Much like the art of compositing the editing process is where it all comes together. While compositing involves combining multiple images to create one (or one shot), editing involves combining multiple shots or "clips" to create one seamless film or movie sequence. This also involves the inclusion of any title and credit sequences as well as sound including voice over, score and sound effects. Editing is also often called Cutting taken literally from the fact that film reels used to be physically cut and pasted back together to produce the final edited reel to be presented. While editing is a functional utility of the film-making process it also provides te director with very important artistic control over how the final film is presented. Different directors often have very unique styles including transitions and pacing and is usually an extension of the cinematography used while producing shots.

Storyboards, Pre-Vis and Anamatics

The art and technique of editing often starts long before a single shot is captured with the camera. Some directors work with illustrators to produce storyboards to help the director plan their vision for the film including shot framing, timing, pacing and even transitions. Completing this task is common and a good practice because it allows the filmmaker to make drastic decisions about the film while it is still very inexpensive to do so. Actors can be added/removed from shots, settings can change, script lines can be redone all within a matter of minutes and for no cost. Just imagine a director deciding that a shots setting should go from inside a spaceship to an alien planet while on-set of the spaceship with the entire crew and actors present. Thats not going to happen no matter how good that decision may be.

For more complex shots that involve large camera movements or a lot of CG elements directors may elect to produce some pre-vis shots to help explain/explore how they want it come together in the end. Previsualization is generally a very roughly modeled/animated and rendered shot that loosely represents the actions that are going to occur in a shot or sequence of shots. Again this allows the filemaker the ability to explore and make drastic changes while it is still fairly inexpensive to do so.

An animatic is created when a director takes storyboards and pre-vis clips and does a first draft edit of the film usually including a rough audio track with dialog and sound effects. The animatic is cut together using the same editing tools that will be used in the final edit and involves a lot of the same techniques. Again this allows the director the ability to see a very rough version of how the final film will look and work to ensure the shots captured on set (or modeled, animated, rendered, composited) will work once assembled in the final edit.

Now we aren't here to talk about storyboards, pre-vis and animatics per se, but I hope you are seeing just how essential they are to the film-making pipeline specifically the editing process. Some directors will shoot and cut the movie to be almost identical to the final cut. This is especially true for 3D animated movies because since every shot is painstakingly planned and is so darn expensive there will rarely be any editing changes after the animation part is complete. However with film this is not always the case.

While camera angles and moves as well as the dialogue will remain the same from take to take the actual performances from actors and shot events may be subtly or drastically different. Some actors will actually purposefuly act each take slightly different to give the director an array of takes to work with on the cutting room floor to shape the exact flow of emotions he or she wants. Some takes have the right emotional pitch, or the right timing, or the right look at the right time that allows for the shots to be cut together into a seamless artistic representation rather than just a sequence of events. These decisions are made in editing.

Check out this behind the scenes on editing from Spider Man 2

Structure

You will find these terms in screen-writing, but the whole point of the script for film is to tell the story. The purpose of the edit is the final realization of that original written plan.

These definitions were taken from screenwritingscience.com

• SHOT: An uninterrupted take by the camera.
• SCENE: Single or multiple shots edited to present a block of the story’s narrative, plot and/or character development Generally, Scenes occur within a specific time frame, and focus on a cohesive theme, event or character experience.
• SEQUENCE: A scene, or a series of connected scenes, that present a succession of related events that constitute and advance a distinct component of the story narrative, plot and/or character development.

All of these building blocks come together to tell the full story for the film. How shots, scenes and sequences are cut together and why largely involves the pacing, timing and transitions. More rapid cutting in a shot will create agitation or unease in the viewer while a long drawn out emotional shot will allow the viewer to be drawn further into the emotion. The use of transitions between shots will aid in different ways.

These definitions were taken from elementsofcimena.com

• CUT: The most basic and common type of transition is the cut. A cut happens when one shot instantly replaces the other. Cuts are so widely used that feature movies normally count thousands of them.
• FADE IN/OUT: Fade ins and fade outs are the second most common type of transition. Fade outs happen when the picture is gradually replaced by black screen or any other solid color. Traditionally, fade outs have been used to conclude movies. Fade ins are the opposite: a solid color gradually gives way to picture, commonly used in the beginning of movies.
• DISSOLVE: also known as overlapping, dissolves happen when one shot gradually replaces by the next. One disappears as the following appears. For a few seconds, they overlap, and both are visible. Commonly used to signify the passage of time.
• WIPE: Wipes are dynamic. They happen when one shot pushes the other off frame. George Lucas deliberately used them throughout the Star Wars series.
• IRIS: An old-fashioned transition hardly employed today is the iris, when a circulars masking closes the picture to a black screen. Irises are found in some cartoons like this example from Betty Boop.

There are many other transitions available, but the primary ones used include cut, fade and dissolve. In editing it is important to know the tools you have and know their purpose. It may be tempting to hide bad camera cuts behind a dissolve but that is not the purpose of a dissolve.

For your assignment this week you will take your exported clip from the After Effects compositing assignment and import it into Adobe Premiere. You will then add your clip to a new sequence and then add some additional clips to the sequence. These could be a basic text title screen, or credits screen or possibly even another shot or 2 that you decide to render out and include. You will also need to add some basic sound effects or some music to the background. You must add a fade in and fade out transition to your sequence. You will export (file > export) your final sequence as a compressed mp4 .h264 movie using adobe encoder. Submit your movie file to UNM Canvas Assignment 11.