and picture, and creative use of other
aspects of editing to reveal and heighten the emotional content of
the piece and to help the audience involvement in the drama;
- demonstrate the
creative handling of all sound elements such as dialogue, sound effects,
voice over, music;
- work with a
writer to determine the final form of the language driven screen work;
- . work collaboratively
with directors, producers, and post-production personnel;
- improve
a work in progress, by successfully receiving and incorporating criticism
to arrive at an important work;
- m.ake a statement
of purpose and create a work from given materials reflecting the personal
point of view specified in the statement;
- demonstrate
a comprehensive understanding of the responsibilities of an editor
and assistant editor;
- be able to edit
a short film and/or create digital optical effects that a) demonstrates
proficiency of craft and creativity, and b) fulfills the maker's explicit
purpose(s).
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THE EDITOR'S
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
From the
number and complexity of the postproduction processes you can see how
important the editor is both technically and creatively. For this reason
the most common path to directing is by way of being an editor first.
DIPLOMACY
The editor
receives the director when the latter is in a state of considerable
anxiety and uncertainty, for the film though shot has yet to prove itself.
At this time most directors, however confident they appear, are morbidly
aware of their material's failures. Many suffer a sort of postnatal
depression in the trough following the sustained impetus of shooting.
If the editor and director do not know each other well, both will usually
be formal and cautious. The editor is taking over the director's baby,
and the director often carries mixed and potentially explosive emotions.
PERSONALITY
The good
editor is patient, highly organized, ready to experiment endlessly,
and diplomatic about trying to get his or her own way.
CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION
The editor's
job goes far beyond the physical task of assembly, and the good editor
- really a person of author caliber working from given materials - is
highly aware of the material's possibilities. Directors are handicapped
in this area through over-familiarity with their own intentions. Not
being present at shooting, the editor comes on the scene with an unobligated
and unprejudiced eye, and is ideally placed to reveal to the director
what possibilities or problems lie dormant within the material.
On a documentary
production, or an improvised fiction film, the editor is really the
second director, since the materials supplied are usually capable of
broad interpretation. Putting it more crudely, they are inherently entertaining
but lack design. Unlike a scripted production, editing requires that
the editor often make responsible subjective judgments. But even in
a tightly scripted fiction film the editor needs the insight and confidence
to know when to bend the original intentions to better serve the film's
underlying goals. Editing is always far more than following a script,
just as music is much more than playing the right notes. Composing is
in fact the closest analogy to the editor's work.
RUSHES
Feature
films usually employ the editor from the start of shooting, so the unit's
output can be assembled as fast as it is shot. With low-budget films,
however, economics may prevent cutting until everything is shot. This
is risky because errors and omissions surface when it is too late to
rectify them. One should therefore try to arrange to see dailies. Shooting
on video allows rushes to be viewed immediately, so that any reshooting
can be scheduled before quitting the location. Many 35mm feature film
cameras now make a simultaneous video recording, which allows instant
replay and mitigates the unit's absolute dependency upon the script
supervisor's powers of observation. The low-budget filmmaker will have
no such luxury, but if rushes can be synchronized at home base they
can be transferred from the editing machine screen to VHS tape at minimal
cost, and seen at the location on a VCR.
PARTNERSHIP
Relationships
between directors and editors vary greatly according to the chemistry
of status and temperaments, but it is usual for the director to discuss
the intentions behind each scene, and to give any necessary special
directions.
The editor then
sets to work on making the assembly, which is a first raw version of
the film. Wise directors leave the cutting room during this period in
order to return with a fresh eye for what the editor produces. The obsessive
director on the other hand will sit in the cutting room night and day
watching the editor's every action. Whether this is at all an amenable
arrangement depends on the editor. Some like to be able to debate their
way through the cutting procedure. Most prefer being left alone to work
out the film's initial problems in bouts of intense concentration over
their logs and equipment.
In the end, very
little escapes discussion; every scene and every cut is scrutinized,
questioned, weighed, and balanced. The creative relationship is intense,
often drawing in all the cutting room staff and the producer. The editor
must often use delicate but sustained leverage against what he or she
senses are those prejudices and fixations that gripe every director.
Ralph Rosenblum's book When the Shooting Stops demonstrates just
how varied and even crazy editor/director relationships can be.
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DIRECTOR/EDITORS
In a low-budget
movie the editor and director are for economic reasons sometimes the
same person. This is particularly hazardous for the inexperienced. Another
mind in creative tension with the director is an inestimable asset,
insuring against an early tumble into the abyss of subjectivity. Because
every film is created as an experience for an audience, the director
needs the steadying and detached influence of an editor, or that director
never gets any distance on the material, and falls prey to subjective
familiarity with it. Cuts will get shorter and shorter, and scenes will
be interwoven to the point where only the film's progenitors can still
understand it. Sometimes this is an indulgent love relationship, but
more often it is a self-flagellating dislike in which the director/editor
puts the film through contortions in the attempt to mask its imagined
deformities.
Sometimes a director
will personally edit because he or she was formerly an editor and cannot
trust anyone else to "do it properly"; sometimes the director
is imbued with the auteur theory, and edits believing this will preserve
a unified artistic identity for the film. Such impulses signal insecurities
about maintaining control. This personality sometimes has great difficulty
absorbing criticism, seeing it as an attack on his or her artistic autonomy.
In truth, the scrutiny
of the emerging work by an equal, the editor's advocacy of alternative
views, and collaboration itself all tend to help produce a tougher and
better balanced film than any one person can generate alone. Reflect
on this: you may not be the exception.
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