Hollywood Editors

 Michael Kahn is a recognized film editor. He is one of the most successful editors of today. He has won awards in the category of Academy Award for Film Editing three times. All of the three movies he won Oscars for were directed by Steven Spielberg: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). And has been nominated a further seven times. His combined box office totals for the films he has edited, reaches into the billions. This is due to his association with several successful directors,

 Beginning his career in the early 70s, editing the television sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. He then went directly to editing feature films. His first features include Elliot Silverstein’s A Man called Horse and three films for director Robert Clouse. He has also worked with George C. Scott, Irvin Kershner, Frank Marshall, Richard Donner, Emilio Estevez, John Frankenheimer, Tobe Hooper, Adrian Lyne, and Robert Zemeckis, among others.

 He is also has a membership to American Cinema Editors (ACE ). The ACE is a honorary society of film editors. Founded in 1950.

 In Total Kahn has edited over 67 titles shown on IMDb. 3 Oscars another 10 wins and 17 nominations. Some of his film credits include the Indiana Jones saga. Jurassic Park. Empire of the Sun. The Goonies. Savin Private Ryan. Schindler’s List. Most recently Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and has been working on the fourth Pirates of the Caribbeans title: On Stranger Tides among others.

Styles of Editing

cut A visual transition created in editing in which one shot is instantaneously replaced on screen by another.

continuity editingEditing that creates action that flows smoothly across shots and scenes without jarring visual inconsistencies. Establishes a sense of story for the viewer.

cross cutting
Cutting back and forth quickly between two or more lines of action, indicating they are happening simultaneously.

dissolve A gradual scene transition. The editor overlaps the end of one shot with the beginning of the next one.

editing The work of selecting and joining together shots to create a finished film.

errors of continuity Disruptions in the flow of a scene, such as a failure to match action or the placement of props across shots.

establishing shot A shot, normally taken from a great distance or from a "bird's eye view," that establishes where the action is about to occur.

eyeline match The matching of eyelines between two or more characters. For example, if Sam looks to the right in shot A, Jean will look to the left in shot B. This establishes a relationship of proximity and continuity.

fade A visual transition between shots or scenes that appears on screen as a brief interval with no picture. The editor fades one shot to black and then fades in the next. Often used to indicate a change in time and place.

final cut The finished edit of a film, approved by the director and the producer. This is what the audience sees.

iris Visible on screen as a circle closing down over or opening up on a shot. Seldom used in contemporary film, but common during the silent era of Hollywood films.

jump cut A cut that creates a lack of continuity by leaving out parts of the action.

matched cut A cut joining two shots whose compositional elements match, helping to establish strong continuity of action.

montage Scenes whose emotional impact and visual design are achieved through the editing together of many brief shots. The shower scene from Psycho is an example of montage editing.

rough cut The editor's first pass at assembling the shots into a film, before tightening and polishing occurs.

sequence shot A long take that extends for an entire scene or sequence. It is composed of only one shot with no editing.

shot reverse shot cuttingUsually used for conversation scenes, this technique alternates between over-the-shoulder shots showing each character speaking.

wipe Visible on screen as a bar travelling across the frame pushing one shot off and pulling the next shot into place. Rarely used in contemporary film, but common in films from the 1930s and 1940s.

History of Editing

Moviola

 Film editing is the art of story telling. It is an important part in the filmmaking process. After a film is finished being shot, it is then taken to a film editor who will take the correct selection of shots and scenes and combine them together and start assembling in the correct order to come up with a final cut, a finished story.

 

With the use of computers and editing software rapidly improving. Editors become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. Before when computers weren’t used a picture editor dealt with only picture. Now a film editor is responsible for picture, sound, music and visual effects.

 Before the widespread use of non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film workprint (cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as a Moviola, or "flatbed" machine such as a K.-E.-M. or Steenback. Today, most films are edited digitally (on systems such as Avid or Final cut pro) and bypass the film positive workprint altogether. In the past, the use of a film positive (not the original negative) allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wished, without the risk of damaging the original.

When the film workprint had been cut to a satisfactory state, it was then used to make an edit decision list (EDL). The negative cutter referred to this list while processing the negative, splitting the shots into rolls, which were then contact printed to produce the final film print or answer print. Today, production companies have the option of bypassing negative cutting altogether. With the advent of digital intermediate ("DI"), the physical negative does not necessarily need to be physically cut and hot spliced together; rather the negative is optically scanned into computer(s) and a cut list is conformed by a DI editor.