Producers, directors, and stars of Hollywood films get all the press, but it's the editors behind the scenes that get the job done. They must take hundreds of hours of footage and craft it into a coherent story, a process that takes skill, objectivity, creativity, and lots of time. Let’s learn a little bit more about that task.
10. DETAILS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO THEM.
Although a film’s big picture storyline is important, film editors also need to focus sharply on the details. Editors can manipulate the tone, pace, and comedic beats of a film to create better performances, craft a more compelling story, or distract audiences from a continuity error. Slight differences—such as a small variation in dialogue or waiting an extra beat before a joke—can make a huge difference in the overall quality of the film. Film editor Walter Murch, who has worked on The Godfather series, Ghost (1990), and Apocalypse Now (1979), tells NPR that he thinks of his job as “sort of a cross between a short-order cook and a brain surgeon … Sometimes you're doing incredibly delicate things. Two frames different will mean whether the film is a success or not.”
11. IF THEIR WORK IS GOOD, IT’S INVISIBLE.
When audiences watch a well-edited movie, transitions between scenes flow smoothly and naturally. A poorly edited film, though, will be obvious. As Murch tells Variety, citing a line from The Wizard of Oz director Victor Fleming: “Good editing makes the director look good, great editing makes the film look like it wasn’t directed at all."
But well-made movies with flashy editing sequences can call attention to a great editor’s work. Thelma Schoonmaker, who edited Goodfellas (1990) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), tells Film Comment that she probably won an Oscar for editing The Aviator because of the film’s dramatic plane crash scene. “There’s a great deal of mystery in film editing, and that’s because you’re not supposed to see a lot of it … And because there is so little understanding of what really great editing is, a film that’s flashy, has a lot of quick cuts and explosions, gets particular attention,” said Schoonmaker.
Read more about the nuts and bolts of the career of film editing at mental_floss.