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I know It’s not a cinematography related question, it’s an editing problem, but a tip on that would help me a lot.
In my illustrations days i learned that your portfolio Is as strong as your weakest work, so less is better. I’m cutting and editing my short and i am thinking in the same way. Of course the elements i’m taking in consideration are the narrative one, the rythm of it, the mood etc etc. I’ve got shots that are fondamental for the story and a group of shots that add something to the story in terms of atmosphere, mood and in other words help me telling the story in the way i want It to be told. I am not sure about some shots of this second group because of the quality of their cinematography, neither horrible nor very good, be It because of the lights or the camera movement or the composition etc. What would you suggest? Keep them for the narrative value (it’s my First short and i accepted that quality can’t be perfect, given my limited budget and limited knowledge) or take them away to rise the average quality of the cinematography of the entire short (they are not fondamental for the story and the rest of the scenes have a decent cinematography, far from a masterpiece but surely the best i could do) ?I know that “quality of shots” is not an issue for professional and established DoPs like you, but trying to figure what happened (or in theory would have happened) at the beginning of your careers would help me a lot! Thanks in advance!
(i apologize, as usual, for double posting the same thread, it seems that editing the post i end up messing up it and the forum marks it as “spam”, so it disappears)
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Mood can be a vital part of the story – think of horror movies. So these shots may carry value for the story even though they are not necessary driving the plot itself. I work intuitively so like to make an edit, wait a few days, and when watching it back I can easily identify what feels wrong. Of course that is not how a paid editor can work but I understand you edit your own short movie here.
The Japanese have a word that can be translated with “Ma” and it means something like the emptiness between two events.
Replying to a question about the “gratuitous motion” in his films, Hayao Miyazaki clapped his hands and said:
“The time in between my clapping is Ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”
I think this can also apply to editing a scene but – as with so many things – it will always depend and I don’t think there’s a golden rule that fits all. You may just have to experiment, let it rest for some days and then come back to the edit.
Thanks a lot Stip!
I noticed that too, looking at scenes with fresh eyes, after some days, helps me a lot with editing. I really love that kind of shots, like Ozu’s pillow shots (like the famous vase one) , the ones in the original Ghost in the Shell or, as you said, in Miyazaki’s works. Surely they are way more common than i remember (for some obscure reason your post made me think of a misterious tree full of symbolism…) but i associate them mostly with japanese movies, it seems. They are like visual haikus, to me. I didn’t know they have a word for that, thanks for teaching me that! 🙂
And yes, it’s almost a “one man show”, i’m doing everything but acting : luckily i’ve some friends with years of experience as theatre actors that helped me, they really did a great job even with my poor directing skills (but it seems that they had a good time working with me and they offered to work again with me on the next short). So i had to learn everything from scratch in every area of a (very small) cinematographic production: from script to sound mixing, from production coordination as a producer to lights wiring as a gaffer.
It’s an horror short and i think these “pillow shots” really add something to the mood (and, jokes apart, i really love that famous shot in Prisoners, it creates tension in an abstract but powerful way). My problem is that – even if i did my best – some of the shots have a poorer “visual quality” (camera movement not so smooth, no enough head room, a boring point of view, contrast ratio on the face too even to suit the story, etc etc etc) and i’m not sure about using them, even if they could add something to the narrative element.
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