Editing: The Importance of Letting it Land

I always have a book or two in my bag so that down times on set are never wasted. Meryl Streep knits. Stallone writes screenplays. I read. Everyone does something.

Recently I had the pleasure of reading producer/screenwriter Phil Rosenthal's book You're Lucky You're Funny, a smart and hilarious page-turner about the creation of the hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond. Included are lots of advice about acting, writing, navigating the sometimes shark-infested waters of Hollywood, and a great piece of advice on editing, which I

decided to share here because I had a conversation on this very thing with a young filmmaker a few days ago. Editing dialog in a film should serve as a guide to the audience on the emotional subtext of what is being said. I called it "including the reaction." Rosenthal calls it "clarity" and "letting it land."

He said it better than I did. Here it is:

"Clarity. At any point along the way the clarity can be muddled, and then the joke, or even the point of your story, is muddled. The shot has to be framed correctly so that we can see Marie next to Frank as he says his line. Then in editing, if you don't stay on that shot for the correct amount of time, or you don't cut to it at the right moment before the line, the clarity could be lost...

"....Pat (editor Pat Barnett) makes a rough assemblage for me....Right away, if the first moment feels wrong to me, we stop and examine all the possibilities. Let's cut it, show me another angle of that, show me all four angles. What was Robert doing while Marie was saying that? Give me the B camera for this line, then go to C, then go to X, and back to A, then back to B. That's how you put together a show--making the moments clearer and clearer with each one of the choices.

"You make it clear by taking out the extraneous, which hones the focus. You know how long to stay on a shot to maybe get an even richer laugh out of it, because the look on an actor's face in close-up is so hilarious that you want to stay there. Don't cut away so fast after this joke; let it land. Ray could say something funny, and if we cut away too fast, it doesn't land, it doesn't have a second. Sometimes the actor's face is great right after the line, and because of that it seems to come from a real person. They really say it, there is some thought behind the line, and the scene is not just joke, joke, joke, joke. It's talking, and it's coming from people. This makes all the difference, and it should go by you, the audience, seamlessly, because you're involved in the story. "

Rosenthal is talking about comedy, but I think this is true whether comedy or drama. The audience needs to see and feel the emotional undercurrents. Otherwise it's all just words.

Background Actors in Hollywood's Golden Age

Oscar-winning actor David Niven came to Hollywood in the 1930s. Before breaking into speaking roles (his skill at socializing with big name stars helped) he signed with Central Casting and worked as what was then called an Extra (now called Background) in such films as Mutiny on the Bounty. It's worth noting what that experience was like before actors unionized. Here's an excerpt from Niven's 1975 memoir, Bring on the Empty Horses:

"It was grim. The wage for a crowd extra fell below $3 a day, and Central Casting reported that, including the highest paid of their 18,000, fewer than 60 extras were earning more than $2,000 a year; the rest were averaging less than $500.

"Most of us were forced to take part-time jobs and we became carhops, manual laborers, shop assistants, janitors, or waitresses; I worked on a fishing boat. Many went on relief.

"The lucky ones among us who received studio calls were expected to report for work at 6 a.m., to accept inedible meals when it suited the producers, to continue working, or rather to continue being herded about like cattle, till all hours of the night with no additional pay and to report again at 6 the following morning. For the same pittance we had to work right through the night on Saturdays, and we had to face the fact that on days when shooting was canceled at the last minute because of bad weather, a drunken  leading man, or "Acts of God" (a favorite studio ploy), we would be sent home without touching a cent. There was no compensation for the hours of travel spent on the erratic transportation system of the metropolis, and if we got hurt during filming, there was no redress except by suing the studio heads, which was tantamount to asking them if they would kindly find room for more names on their blacklists....

"All registered extras followed the same routine: Between five and eight o'clock every evening we would call Central Casting and state our names and classifications....

" With up to 18,000 inquiries coming in for an average of 800 jobs, the evening hum of disappointment rising from the switchboard was numbing.

"Nothing, call later...Nothing, call later...Nothing, call later - but most people continued calling till at long last the switchboard went dead."

The Screen Actors Guild was finally recognized in 1935 and thankfully for David Niven he landed one of those coveted seven-year contracts with MGM a year later.

Director/Coach John Pallotta Offers an E-Book on Acting

John Pallotta conducting an acting class

I want to pass this along before I forget: New York Director and Acting Coach John Pallotta has written an E-Book - AUTOMATED MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA DEVELOPMENT -  that I think is a very useful compilation of advice and tips for those starting out in the business. John hosts insightful classes and workshops for actors all over the East and right now the book is posted on his blog where actors can read it for free.  See it linked here.  Also check out his classes at his website here. I've taken them and found his advice to be invaluable in developing a character for the screen.

Frank Capra on the Art of Directing Actors

In my free time, I love to read books about filmmaking, especially autobiographies of great directors. Recently, while reading Frank Capra's The Name Above the Title, I came across this gem on what distinguishes great directors from the pack. It could have been written yesterday (just add "CGI" to paragraph 3). Here is what he said:

"This is the artistry of the film director: convince actors that they are real flesh and blood human beings living a story. Once actors are themselves convinced, then, hopefully, they will convince audiences....Does a star, paying his hotel bill, pay it to a bit actress or to a real cashier? A bit actress, perhaps hired for one day, will be just a bit actress to herself and to audiences. But let the director give her an identity--an only daughter worried about her mother in the hospital, a wife anxious about her husband losing his job, or a woman in love going to a party that night with the man of her life--and that bit actress becomes a woman.  She many not say a single word in her brief appearance on the screen, but her "identity" will fix her mood, her thinking, her attitude.  And audiences will sense her as a real person, not an actress....

"Extras walking on sidewalks as backgrounds to a scene can walk through as a flock of sheep or as real pedestrians, depending on the wit of the director. He must give each one an identity. One extra is late for a dentist's appointment, another is looking for the address of his wife's lawyer. That one is going to a poker game. This woman is shopping for her kid's shoes. That young one has a lunch date, that other one hopes men will notice her new hairdo. It doesn't matter who the director tells them they are, as long as they are somebody as they walk through the background. One simple detail changes the scene from ersatz to real....

"Another distinguishing mark of top directors is the absence of obvious camera moves. Undisguised camera tricks are the mark of beginners who fall in love with bizarre camera angles and hand-held moving camera shots. Wrong. Fall in love with your actors. All else is machinery, and director's vanity. The audience must never become aware that there is a camera within a thousand miles of the scene. Mood scenes? Fine. Necessary. But establish moods subtly, suggestively. Don't let your cameras hang up figurative sign posts giving mileage and directions. Audiences cannot both feel and think at the same time. If they notice your "show-off" camera, the mood goes out the window. Stanley Kramer's 360-degree pan shot in the courtroom of Judgment at Nuremberg served only to distract attention from his tense drama.

"Therefore, young directors, forget techniques, forget zoom lenses and subliminal cutting; remember only that you are telling your story not with gimmicks but with actors!

"I have heard an extra ask the assistant director (he generally handles groups of extras in crowd scenes): 'Who am I supposed to be in this scene?' To such a question, vital to all actors in all scenes, the sweating assistant is apt to answer: 'Who the hell cares who you are, lady? Just sashay through the scene, will ya?' 

"That assistant will never make a director. But the background extra who asked, 'Who am I?' lit a bulb toward her name in lights."

Reading Capra's opening paragraph above finally provided the answer to a question that has puzzled me for a very long time: Why so much of director Michael Curtiz' Casablanca, from the opening shot in the souk  to the bit players and the stars, is so alive and magical? It's because great directing requires a love of actors, even background actors, and a passion for believability.

Understanding and Developing a Scene

Many actors try to gain insight into the character they are playing by writing reams of backstory and character description. For me, being a triple Aries and terribly anxious to get on with things, that approach is a struggle.

Here are David Mamet's thoughts on understanding and developing a scene that I've found very helpful in adding immediacy and specificity to my role. In fact, I printed this out and carry it in my wallet because it's especially useful for cold reads.

A Moving Performance from Michael Shiflett

Actor friend Michael Shiflett, who played my husband last month in Andrew Evans' short film, Anna and Thomas, plays the Vietnam vet in this video.  I had to share it as it's a lovely, understated performance. Michael often plays tough guys, but when a tough guy dials it down it can be so moving....

Two by Otto Friedrich

I don’t think one can work in film without being in love with the movies: their long and glorious history, the trends and techniques that create them, and the actors and actresses – great stars and contract players – who bring them to life.

Since starting down this crazy path as an actress, my shelves have become filled with books about the film industry and the availability of many wonderful old books on Amazon, some of them out of print, means that I always have one in my bag to pick up between scenes or devour in my easy chair during those weeks between jobs.

I’ve just acquired two by American journalist and author Otto Friedrich: City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940’s and Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s, the second of which provides back story on many of the European actors, writers, and filmmakers who fled to Hollywood prior to the second World War.

Friedrich is a terrific writer who captures the big picture and then enriches it with the stories (and scandals) of those who played a part. Fascinating reading.  The errands can wait.