Against Good Editing
4 years ago, when I was starting out as an editor, my conception of good editing was intuitive and whimsical. An evaluation was usually only passed on my own videos, the thought of analyzing the editing in a film hadn’t even occurred to me at that point.
If I liked a video I edited, then, maybe it was good editing, if a few people around me liked it, then it probably was good editing.
After the initial few months of editing—I was mostly making Anime Music Videos—my own inability to objectively evaluate my editing began troubling me. I was frustrated largely because all I had to go on was the feeling of it being good, and feelings changed constantly. This feeling coincided and was partially cultivated by my forays into working with and for others, partially from a sense I had developed throughout the years of watching film and television. If there was any sort of a dispute, it was my feeling against theirs, which always seemed to be irreconcilable. I was unable to explain to a third person the reasoning behind my convictions.
My lack of knowledge would painfully make itself aware during a 9 month stint at a Digital Marketing Agency where I was tasked with editing almost 24 reels a week. Most of the time I rarely got any feedback on the edits. I was expected to work independently, but being a fresher and clearly lacking knowledge made me extremely anxious. Until the day I quit the company I had no idea whether an edit would be rejected or accepted. When I did get feedback it was usually:
It isn’t good enough; had nothing actionable in it to work on.
The flow isn’t there; which I assumed meant the cuts weren’t smooth enough.
It always felt like I was shooting in the dark, not really understanding what I was doing, nor understanding the tools I was using well enough to be assured in their use.
I later realized that my understanding of editing was not knowledge—as knowledge is by its nature is intelligible. Even if I had some insight into editing itself, I had not yet made those insights intelligible to myself nor to a third person. To explain to someone that my editing is good would require that I must also be able to understand why it is so.
One of those insights was that all videos—reels, music videos, film, youtube videos—tried to communicate something. This could be a joke, a story, a product’s features etc. From this follows that each video must be judged based on what it’s trying to communicate. This is the basis of my whole argument. As such, film is a form of communication. The proficiency of editing must be measured based on what it communicates and how it does so. This itself cannot be done without an intimate engagement with the film in question.
I will attempt to non-exhaustively interpret the meaning behind good/bad editing and prove that it has very little value beyond signalling what you like/don’t like and what is accepted and rejected. As long as we stay in the realm of discerning between good and bad, accepting and rejecting, comprehension will forever be alien to us.
What is editing?
(An important note here is that when speaking of editing or the editor, I do not mean the credited editor but the process itself. Usually a large number of people play a part in the process and I do not wish to diminish their contributions).
The process of editing is the selection, timing and arrangement of given shots into a filmic continuity.
In other words which shots go where, in what order and how long each shot lasts.
There are some caveats here that are worth mentioning.
Practically speaking, with regards to contemporary film making, the process of editing is not one that is undertaken solely by the editor. In the era of Silent Cinema, often a huge amount of footage would be shot, all of this would only find its place during editing.
But the advent of sound brought change with it, recording sound was quite expensive and this led to the filmmakers planning out shots and their order far in advance of shooting. A main consideration for this is the essential difference between sound and silent cinema. In sound cinema dialogue would often carry information that could not be placed anywhere else. Thus the final order of shots would be decided upon before shooting. This method also allowed filmmakers to shoot within the financial constraints put on them by studios.
Thus one responsibility of editing had shifted from the editor to the writer; the arrangement of shots.
This does not mean that planning out the whole film beforehand is the rule, it was simply a norm. There are many directors who prefer to work off the cuff. David Fincher shot a whopping 286 hours of footage for The Social Network (2008). Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000) was shot over a 15 month period with no script to speak of. Most of the film was improvised on set.
I’d also like to define the context within which I use the term filmic continuity*1
Filmic continuity is the experience the film presents us with. Although the experiences can’t be clearly delineated into singular ones, for the sake of making it intelligible, I’ll provide an outline.
In the case of a Hollywood film it would be the narrative, In the case of a documentary it would be an investigation of its subject, certain films expound a specific idea and each cut carries forward that idea. Each cut carries forward the continuity of the film.
By the time a film reaches the editing table, a huge part of the experience is already created. What the editor does is shape it. The shape is how we experience film. The shape cannot be evaluated on its own without any reference to what is contained within it.
It’s important to note here that although continuity as it is used in the film industry falls within the definition of filmic continuity, it is narrower.
Continuity System
The term continuity is ubiquitous within film making. Anyone who hasn’t worked on a film set before will become instantly familiarized with it as soon as they step onto a set.
Continuity means that all the details within a film must be consistent from shot to shot and from scene to scene.
The room they are in is the same.
The lighting is consistent between the shots.
The props in the second shot occupy the same position they did in the first.
The actors in the second shot are wearing the same costumes as in the first shot.
Although small continuity errors go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things, like this cut in His Girl Friday (1940). By and large the details within the two shots are continuous.
The Continuity System*2 is a set of approaches to film-making that was developed in early Hollywood in order to make films in which the narrative is presented with clarity.
Some thoughts on Good or bad editing
Although I’m suggesting that the simple invoking of good or bad editing essentially means nothing. There is something it signifies, a consensus. I would like to take some time to address this consensus behind the technical tools that are used to invoke the phantom of good editing.
In no order particular,
What is usually considered to be good editing is a film, a music video, or a reel in which the transition from one shot to the next feels as smooth as possible. This is more true for music videos and reels than for films where the singular cut is less noticed. There is a ubiquitous quote associated with this too, “The editor becomes invisible.” This is done in a variety of ways, matching on action and sound is the most common method for this.
Smoothness has a very specific goal in mind. To maintain an illusion of a continuous stream of action. The efficacy of this method can clearly be seen since the continuity system is ubiquitous.
All smoothness indicates an adherence to the Continuity System, which is a style, a style is a way of telling a story, one cannot evaluate the use of the style itself without understanding the story.
Another interpretation which is intimately tied to smoothness is tightness of the edit. Tightness is sensuous, it cannot be measured, it’s relative. It is generally measured by how engaged a person was while watching the film. The intensity of engagement itself will vary wildly among multiple viewers when considering the same film itself. One person’s unnecessary scene might be another’s crucial and important one.
Although if one interprets tightness quite charitably, it also yields a very specific technical presumption. An expectation for a film to be shaped in a certain way that one is familiar with. This film feels different from another one that I like.
One factor that adds to tightness is how compelling the narrative is. Immersion in the narrative usually means that cuts that don’t even attempt to be smooth (jump cuts), tend to pass under the radar.
Flagrant cuts are another symbol to signify good editing. The most popular of which being the graphic match cut. These appraisals are usually concerned with explicit display of ingenuity.
If we look at it from a bigger perspective with respect to how scenes in a film relate to one another, one technique that has become a gimmick over the years is non-linear editing. This narrative technique produces a very suspenseful tension and release cycle.
The qualities of good editing mentioned above are features of editing according to the Continuity Style. Most commercial filmmakers across the world adhere to this system. Bad editing tends to be anything that falls outside of this rubric.
None of these are absolutes or universals. Continuity is simply a style that is ubiquitous and not the only way to make cinema. Matches on action, matches on sound, the 180 degree rule are simply techniques or tools that are used to create a specific experience. To say the editing is good because the film employs these tools is tantamount to saying that the painting is good because they used oil. It doesn’t mean anything, it is only a description. To pick out properties of the films one likes, decontextualize them and to consider them a sign of good editing, is at worst vulgar anti-intellectualism and at best only the first step in understanding the value editing choices brings to the film.
A Finer Look
If we look at the specific techniques in use; matches, graphic matches, non-linear editing, smooth transitions etc. It’s easier to measure and probably say that it’s good. A match is good, when it masks the cut from one shot to the next. The same criteria applies for each transition. Non-linear editing as a narrative technique is used well when the film is able to maintain narrative clarity. Although even in this case, there might be films that deliberately obscure the narrative in order to produce other effects. Thus making it’s categorization of good and bad much wider.
Inception (2010) uses parallel editing to make scenes more tense and gripping. A fascinating usage of parallel editing comes towards the end of the film where around 3-4 nested timelines are juggled by Christopher Nolan. What is of note about the film is that it creates an internal logic that makes the time within those scenes proportional, making the duration of the shots a narrative requirement. Heartfelt realizations happening against the background of hair-raising tension.
At the end of the day these are simply evaluations of the tools themselves. These techniques are to be judged based on the effect it creates and how it adds to the totality of the film. Not to mention that when addressing the techniques in film one has to be extremely specific, as they exist in such a confluence that a simple reference to editing doesn’t represent a cogent articulation of what it does in the film.
So the question that we are left with is this; how does one evaluate editing? In an absolute sense of good and bad, I don’t know. I don’t think this is possible. Although I do think use cases can be provided in which certain tools are a good fit.
Without a systematic understanding of editing, such an effort, no matter how well intentioned, is putting the cart before the horse.
(Paraphrasing from the Phenomenology of Spirit) In a proposition of this kind one begins with the word ‘Good’. This by itself is a meaningless sound, a mere declaration; it is only that predicate that says what Good is, gives it Content and meaning. Only at the end does the empty declaration of Good become knowledge.
Reisz, Karl. The Technique of Film Editing (1953), p. 3
Bordwell, David. Film Art, An Introduction (1979), p. 230