Architects & Contractors
written by Minsa Cho
Years ago, I worked for a major cable network on a show with a very green director. This director was never sure of what he needed to shoot, so we had to shoot everything. In fact, we shot the same scenes in different locations so the editor could, if he wanted, place the scene where he saw fit. He’d be so busy shooting scenes over and over that he’d forget to shoot elements that we actually needed.
What happened with this footage? It got thrown at the editor with the hopes that he would be able to create some sort of story. The problem was that there was too much of the same footage to make heads and tails of anything. There were way too many options, too many choices, and not enough story. And too many choices are never a good thing. The end result was a jumbled, incoherent nightmare.
The producer/director is like the architect of a house. He plans the look, the layout of the rooms and the materials that will be used. The editor, therefore, is the contractor. He is the person who physically builds the house. If the architect’s blueprints (story) are jumbled and without proper measurements, the contractor (editor) is handicapped in his ability to construct.
Just as an architect cannot plan to build a house without a blueprint, a producer/director cannot craft a story without a proper vision of the elements that need to be shot, and where those elements fit in the story.
Take Martin Scorsese’s ‘Raging Bull’ as an example. In the sequence where Jake La Motta lets Sugar Ray Robinson pummel him, Scorsese doesn’t have his DP, Michael Chapman, shoot from every possible angle ‘just in case’ he might need it. Instead, he had Chapman shoot very specific elements that would cut together to create an emotional yet incredibly visceral moment.
I hear it from producers and directors all the time on set: ‘Well, let’s just shoot it just in case we need it…’ Although I agree to a certain extent, more often than not those words are coming, not from a place of assuredness, but rather, fear.
So the idea is: shoot what you need, with a little wiggle room, and move forward from there. Don’t rely on your editor to save the day – after all, an editor can only do so much… Martin Scorsese’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, does such an incredible job not because she’s given an incredible amount of footage from which to choose, but because she has an incredible blueprint from which to work.
