Chapter 5

Creating Sequences

We are in the process of zooming out, first from examining individual shots, then to joining those individual shots together as partners, and now I consider the wider picture, as those partners form groups of shots that start to tell a story.

This chapter is divided as follows:

• 5.1 Pace and Timing—Taking a broader view, I show you how to be on the lookout for ways to control the pace and timing of a sequence.
• 5.2 Eliminating Unnecessary Pauses—Learn how to spot and eliminate unnecessary pauses and delays.
• 5.3 Continuity—Very often it’s too late by the time poor continuity reaches the editor. I’ll show you some ways you can deceive your audience and hide some of these problems.
• 5.4 Cutaways—A necessary evil that, in the wrong hands, can make such a shot seem to scream ‘I’m a cutaway!’ I’ll show you some tricks to avoid this.
• 5.5 Flow—How additional sound can often help join shots together and create flow.
• 5.6 Time Jumps—How to compress real time without letting the viewer know.
• 5.7 Editing without Dialogue—How to create a sequence without the help of a dialogue track.
• 5.8 Key Points—Creating Sequences

5.1 Pace and Timing

Pace and timing are hugely dependent on what you are cutting. The extremes of comedy and tragedy are paced, performed, and timed very differently but, as with every scene, an editor must include all available emotions, happy or sad, that affect the characters involved. This can only be done with the variety of shots provided for you, but the selection is very much up to you.

Even when you’re dealing with a scene set at a funeral, an inherently slow and thoughtful process, you’ll find there is still barely time in your cut to show how this sad occasion affects all of your participating characters. Remember, you are choosing what the viewer actually sees, so you’d better get this right…no pressure, then!

 Brain of Britain—Be Clever with Your Material

I was always trained to constantly ask myself if any action I was working on could take place in a cleverer and quicker way. This has stood me in good stead for my chosen vocation of editing comedy. Here, every single frame has to justify its existence and fight for its survival, as so often you are up against the clock.

If you, as an editor, can offer clever ways in your cut to convey all the emotion, drama, and comedy of a scene, but in a shorter time and without this looking rushed in any way, then there is a good chance you’ll be asked back.

Even in the slowest of scenes, the viewer, often unconsciously, expects to see a reason for every shot change straightaway. If they don’t, they will have the sense, again often unconsciously, of being pulled away from an interesting outgoing shot, only to be forced to watch an unnecessary pause before the action gets going again. For this reason, dramatic pauses are better left on the outgoing shot, thus allowing the next shot change to propel the scene forward.

As you’ve probably gathered, there aren’t many hard and fast rules connected with editing, but at last we have a rule that most would agree is good practice.

Our first editing rule is: Don’t cut unless you have to, and if you do, make sure you have something just as interesting for the viewer to look at.

The next exercise is Ex 24 Keep It Moving.

 Dumb and Dumber—Be Objective—One of Our Strengths

An editor is marvellously ignorant of how difficult a shot or sequence was to film. Directors, writers, and producers are often far too close to the material by the time it comes to the edit suite to be truly objective. This gives us as editors an amazing impartiality to include or reject on merit alone.

It’s very often the case that shots that took the greatest time and effort to achieve on location are the most vulnerable when it comes to the cutting room. That fabulous sunrise, that expensive aerial shot, or that long and beautiful tracking shot are all at risk in the cutting room when the plot has to move on and, above all, fit into a timeslot. It is essential to make sure your director has no sharp objects at hand when you suggest losing such material.

 Between the Lines—Use of Tension and Release

Achieving a good pace is not as simple as eliminating every pause; I’m sorry if I’ve given that impression. Just as in music, where the rests are equally as important as the notes, dramatic pauses are the framework on which dialogue is played. Those little moments of tension and release are essential. They mostly originate from the script and the performance, but they can also be created or enhanced in the edit suite. That little glimmer of a smile as the outgoing line settles in the character’s mind is so important to increase our comprehension of a narrative.

 Death in Venice (1971)—Slow, Indulgent, or Simply Beautiful

Sometimes moments have to be enjoyed slowly, and Death in Venice (1971), directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde and Björn Andrésen, is a great example of this.

Set against a very slow performance of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, the film sets a peaceful pace right from the off, with three minutes of credits against black before the ghostly image of a ferry, steaming across the frame, comes into view at the break of day. By six minutes into the film, all we have seen are the credits, the ferry, a couple of views of approaching Venice, bathed in the mist of an early dawn, and Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) on board that ferry, sitting in a wicker chair, wrapped up against the cold. The film takes its time, and yes, it’s indulgent in places, but it’s in no way less entertaining for that. You enter that world, bathe in its serenity, and enjoy the lush period detail.

The problem for all of us is, when do you let your piece breathe, and when do you tighten down the pauses?

5.2 Eliminating Unnecessary Pauses

 Space Patrol—Dealing with Pauses and Silences

Pauses and silences get more notes and comments back from those who might look at an early cut than any other aspect of editing I know. The problem is, an early cut is usually undubbed; in other words, the dialogue is present but as yet without any of the accompanying background sound, which will be added later. Despite frequent reminders that what they are watching is an undubbed cut, the comment about silence comes back time and time again, especially from those with little else to say. The only cure is to do a mini-dub on your material and shove on some background sound effects before these people view your cut. Pub atmos or a radio on, if appropriate, can help solve the problem.

 Pause for Thought—Is That Pause Necessary?

Well, is the pause necessary? My only advice here is to judge every pause on its merits. Ask yourself the question, can I deal with the pause in a cleverer way? It may be possible to rearrange the shots and allow the pause to happen over a more interesting reaction.

Again, you may be disappointed that there are no hard and fast rules about which pause to shorten and which to leave alone; you’ll just have to experiment with each of them in turn and see if you achieve improvement. All I would say is that I’ve rarely seen any sequence look worse for being tightened-up a little, even if this occurs at the fine-cutting stage, where the timing of any scene has already survived several previous viewings.

Have a go at Exercise 25: Pauses.

5.3 Continuity

I suspect the majority of the population thinks that editors are primarily obsessed with continuity; this is far from being the case. As some sort of proof, here we are many pages into this book and I am only now seriously discussing continuity for the first time. I would put it at about 7 out of 10 in the grand scheme of things, for many reasons. After all, if there has been a really serious mistake in continuity, such as costume, set, or props, there is very little an editor can do about it, other than exclude.

The sitcom My Family, which starred Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker, was recorded in front of a live studio audience. Some scenes were shot in Robert’s character’s dental surgery, where there was a very large tank of ornamental fish.

At the end of a take, recordings were stopped, and then began a flurry of activity on the studio floor to get props and actors back to their starting positions before a second attempt could be made of the scene.

The one and only Bobby Bragg, who usually did the audience warm-up, was also employed to keep the audience entertained during such breaks in recording. If the delay was of a significant length, he would explain to the audience that the reason it was taking so long was that ‘they’, meaning us in the gallery, were waiting for the fish to get back into the right position.

 Did You See?—Solving Continuity Problems by Putting Movement on the Cut

As I have touched on before, an editor has many tools by which he or she can throw the viewer’s eye away from minor discontinuities, which are inevitable between different takes of the same action.

The eye is attracted to movement, as we have seen; it’s totally instinctive. This flaw in viewers’ defences allows an editor to deflect their eyes away from continuity trouble to a more innocent area of the screen by the simple use of a helpful and distracting bit of movement.

What power! Just try it; it works every time. If you know you have to make a less than perfect join, make sure your incoming shot has movement right on the cut, such as an arm or head turn, that will immediately distract the eye, so that any continuity discrepancy remains unobserved. Ask any magician!

For your next trick, try the technique in Exercise 26: Continuity.

 Sight and Sound in Concert—The Healing Powers of Sound

Sound also acts as amazing sticking plaster over indifferent joins. I’ve always believed that sound carries the vision, and this is yet further proof. In other words, if the sound is continuous, overlapping, and correct, then you are able to get away with vision, which may not be 100% perfect.

Have a go at the problem in this exercise, Exercise 27: Healing Sound.

5.4 Cutaways

Cutaways is a name for added shots that allow an edit to be made in the soundtrack. They can look really obvious or virtually invisible, depending on their timing with respect to the neighbouring shots or action. They should look as natural as reaction shots; however, the reason they often don’t is that you are sometimes forced into using one at a place where you’d never cut to a reaction shot.

The problem is caused by the fact that if an edit has to be made in the soundtrack, you have to do something with the vision to cover up what would otherwise be a jump cut.

It’s time to get your editorial hat on with this next exercise, Exercise 28: Dialogue Removal.

Here, Helen’s dialogue is flabby and longwinded. Decide what has to go and use, guess what, a cutaway.

 How to Look Good Naked—Damage Limitation

I wouldn’t bother preparing any BAFTA acceptance speech if you have to face too many of these damage limitation situations, but it is here that a good editor is even more valuable. This delicate repair work usually involves cutaways so that you can cover up any necessary reconstruction of the soundtrack.

If you can, try to place any cutaway at the end of a strong word or comment. At least this offers a plausible excuse for the forced change of viewpoint. Having made the cut, the choice of expression on the cutaway’s face must be chosen to fit exactly with the mood of the outgoing words. Too often in interviews, I have seen the use of inappropriate reactions that are so obviously from a different part of the interview, and thus they stick out badly.

Care must also be taken to ensure that the subject of the cutaway hasn’t changed position too much from the last time we saw them in the programme.

You’ve got a great exercise to attempt here! It will take all the skills you have acquired so far to get over the problems.

Have a go at Exercise 29: Damage Limitation 1.

 Damages—More on Damage Limitation

Here is another exercise involving damage limitation. Yet again, you have to try to save as much as you can from this section of the scene.

You’ll find out that much of Philip’s shot is unacceptable, but what can you do to mitigate the situation?

Have a go at Exercise 30: Damage Limitation 2.

 Noddy in Toyland—How to Use Noddies

Noddies, as I have already mentioned, is just another term for a cutaway. The term is more usually applied to interview situations, and their use is worth considering separately just for a paragraph.

Don’t be tempted to insert too many traditional-looking noddies. We don’t sit listening to one another with our heads bobbling around like a toy dog on a dashboard or parcel shelf. Very often a blink or other slight change of expression is better than the more clichéd nod. To emphasise this, in some news organisations, the use of a traditional noddy is banned because it implies agreement with the point being made. What a cautious world we live in these days. Still, having gone away to the vision of the cutaway, don’t be tempted to go back prematurely. Instead, stay a while and the change of shot will look much more intentional. One last point: try not to go back to the same size shot you left on. A two-shot instead of a single (if such coverage is available and it fits) will further disguise the forced use of a cutaway.

Take a look at Exercise 31: Noddies.

 White Out—More Stylistic Edits

I’m sure you have noticed a recent trend to dispose of cutaways altogether on certain types of programmes. More and more you’ll see a quick mix or dip to white in place of the more traditional approach. I must say, this seems to be a more honest and straightforward technique, but I agree that it doesn’t work in all circumstances. In other words, what would be appropriate for a news interview or a sport report would not be appropriate in The Graham Norton Show or The Late Late Show currently hosted by Brit James Corden.

5.5 Flow

What I mean by flow is best illustrated with an example.

 Noises Off—Use of Sound Glue to Join Unrelated Pictures

Imagine a car draws up alongside a railway embankment. An occupant gets out and starts down an overgrown path alongside the embankment. In a wide establishing shot, a train is seen to pass with considerable noise. Subsequent close-ups of our character walking down the path may have to be filmed in a different location, miles from any railway. There is a possibility these shots might not cut to the establisher that well. One solution that might do the trick would be to lay the sound of the train from the wide shot over these new shots. This is what I mean by flow. The cement joining the shots together is the sound of the passing train, even though the train is not seen in the close-up shots. One shot flows into the other, or others, because the audience now believes our path remains placed firmly alongside the railway line just by using the ‘sound glue’ of a passing train.

 Words and Music—Adding Music over Troublesome Pictures

Flow can also be created or enhanced by music that is either specially composed or from a commercial track. It’s just another form of ‘sound glue’, but it’s a very important one.

I will consider music and how it can help the editing process in greater detail in Chapter 10.

 Loose Ends—The Use of Sound Effects to Help Weld the Join

In the railway embankment scene described previously, the shots would have been designed and directed in a way to give the illusion of continuity of location, helped by the use of the train noise from the master shot and mixed over the subsequent closer shots. Sometimes extra glue, in the form of added sound effects, has to be offered in the edit suite in order to help the spatial continuity. Sounds like a dog barking, children playing nearby, or passing traffic can all help bond shots together and create flow. With such sound glue, you’ll be surprised how many more liberties you’ll be able to take with the timing and the content of the vision.

Imagine coverage of a person buying a railway ticket from a vending machine at a train station. The director will (hopefully) have given you a master wide and several close-ups: a wallet being opened, close-ups of the selection screen, fingers on a keypad, selections being made on the screen, and tickets being dispensed. You will be amazed how much easier it is to jump time within this sequence with, let’s say, the added sound of an announcement from the station’s PA system or the noise of a train arriving. These sounds will help disguise the small time jumps in the action that are necessary to shorten the otherwise boring sequence of buying a train ticket.

With the good use of a sound effect, you have shortened a dull sequence and created flow. Music will also perform this function superbly well, but it is not always appropriate in every case.

An exercise is next: Exercise 32: Shorten Time.

5.6 Time Jumps

I just thought it’s worth spending a few moments examining some common techniques which are used to create or hide jumps in time.

 The Time Tunnel—Putting the Clock Forward

Time jumps split into two main types, macro and micro, or if you like, long and short. Macro jumps are mostly given to you in the script or develop as the programme is assembled. This is especially true for documentaries.

Written scenes that stop when the participants go to bed and begin again with cocks crowing, milk bottles rattling in their crates, and toast projected vertically upwards from between red-hot heating elements have an inbuilt time jump. They are created by the pen, shot by the director, acted by the cast, and then timed to perfection by you. These jumps are fairly obvious, but in any film or TV programme, there are many more time jumps than you think. When you next watch a movie, count the number of times the clock has been moved on with respect to continuous time, however short those jumps are.

There are loads of examples in the language of film—a doorbell rings, a person reacts, and we cut straightaway to a hand going onto the latch; or a couple meet and greet on a city street and we cut to a waiter now serving some drinks to our couple, who are now seated at their favourite table near the window. In both these examples, elements of real life have been removed and deemed unnecessary to the story. Well, it would be ridiculous to watch a car driving even a relatively short distance, with all the traffic delays we expect these days on such a journey. In filmic terms, it is perfectly acceptable to show a car leaving a suburban house and a moment later arriving at terminal 3 to convey what is going on; the journey itself is edited out, either in the camera or in the edit suite. The clever part is making these joins work in terms of the sound and the vision.

 Citizen Kane (1941)—An Example of Using Time Jumps from the Movies

Time jumps are used in a very creative way in the film Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles and edited by Robert Wise. In the film, the central character, Charles Foster Kane, is seen at various stages throughout his life. These episodes are sometimes years apart, and Welles uses many great techniques, honed from his radio-producing days, to turn the pages of the calendar back and forth.

One particular junction starts at Christmas time when Kane is a boy. Walter Thatcher (George Coulouris), his guardian, offers the young Charles a gift with the words, ‘Merry Christmas’. His sentence is finished 17 years later when Thatcher is dictating a letter and concludes with the words, ‘and a Happy New Year’.

Only with the evidence that Thatcher looks older, and that he refers to Kane’s 25th birthday, do we accept that all that time has passed in an instant. As I said, it was probably Welles’s background in radio (remember his sensational broadcast of The War of the Worlds [1937], which had America believing an alien invasion was actually happening) that hugely influenced his early filmmaking.

 The Theory of Everything (2014)—A Great Time-Jumping Montage

At the end of the film The Theory of Everything (2014) about the life of Professor Stephen Hawking, which starred the 2015 BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Oscar-winning Eddie Redmayne and was directed by James Marsh and edited by Jinx Godfrey, there is a superb rewinding of time montage against Jóhann Jóhannsson’s music to turn what was the end of the movie into the start.

Let me explain, and because most of us know about the life of Professor Stephen Hawking, I won’t have to worry too much about spoilers. With his triumph of the publication of his book A Brief History of Time, you would think the film would end with this, but no. The music stirs and sends us on a superbly cut, rewinding montage of the key moments we’ve just seen from Stephen’s life, this time run backwards—his family, his academic acclaim, his doctorate, the birth of his children, the onset of his illness, his university days at Cambridge, and eventually to that life-changing moment when he first saw his future wife Jane (Felicity Jones) at a party and in a Cambridge pub, all those years ago. Here the film ends as it began. So good!

 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)—One Superb Time Jump

I don’t know how we’ve got so far in this publication without mentioning those great film makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, but they wound the clock back 40 years very cleverly on our hero, Clive Candy, played by Roger Livesey, in the film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). The 40 years vanished from one end to the other of a bath in the steam room of a Turkish bath. He plunges in as Major-General Wynne-Candy in 1942 and emerges 40 years earlier in 1902 as Lieutenant Candy.

 Beat the Clock—Back to Our Plot!

In a way these macro time jumps are easier to generate and deal with than the micro variety we constantly look for within the body of a scene. Micro jumps, used well, can drastically improve the impression of pace and urgency that are so necessary these days to hold the attention of an audience. Being clever with micro jumps, or tightens, is certainly one of the secrets of being a good editor.

 The Time Machine—Micro Tightens

Micro tightens can only be achieved between different shots. Well, that’s not strictly true, because time can sometimes be removed invisibly from within the same shot if the camera and your subject are both still enough; however, this is rare, especially because any tripod or mount is today, more often than not, gathering dust in a store cupboard. We’re back to those fashionable jump cuts that we discussed earlier.

Given that, for the most part, we are looking to tighten time, it is sometimes necessary to generate a shot change in order to achieve this. It is always a good idea to be on the lookout for tightens. Once a sequence is assembled to a working version stage, ask yourself the question: Can it be made to happen more quickly without ruining performance or style? For example, maybe with the use of a close-up you can tuck under some incoming dialogue a few frames earlier and eliminate another pause. Once again, our old friend movement will help give you the chance to jump time forward. Getting up from a chair, going through a door, or boarding a train are all examples that will give you the opportunity to cheat time forward slightly.

Along with movement, sound can also be used to push time forward—a door slam, a telephone ring, or the ping of an arriving text, and you can more easily jump to the next bit of action. Remember, even a few frames can make all the difference.

Thus, we have a second editing rule: Always look for nips and tucks.

 The Great Gatsby (2013)—An Uncomfortable Ride?

In my opinion, a film where the removal of small amounts of time is taken to the extreme is The Great Gatsby (2013), starring Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Baz Luhrmann, and edited by Jason Ballantine. Here, some of Luhrmann’s time jumps turn into uncomfortable, distracting, and above all, unnecessary jump cuts.

 A Time to Kill—Tightening Action

The next exercise is Exercise 33: Tighten Action. In this exercise I invite you to examine the possibilities of tightening dialogue, with the aim of making it both crisper and sharper. This does not mean you tighten everything in sight and start overlapping dialogue left, right, and centre. Consideration must, at all times, be given to the original performance; it should be improved by an edit but not changed out of recognition.

5.7 Editing without Dialogue

Dialogue, by its very nature, offers you inbuilt cutting points as the conversation is batted back and forth between the participants. But what happens if there is no such dialogue to help you and you are left to control the pace of a sequence only by its content?

 Keep on Running—Try to Keep Things Moving

Take the example of a character walking up to a front door, ringing the bell, and waiting for an answer that is a long time in coming. The worst thing to do when trying to tell this story on screen is to replicate the wait as it happened in real life. A boring wait for the character in your story will inevitably turn into a boring wait for your audience. Ways have to be found to convey this long wait in a shorter time. A good director will provide you with a variety of shots that will enable you to achieve this, but it is your job to put them together in a sensible sequence.

To ensure your sequence isn’t used as the latest cure for insomnia, you have to make sure each shot change moves the story on. I know a character waiting at a door is a challenge, but even here, changes of emotion (in this case the increasing frustration that the doorbell has still not been answered) can be assembled to form a reasonably interesting progression.

To make sure there is a progression, never return to the waiting character with exactly the same expression on his or her face as when it was last seen. It is far better to wind time on a fraction and display the next level of frustration as the wait continues. You know the kind of thing—a sigh, a look around, or even a look at a watch. Yes, I know the shots and the action have to be there in the first place, but you’d be surprised how, by putting even the slightest change of expression right at the start of the next shot, you can help push time on and keep your viewers awake. In reality, I’m sure a scene like this would be intercut with a parallel scene in order to keep the plot moving.

 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (BBC TV) (1979)—A Scene without Dialogue

Without any doubt, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) is my favourite TV series of all time. From the book by John le Carré, it was directed by John Irvin, edited by Chris Wimble and Clare Douglas, and starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley. It starts with a superb cold opening which for two minutes contains no dialogue.

All the scene shows us is four men entering a room for a meeting. I know that sounds somewhat dull, but it is in fact quite the opposite. Each character reveals his persona to us both in his attitude to the forthcoming meeting and to the others, and all of this is played without any dialogue. First in is Toby Esterhase (Bernard Hepton), prim, proper, with his meeting file already prepared and now laid out perfectly on the desk in front of him. Next in is Roy Bland (Terence Rigby), dishevelled, smoking, and reading a document he probably should have read earlier. He’s followed by Percy Alleline (Michael Aldridge) pompous, unsmiling, and entering the room as though he owns the place (which he does), and he sits down and gets his pen and pipe out ready to chair the meeting. Bill Haydon (Ian Richardson) is the last to arrive, and he enters balancing a saucer on top of a very full cup of tea. He tries to shut the door with his foot, but he fails. He sits down and smiles at Toby, who, wanting everything to be just right, gets up and closes the door for Bill. We see a silent four-shot for another 10 seconds, until eventually Percy says, ‘Right, we shall start’. A cut to the matryoshka dolls opening title sequence, complete with Geoffrey Burgon’s marvellous music, and we indeed have started.

I wonder what TV drama today would be given the luxury of two minutes of a wordless cold opening consisting of four men entering a stuffy room for a meeting.

5.8 Key Points—Creating Sequences

• At last we have a first universal editing rule: Don’t cut unless you have to, and if you do, make sure you have something just as interesting for the viewer to look at.
• Always look for ways for the action to take place in a cleverer and quicker way.
• Our second editing rule is: Always look for nips and tucks.
• Editors have an amazing impartiality to include (or reject) shots on merit alone and not the time and trouble it took to photograph them.
• Pauses can be left on the outgoing shot more comfortably than the incoming.
• Judge every pause on its merits.
• Be careful of leaving any gaps or silences in the soundtrack of an early undubbed cut, as they can cause a flurry of unnecessary edit notes. The solution is to dub some sound on, and you’ll get away with that pause you want to keep.
• If you were being really devious, you could always leave some pauses in intentionally, so that your reviewers comment on these and might ignore or miss others.
• ‘If in doubt, tighten’ is not a bad attitude to adopt. Ninety-five percent of the time your sequence will look better.
• Continuity shouldn’t rule an editor’s life.
• If there is an unavoidable continuity problem, find ways to deflect the viewer’s eye by cutting to an irresistible bit of movement somewhere else in the frame.
• Let perfect sound carry less than perfect vision.
• Cutaways should look as natural as reaction shots.
• Place the cutaway (if you can) at the end of a strong word or comment, which gives an excuse for the forced change of viewpoint.
• Try not to come back to the same size of shot after the cutaway.
• Sometimes it’s better to be honest and dip to white, or something similar, to cover the join. This either works or it doesn’t, according to the style of the programme concerned.
• Sound glue (sound or music that is spread over several different shots) can help the flow of a scene and hide small time jumps.
• Even sequences without dialogue must be made to flow. Never come back to a shot that tells the viewer nothing they don’t know already.
• A boring wait for a character in your story can easily turn into a boring wait for your audience. Look for ways of editing time out of such a sequence whenever you can.