Chapter 12 - Story and Editing

Editorial Judgment | Advance Planning | “Ticket Window and Rowboat” | Tips on Advance Planning | Editorial Judgment While Shooting | Tempo | Composition | Composing Static Action | After the Shooting is Over: Editing | Is it Really waste? | Do Your Own Editing | Summary

Editorial Judgment

It is not the province of this book to analyze scenario writ­ing. We are studying pictorial continuity: those rules of struc­ture, logic, and form which work to make a coherent motion-picture story regardless of the type of plot, much as certain rules of building construction are applied regardless of whether the building is a hotel or a garage.

Hut just as rules of building construction do control the flow and movement of people within a structure, so does pictorial continuity have a powerful effect on the development of any plot.

This held true even in the simple sequence of Mr. Prospect, where the most emphatic, intensifying shot—the CU—was re­served for his face. In other words, there was a rudimentary scenario entitled "Seeing Mr. Prospect, which reached its climax with the closeup. Pictorial continuity was thus closely integrated with story continuity.

As a further example of the logic and laws of common sense they both share, neither pictorial nor plot continuity would allow an LS of Mr. Prospect to be followed by an MS of a horse race and then a CU of Baby eating her cereal.

The above analogies are an elementary view of the correla­tion between pictorial and story continuity. But with that correlation made clear, we can look further into how pictorial continuity, broadening in scope as it progresses, now touches on a subject that strongly affects the shape and quality of a cameraman's work. That subject is his editorial judgment— his control over his picture from the viewpoints of form, em­phasis, tempo, composition, and final touches.

This chapter on buildup marks an important milestone along the route of continuity study, and we may well pause for a quick RS of the road we have just traveled.

Advance Planning

The ideal motion picture would be subject to the absolute control of a photographer blessed with a complete shooting script which he could follow without the slightest deviation. Well, there "ain't no sech animule." Furthermore, a good many cameramen don't want to be bothered with an elab­orately detailed scenario. Shooting a picture—especially for the non-professional—is often a spontaneous act, done on im­pulse, done to seize an unusual, quickly passing opportunity. It would defeat the photographers purpose and even sour his pleasure to be burdened with a minutely figured plan of action.

So when we recommend some sort of advance planning, we keep the needs of the quick-working type of photographer in mind. He needn't have a detailed scenario, highly desirable though that might be. He can shoot very effectively without any script at all—"off the cuff," as movie slang puts it—as long as he does some mental picture planting in advance.

What does this mean? Simply that the photographer, be­fore he brings the camera view-finder up to his eye, makes a mental list of those shots he needs to have his picture co­herent and complete; fits in his long, medium, closeup, and reestablishing shots, cut-ins, and the rest according to the importance or dramatic interest of the action; and keeps this mental list fresh in his mind at least two or three shots ahead of the one he is actually taking.

"Ticket Window . . .

Dad, restless on a sunny day in spring, grabs his camera and calls out: "Come on. Mother, let's get the boy and go to the lake."

As he drives off with his family, he is already planning his picture. "Well," he thinks to himself, "haven't done a movie about rowing on the lake. Believe I'll do a thorough job on it and start off with a sequence at the boathouse. . . .

"Let's see now. Think I'll stop on the way to the boathouse at that hill that looks down on the lake and take a real location

shot. Then I'll take my regular establishing shot down by the lake from the side of the boathouse, showing part of the build­ing, people lined up to hire boats moored to the dock. and people out on the lake. . . .

"Now I'll get into the meat of my sequence by moving up for an LS of the line with Junior—I'll build my story around him—making a clean entrance and getting in the line. Next, maybe an MS of the cashier selling a ticket to someone, fol­lowed by another medium of Junior waving back to Mother, then a cutaway shot of Mother waving back. If I cut back to an MS of Junior now, I can get away with showing him pretty close to the ticket window, thanks to those distraction shots. . . .

"Think  I'll try some more cut-away stuff to get him even closer to the window. I'll make an MS of him looking back over his shoulder and putting his hand up to shade his eyes. Now I'll make a closeup of this action, then move back of him and let the camera see what he's looking at. That'll be the lake—a whole regatta of rowers with lots of color. That's swell buildup and I'll give it a nice long shot. . . .

"Time now to get back to the business of buying the ticket. I've set things so that I can show Junior all the way up to the ticket window, and no one will kick. So I'll reestablish with an MS as he steps forward, pulling out his money as he hands it through the window.  . . .

"1 can get the ticket man into the action with a CU showing him taking the money and stamping the time on a ticket— good idea to get an insert of the stamper doing the job—now I'm all set for an RS as Junior picks up the ticket and walks out of the frame to the right in the direction of his mother. . . .

"My next shot will be an MS of Mother looking left. Junior enters from the left to join her, then 111 pan them both as the) walk off to the boats. . . .
"That's plenty in the way of advance planning before I get there. I can decide on the shots for the next sequence after I finish shooting that one."

So much for Dad's "stream of consciousness" thoughts about what he plans to shoot. Lets assume that by means of the persuasiveness so valuable to a photographer, he gets the people in the line not to stare at the camera, persuades the ticket man to stamp Juniors ticket over again for an insert and in general manages to shoot the sequence pretty much as he had planned it. He does decide to add a few cut-aways of attractive buildup subjects he finds in the line—a young ser­vice man and his girl, a pretty little boy dressed in a sailor suit waiting for his father, a kid munching popcorn and wav­ing a balloon.

. . . And Rowboat"

Dad does the same advance picture planning as he pre­pares to shoot his next sequence, which is to show Mother and Junior boarding a rowboat: His mental scenario breaks down something like this:

1. LS of Mother and Junior approaching rowboat, let­ ting them come cleanly into frame or else dissolving them into head-on shot; then panning them as they come around side of boat and prepare to get in.
2. MS from different angle  (Dad invariably shifts his angles) as Junior hands Mother into boat.
3. CU of Mother's smiling face.
4. MS to show boat rocking as Mother steps into it.
5. CU of Mothers face as smile gives away to gasp of consternation.
6. CU of Junior laughing at her startled expression.
7. MS of Junior placing foot on gunwale of boat in order to steady it.
8. CU cut-in of foot.
9. MS from boat to reestablish as Junior waves Mother to seat in stern.
10. CU of Mother seating herself and grasping sides of boat.
11. ECU of her hands holding on for dear life.
12. MS to reestablish as  Junior gets into boat and sits down.
13. CU from clock as Junior pushes boat away from mooring and grasps oars.
14. ECU cut-ins of hands grasping oars.
15. MS as he begins to row.
16. LS as he pulls boat away from dock into lake.

Dad knows that some of the CU's and inserts do not have to be shot in sequence as long as they are placed in sequence in the final editing. If he has to he can, for instance, shoot the cut-ins of Mother's hands grasping the sides of the boat, and of Junior's taking the oars, one after the other, with the boat firmly tied to the dock; he knows he will be able to put them in their proper place when the film is edited, so he makes the inserts at his convenience.

Once this sequence is shot, he continues his mental planning of the sequences that will be necessary to complete the pic­ture, always leaving room for changing, omitting, or adding shots to suit the situation at the time that he is actually shoot­ing    .  .  . keeping his planning flexible.

Tips On Advance Planning

Neither of the example sequences given above need be planned or shot as elaborately as described. Either or both of them could be condensed a great deal, with no loss of contin­uity, although they would not have quite as much buildup.

Dad might decide that the first sequence, being introduc­tory, should move very quickly, and should be confined to the essentials of buying a ticket. He would therefore confine his picture planning of that sequence to no more than the follow­ing shots: a location shot, an LS of the ticket line which Junior leaves Mother to join, an MS picking up Junior as he moves to the window, and a CU showing him buying the ticket. A re­establishing shot panning Junior back to Mother and holding on them both as they walk down to the boat, would carry the action smoothly into the main boating sequence.

The important point is that whether advance picture plan­ning is done elaborately or not, some measure of it be under­taken.

Another important lesson may be drawn from the mental picture planning illustrated by Dad's boating sequences. The lesson is that such planning presupposes, first and foremost, a clear idea of what the cameraman is going to shoot, of what his climax will be, and of how he will build up to it.

Naturally this sort of spontaneous scenario planning is much easier with a controlled story in your own living room, or even a semi-controlled story like Dad's rowing picture, than with the wildly uncontrolled story of a raging fire.

But mental picture planning within a sequence is always possible to some extent, even when action is wholly uncon­trolled. Firemen putting a hose into operation or hurrying up a ladder compose sequences that break down into separate scenes of LS's, MS's, CU's, and ECU's, despite their high speed of action. You can figure in advance on a long shot from across the street as the fire truck rolls up (entering the frame, if possible); then a medium shot as the firemen start to un­roll the hose; closeups of the firemen; a reestablishing scene as they drag hose to the water pump; an MS as they start clamping it on; CU's and ECU's of the hose being tightened.

Similarly, a sequence built around the fire ladder could be tentatively broken down in advance into a long and medium shot of it being raised and placed against the wall; a closeup of the machinery performing the operation and another of the fireman at the controls; an RS of a fireman starting to mount the ladder; a cut-in of his feet as they go up the rungs; a long shot as he goes into a window.

Obviously, not all of these shots may be possible, especially the close-range, intimate CU's and ECU's. It must be a stern and carefully obeyed principle with you, as with all responsi­ble cameramen, never to get in the way of people engaged in rescue work at the scene of a disaster. Long lenses, in such instances, can perform the function of close physical approach.

The point to be observed in these examples is that advance planning, no matter how subject to sudden change or cancela-tion. can be done. It is possible for you to anticipate scenes in uncontrolled action and this anticipation, even if unrealized, can serve as a rough guide in shooting.

Your ability to look ahead and anticipate stages of action is a great boon to lightning-quick picture planning, but don't forget that this ability derives from practice and experience

Just as improvised picture planning is easier when the ac­tion is controlled rather than uncontrolled, so is it easier if your movie is brief. Shooting Cousin Robert smoking a cigar is far less complicated than exposing several reels of film on a four-alarm fire. Yet even with the latter, you can rectify your mistakes of editorial judgment before or during shooting by editing afterward.

Here's a final word on advance picture planning Look at it this way: Mother finds that shopping for the day is usually more efficient if she plans a list, mental or written, of what she must get at the butcher's, the baker's, the grocers. Such a list takes only a moment to make up. Advance picture planning need take no more time. The important thing is to do it. The habit of it will soon take hold.

Whether you figure out your shots on a mental slate, or scribble a few notes on memo paper, or prefer to work out an elaborate scenario, plan your work in advance as much as possible—before, during, and after shooting.

Editorial Judgment While Shooting

Advance story planning is a vital aspect of editorial judg­ment But the planning is still only a means to the shooting. The payoff of your work as a cameraman depends on those powers of camera judgment that put your individual stamp on a picture, that enable you to mark each shot with your own personality.

The answer to this "how, the guides to putting your crea­tive powers to work on a movie, have been suggested in the study of buildup, where concrete details in the form of cut-ins and cut-aways, variety of angles, suspense, contrast, and so on were called for.

But there are other factors, less exact, more difficult to nail down, calling for a strong exercise of editorial judgment, that play an important point in the quality, the liveliness, the in­terest of your picture. One of the most elusive and critical of these is tempo.

Tempo

Tempo, timing, or pace are synonymous movie terms that have a rather forbidding sound for the non-professional. The idea of tempo, however, is simple enough. It is the rate of movement, the relative speed or slowness of your motion-pic­ture action. It is determined not only by the speed of the ac­tion itself, but also by the amount of footage you give it, and by the kind of buildup it receives in change of image size and angle. The final control of tempo is in the editing or cutting.

Speed is accentuated by short shots, shots of great contrast. In that sequence of Aunt Sally and Junior approaching each other from opposite directions, if you allow each shot to run Innu;. their coming together seems a quite leisurely affair; if you have each shot brief, they seem to rush together.

Change ot speed within a sequence can be manipulated through the general rule of changes in image size and angles.

A progression ot image sizes from smaller to larger increases tempo—sharpens the sense of things happening faster. You'll find this is so whether the sequence is a salesman's meeting with Mr. Prospect or a tense scene in a Hollywood thriller where the would-be murder closes in on the hero and the audience sees his strained face and upraised knife in succes­sive, ever-larger closeups.

As far as angles are concerned, the closer you make your angle of vision—the more oblique, the lower it is—the faster the action seems to be on-screen. This holds true regardless of just what your story happens to be, whether it is the meet­ing of Junior and Aunt Sally, or a parade, or a christening.

The tempo of a sequence as a whole cannot only be con­trolled by the length of each scene and the tempo within the scene, but also by die cut-ins and cut-aways used in among the main shots.

Cut-ins usually heighten action more than cut-aways, since they are intimately connected with the main action rather than with a related one.
Again, length of cuts has a direct influence on the general tempo. A quick cut of horses' hooves, or shouting spectators at a race, conveys more speed and excitement than does a long one.

The nature of the subject likewise has a bearing on tempo. If you're shooting a sequence of Baby out for a ride in her carriage you'll find that a cut-in of the turning wheel conveys a stronger sense of motion than a CU cut-in of Baby looking around—an action she might be performing from a stationary position.

Control of tempo through continuity is obviously very strong. Never make the mistake, however, of putting the cart before the horse and trying to force slow or fast tempo on a subject, instead of letting the nature of the subject determine the tempo. You cannot, for example, have the same tempo in a basketball game as you would in a picnic story without get­ting a dull, disappointing movie. But even in a swift basket­ball game, you will have intervals of slower action. The tempo for these slower-paced intervals should reflect the slow­ing down of the action. You can get your effect by using longer scenes of the players dribbling the ball or else by lengthening your cut-aways of spectators or substitutes and the coach watching the game.

Such a mixing of tempos is a great boon to your movie since it brings that wonderful quality of variety to it; a change of pace is as refreshing to your audience as a change of scene.

The meaning of tempo—and its application via pictorial continuity—is easy to grasp. There is no more esoteric mys­tery to it than there is to any of the other phases of motion-picture technique, even though it may be somewhat more subtle. As with those other phases, you will gain skill and sureness through experience and careful attention.

A really great sense of timing is a rare gift; a movie man born with it has been endowed with a touch of genius. But fortunately for most of us movie addicts who were born with only average talents, a sense of timing can be developed that will be thoroughly adequate.

Composition

Editorial judgment is also very strongly exercised in com­position, another means whereby your camera personality can be reflected in the way you make your shots.

There is one fundamental fact about composition in motion pictures, however, that must be brought out and fully under­stood. The fundamental fact is that—unlike the subject of the still picture—the motion-picture subject is usually in motion. All considerations must therefore he subordinated to the main one of keeping the audience's attention consistently on the action. Your guiding thought in "composing" on that moving celluloid canvas must be to present that action to best ad­vantage, to keep it clear and dominant.

You start, then—as lout; as your action really "moves" around and is not static—by keeping it fairly well centered on the screen, since the center is the1 natural focus of interest. This thought behooves you to be especially careful when panning action. It also calls for caution when shooting closeups, be­cause of parallax. In CU"s the position of the image in the view finder will not be identical with the position of the image in the lens, due to the different locations of these parts on the camera. Therefore, in order to center the image in the lens, it will be necessary to  adjust it off center in your viewfinder.

Your next consideration must be not to cut off anything necessary to explain the action. If you shoot a hockey game, don't frame the players from the knees up without ever show­ing their feet, because it is their quickly moving feet which explains their rapid motion.

You can hold off showing their feet until the sequence is well underway. This delay, if not protracted too long, is an excellent suspense—and surprise—device. Suppose, for ex­ample, that your audience, after watching "hockey" players whiz around for a while, saw the scene lower suddenly and reveal that they were wearing roller skates.

Be sure in such a suspense-surprise sequence to use a close-up to reveal the feet. The revelation is the climax of the se­quence and should have attention concentrated on it by means of a CU. If you used an LS to disclose their method of locomotion, the action of the game would dominate the shot and weaken the punch of discovering the roller skates.

The composition of action in closeups requires extra vigil­ance. Make a clean-cut job of telling your story. Let's return to that theme of Baby playing with a toy. Don't make a close shot which has most of Baby's face and part of her hands stretched out for the toy but which does not actually include the toy.

Pull back far enough to get the toy in the frame, since it is an integral part of the scene. Now if you want to emphasize the toy exclusively, come in for an ECU of it alone, held in her hands. Next shift to an ECU of Baby's
face to get her happy expression. Then to reestablish, pull back to a dif­ferent angle and shoot the entire action without cutting any essential part.

In other words, give each scene a strong, clearly defined center of interest; make each scene clean cut.

To keep each scene clean cut, care must be taken in the way parts of the body are cut off when you are shooting CU's and ECU's.

In the ECU of the toy in Baby's hands, try to avoid cutting off the hands across the fingers. Try to show the full length of fingers, or better still, the full hand; try to show a complete part.

As for the ECU of Baby's face, there is no objection to nip­ping off a bit of her top not now and then with your top frame line; just don't let that frame-line "knife" slip and slice her horribly through the eyes. If she is unusually animated and her head keeps bobbing up and down, keep your camera far enough away so that the head does not move in and out of the frame repeatedly. It is distressing to see Baby being scalped again and again.

Composing Static Action

Thus far you have been composing scenes of moving action, and your main concern lias been to frame it fully and clearly so that audience attention is held consistently upon the mo­tion.

Other composition considerations are minor as long as the screen shows plenty of movement with dramatic interest; the audience eye will be riveted upon it and oblivious of anything else.

But you will inevitably have static scenes with virtually no motion by your subjects. It is in such cases that conventional considerations of composition can serve the action well, both by focusing attention on it and by eliminating or reducing distracting elements. What are these conventional proce­dures:'

When action is static, placing the subject dead center in your viewfinder (and consequently, on the screen) is a bad way to focus attention on it, because it emphasizes its static nature. Some displacement off center is desirable. Remember that the eye usually travels from left to right and from bot­tom to top when viewing the screen, and spot your subject a little to the right and above center; this will tend to reduce its deadness, its static quality. Static action justifies—and allows time for—such finickiness.

To avoid the monotony created by an even balance, take pains in scenes which show the horizon to make sure that the horizon line crosses in the lower or higher third of the frame instead of exactly in the middle.

Furthermore, because the eye does travel from the bottom of the picture upward, minimize the foreground—unless your action or main subject is located in it. If you cannot avoid having your action take place at the top of the frame, leaving a large stretch of unimportant foreground or "waste space," try to utilize it so that it leads the eye to the subject; or else minimize it by reducing it or breaking it up, where possible, by the use of shadow.

For example, you are filming a long shot of worshippers entering a church on a hilltop, with much empty hillside in the foreground. Instead of resignedly shooting it that way, move around until your view-finder frames the road winding up to the church and leading the eye right to it. Better still, wait until a car enters the frame and drives up the road. With action in it, your foreground is no longer waste space. Even if your shot has to show the church alone, with no one going up the hillside, you can break up that monotonous foreground by scouting out some natural object like trees or rocks which throw a shadow.

You can use waste foreground to excellent advantage by manipulating the camera so that some object in the near fore­ground becomes part of the frame line, replacing the rigid line of the viewfinder. The doorway could serve to frame the LS of Mr. Prospect's office. It may be seen, from this example that a foreground object used for framing is not of great im­portance to the scene. It may be human or it may be inani­mate. In either case, however, it serves the function of a prop which eliminates waste space and draws the eye to the main subject by creating contrast and a feeling of depth.

If you were shooting that horse race, an excellent fore­ground frame could be found in a fence rail: a live prop could be found in the head and shoulders of a spectator. The human shape would not be in very sharp focus, but this would matter little since it would be recognizable in outline and would perform its framing function.

Framing can be done on the sides and background of your picture as well as the foreground. In that salesman's call on Mr. Prospect, the sides of the office doorway could be used as a frame. Employing tree branches to frame the background at the top of a scenic shot is another familiar device. Framing material can be found most anywhere: a lamp will serve when shooting a living-room scene, a bush when shooting scenery.

As for a good background, it should—at the least—be free of anything that distracts the audience from the main subject. Don't have either moving objects, such as a dog frisking around while your're shooting Aunt Sally spading her garden.or immobile objects, such as a tree directly behind her which seems to be sprouting right out of her hat.

A good background, at best, will cause your subject to stand out more prominently by virtue of contrast. Never for­get the graphic powers of light and dark, and the desirability of setting oil your subject against a background of contrasting tone. A blonde girl will stand out much more effectively than a brunette against the dark of a shadowed doorway; equally, the brunette will photograph better against the white-painted wall of a house.

The audience eye, by the way, is attracted to light tones be fore dark tones. (This may well be one of the reasons why gentlemen prefer blondes.)

We have here given a resume of the important considera­tions of composition in so far as they affect moving pictures. We are frankly reluctant to dwell on the subject, because com­position comes more and more into its own as action becomes increasingly static—in effect, less and less of a motion picture. It comes most fully into its own when shooting scenery, which is where the motion picture comes closest to the still picture. Motion-picture photographers too entranced by static composition possibilities sometimes forget the import­ance of action.

After The Shooting Is Over: Editing

Editing is the final stage in the study of pictorial continuity. It is only when you take your finger off the button after the final shot that you can really assess your work, smooth out the rough spots and polish up the good points.

Theoretically, final editing can be dispensed with when you have ideal shooting conditions: complete control and a de­tailed script. In such cases you can shoot your scenes with such precision that virtually no cutting or editing (the terms can be considered synonymous) will be necessary afterward. This is known as cutting in the camera.

Cutting in the camera, like any state of perfection, can never be more than partly realized. Even in Hollywood, where shooting conditions come nearest to perfect control, there is a colossal amount of wash' footage. Despite minutest care in advance planning, and the most costly preparations, the job of editing a Hollywood film after it is completed is almost as big as the job of shooting it.

In actual truth, you—the non-professional or the beginner-can come closer than Hollywood to cutting in the camera, be­cause your picture plan is likely to be far more simple. But you too will inevitably have to do some final editing.

Film with mechanical faults such as edge fog, scenes where the subject gawked into the camera, scenes which were sub­sequently reshot because a better angle was discovered—all will have to come out.

Such deletions are obvious and inevitable. What is most im­portant about final editing, what indeed makes it almost man­datory, is that you have an opportunity to look at your film the way the audience will see it. You get an exclusive preview you have a chance to see how close you came to achieving the objective you were shooting for, you have the opportunity to cut out poor footage, to rearrange scenes for better continuity and dramatic effect, to tinker with tempo, reshoot where necessary—in general, you can polish your work as near to perfection as possible.

If you have taken a considerable number of shots, editing gives you a chance to put them in their proper order. Recall how, in those example sequences when shooting uncontrolled action that was moving fast—the horse race, the fire—you grabbed the most exciting shots first before they were no longer available, then took the buildup shots with greater lei­sure and care. Their being jumbled up in the camera didn't matter; you knew you could arrange them for continuity in the final editing.

There will be many times when you will finish shooting one movie story on the beginning of a roll of film, and start shooting another on the same roll. There will be times when you take various shots or sequences at random, to use in a more elaborate, fully planned movie story later on. In all such cases, the non-related shots will have to be cut out and filed separately.

Still another reason for final editing is the fact that it is wise, when shooting, to make your scenes a little long. The cautious cameraman will start his camera rolling just before his action begins and keep shooting for an instant after the action ends. You should not only make sure of getting the complete picture. but have additional frames for overlap or any other splicing contingencies. Always bear in mind the continuity truism that one cannot put into film while editing what was not registered on film when shooting.

As for tempo, editing gives you a shining opportunity to put into your picture more snap and speed where called for, or to pace it at more tranquil rate of movement when that is appropriate. This, as we have seen earlier, is controlled by the length to which you trim your scenes and by the use you make of cut-ins and cut-aways. Remember that there isn't too much danger of making your shots too short when editing for tempo. It is a far more common fault for movies to drag than to move too briskly.

Is It Really Waste?

The idea of throwing away film tends to hurt the non-professional in pride and purse—he thinks. It will reassure him to know that every experienced cameraman figures on a mar-gin of waste. It is inevitable.

Far more film is left on Hollywood cutting-room floors than ever appears in the local theatre. The ratio of discarded to used footage may run as high as ten to one. Even newsreels usually shoot several hundred per cent more film than is actually used. The non-professional cameraman need not feel he is throwing his money away if the exigencies of good con­tinuity require him to discard ten per cent of his film.

So don't worry about those trims you throw away. What Minis like wasting film is actually conserving—conserving the quality of your motion picture.

Do Your Own  Editing!

A good many non-professional motion-picture cameramen do not do their own editing. Main beginners—or even seasoned

non-professionals—arc reluctant to do so; they may lack the1 equipment, the time, feel they require special technical knowledge, or simply prefer to have their films edited "outside" by a professional outfit.

To-day, however, equipment is abundant and inexpensive. As for the mechanical technique required to use it. it will take the non-professional no longer to learn how to handle shears viewer and splicer than it did to learn how to load a camera and set exposure and focus!

We find it a sorry thought that a cameraman who has con­ceived, planned, and photographed a movie story, however simple, could let a total stranger do the final editing. Allowing such a thing to happen to his "brain-child" is like bringing a flesh-and-blood child into the world and turning him over to someone else to be raised!

Your picture is your "baby." Don't give it away to someone who cannot understand your ideas and hopes for it.

Edit your film yourself. Having done that in addition to planning your story, directing, and shooting it, you may de­servedly assume the title of producer, too!

Summary

Pictorial continuity has a strong influence on the form and internal structure of a motion-picture story.

This influence is expressed through the editorial judgment of the photographer.

Editorial   judgment   is   exercised   before   shooting   In means of advance planning.

Some advance planning is desirable, whether it is a de­tailed scenario or a few mental notes.

Editorial   judgment   exercised   during   shooting   stamps the cameraman s individuality on each scene.

Tempo determines the speed at which the story seems to move; it is affected by length of shots, rate of movement of action, angles, use of cut-ins and cut-aways.

The primary consideration of good composition in a motion picture is to focus attention on the main action, and to eliminate or reduce distracting elements.

The final expression of editorial judgment is in the editing of the film after shooting—in placing cut-ins, cut-aways and other shots in their proper order, in matching action through overlap, in eliminating bad scenes and bad film, in adjusting tempo, and in many other essential operations

Any waste incurred through the throwing away of film is more than compensated for by the saving of film quality.

There is little excuse for the non-professional s refraining from doing his own editing: equipment is abundant and inexpensive; there is no special mechanical technique to be learned; and finally, the cameraman is definitely unfair to his own creative effort when he turns over the editing of his movie to a professional who is a stranger to his own conception of that movie.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...