I’ll admit it. I love cuts. They’re pure and efficient, and, in the hands of an expert, elegant. The “cut” transition has often been feared and maligned as a visual device since the invention of motion photography. Early filmmakers shied away from its directness, fearing the abruptness would be both disorienting and disturbing. Would audiences go mad? Storm the stage? Edwin Porter, in making the first edited film, The Life of an American Fireman, in 1903, was so concerned that his series of non-consecutive clips would be unsettling that he made a series of small dissolves between each discrete motion image so as to make the transitions easier on his audience. Very soon, of course, it was discovered that people could easily infer time and location from a well-placed cut, and it can be argued that efficient and deliberate cutting serves a purpose within the visual language, similar to that of punctuation in the written word.
The Russian school of filmmakers, epitomized by the works of Sergei Eisenstein, wholeheartedly embraced the brief moment of confusion and receptivity the cut brings. His montages brought together many disparate images that forced the viewer to create continuity and an internal storyline in order to glean meaning. The takeaway then becomes a matter for individual interpretation and reflection, and consequently you create art that is intrinsically more complex and satisfying.
When I was first starting out as an editor, the technology for making dissolves or more complex transitions was expensive, especially in the electronic (tape-based) world. Not only did you need three tape machines, minimum, but you also needed gear to synchronize those machines so that they would play nicely together. Hence, most students then learned about editing in a world where the only transition was a cut. Being young, I felt this was limiting and quite unfair; why shouldn’t I have access to the full vocabulary of editing? Only in retrospect do I think that I was terribly lucky to have been given that break. Placing cuts is not an easy skill to learn for the uninitiated. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of squinting and thinking, “Why doesn’t that look right?” to get to the point where you place an edit by instinct. Visual rhythm is every bit as important a concept as musical rhythm, but they are utterly NOT the same thing. It is by no means surprising that a great many musicians find themselves working in film/video editing chairs due to their familiarity with decoding polyrhythms. Plus, there are visual rules for cutting that you learn by trial and error or through mentorship: Don’t cut (or dissolve!) wide to wide. Defy continuity with caution, but be confident when you do. Don’t cross the axis of action. The lowly, deceptively simple cut is the editor’s very first transitional device. It’s easy to mimic the motions but it takes a lifetime of learning – and then unlearning – to master the Zen of hitting the “in” marker when it just feels right.
Just as all good writers learn to write by reading a lot, editors aspiring to master the cut need to see the poets of the industry in action, and watch film with an attention to rhythm and spatial juxtaposition. I have directorial favorites: Kurosawa, Kubrick, Zinneman, Lumet – and editorial favorites: Schoonmaker, Murch, Frank Keller, Jill Bilcock. I don’t say my list should be everyone’s; I DO say everyone should make a point of populating their own list by finding motion pictures they love, and then asking the question, “Why does it work?” I will guarantee you, in the final analysis, that much of your gut level response is directly attributable to the editing, and decisions that were made in the editing room. The vast majority of those decisions? The cuts. So simple, so powerful. It is the considered application of form to chaos. It can be argued that applying form to chaos is the basis of all art. So, when you next go to make a cut, ask yourself: does this cut satisfy you, further the plot, create the desired emotion? If so, feel the power.
