When I explained the different jobs involved in production, I was pretty vague about the editor’s job. That’s because there is so much involved in the step after the camera stops rolling that I felt like post-production deserved its own post.
There’s a (usually) tongue-in-cheek phrase that people like to use on set: “We’ll fix it in post.” While there are plenty of things that can be fixed in post-production, it’s not an editor’s job to fix all the mistakes that were made at a shoot. It’s up to the people on set to make sure that the editors have minimal things to fix, so that they can work their magic without having to worry about how many times someone decided “We’ll fix it in post!”
A good editor is an artist in his or her own right. It’s not just about following the script—it’s deciding exactly how long that awkward moment should last, when to cut away from a speaker to show a reaction, sifting through the footage that works and the footage that doesn’t, or even how to cut together a scene so that it makes sense without any dialogue. It’s setting the pace and the rhythm of the whole project. It’s storytelling in its own way.
William Goldenberg is an editor who’s worked on films like Argo (for which he won an Oscar), The Imitation Game, Transformers, and Pleasantville. (He’s also an alum from my alma mater, Temple University!) While I was at Temple, he came to speak to the film and media production students about being an editor, and one of the things he said that I found very interesting is that he purposely never spends time on set. Some editors like to be on set to get a feel for the process of the movie they’re working on, but Mr. Goldenberg said that when he edits, he doesn’t want to look at a scene and think, “Well, they spent a really long time on this scene, so I’d feel bad if I cut this out.” By not being part of the production process, he can approach post-production with objectivity and can make decisions about what stays and what goes without being bogged down by guilt over cutting out shots that took a lot of effort. He feels that this gives him the best chance of making the best film he can.
In addition to deciding what stays and what goes and piecing the story together, there’s also color correcting and grading. Color correction is retouching the color of the shot so that things look more natural—white looks like white, black looks like black, etc. This is useful if the camera wasn’t white balanced properly (which I talked about in my last post), and is done for technical reasons. Color grading on the other hand, is another way to create tone and atmosphere. Color grading can mean the difference between, say, a dark Tim Burton film and a bright, loud Baz Luhrmann one.
How the post-production process works differs wildly from project to project. Sometimes it’s just a guy at a computer working on his own. Sometimes the director is involved in every step. Sometimes there are lots of editors, each working on different parts of the project. Sometimes there is a lot of CGI (computer animation), and the project has to be sent out to a graphics house to be completed. Sometimes there are storyboards to follow, and sometimes there’s more freedom in storytelling. It all depends on the kind of project and who is in charge.
Many projects, even including small ones, have a post-production coordinator, who keeps everything on schedule and delegates tasks to the post-production team. They make sure everything is running smoothly so that the project is finished on time. I interned with a small production company in college and worked mostly under the post-production coordinator. She made sure everyone had something to do, and she was in touch with clients so that the editors didn’t have to worry about it.
The big thing to know about post-production is that it’s not an easy job. This isn’t opening iMovie and dropping in some clips with some cool-looking presets. This is storytelling. It’s finding the best shots and the best order for them. It’s making sure the color looks the way it should and the audio sounds right. (There is a difference between sound mixing and sound editing. I promise all of you who watch the Oscars and are baffled by this.) It’s creating the finished product that we can enjoy (or maybe not). Without the post-production process, all we would have would be a pile of disconnected clips, and no awesome Transformers robots or Jurassic Park dinosaurs!
If you are interested in the editing process, working with MLP gives you the option of taking part in in-person edit sessions! To learn more, Susanna wrote a post describing what you’ll see and why it can be a great option for clients.