Words: Ije Ndukwe
Illustration: Chris Dickason
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It’s the spectre that hangs over programme-making; the veiled process that turns endless footage into coherent narrative. But how authoritative is the edit suite? Meet three editors who between them have cut some of the industry’s most challenging genres.
Documentary Case Study: Louis Theroux
Stuart Cabb has directed and produced a range of films fronted by Louis Theroux, including Louis And The Nazis and Louis Theroux: Behind Bars, which attracted nearly 6 million viewers. He explains how he uses the edit suite to “create a heightened version of the story.”
For me, the edit suite tells you what your film is really about. When working on Louis Theroux, we tend to follow experiences through Louis’ eyes. This means that during the edit, you have to find the narrative when there really isn’t one. It’s rather like a puzzle. If you don’t crack it, it’s completely demoralising.
The prison [Louis Theroux: Behind Bars] was hard because people are always coming and going. So if anyone perks your interest, you hope the next time you see them something new would emerge and then the edit hones in on that story.
One funny thing I noticed in the edit is that every time I walked through the lower ground floor of San Quentin prison, the prisoners would call me everything from ‘English ponce’ to ‘Gimp boy’. ‘Camera wimp’ was the favourite. After several weeks of hearing that in the edit, you somehow feel less of a man for not being able to turn around with the confidence to express your masculinity to them, knowing that they’re locked behind a cell door.
We did a casino film [Louis Theroux: Gambling In Las Vegas]. There was this woman, Martha, who was 80 years old and had lost $4m. Every time Louis met her, you got to know her a bit better, so the audience felt they were on a bit of a journey. The edit brought that together, like there was a continuing narrative.
In all the edits I’ve ever done, we have always played with structure more than anything else. We know the characters are good, we know the story is there, but we play with how to structure it so it’s fascinating and unpredictable. We start the story in a place you don’t expect.
The very first thing we do is a synch pool in the first week. Everything that we think is any good, we quickly cut together. That usually runs at around five to six hours. We watch that through all in one go, and straight away the characters that are really interesting leap out.
It’s great to cut all the best stuff out of your film, see it and say, ‘The life of my film is here.’ The worst thing to do is to walk in with a paper edit. Generally you lose the life of the story that way, because you’re trying to predict it before you edit it.
You have to remember what the story feels like the first time you edit it, and log it purposefully in your brain: I’m horrified by that quote; I’m shocked by that experience; that makes me feel emotional. You have to remember these things, because in about five weeks time you’re going to completely distrust it. You can’t over-think it. It’s like romance. If you have to give yourself reasons to stay with someone, as opposed to really wanting to, it doesn’t work. It’s the same in an edit. Your gut tells you when you’ve got a great moment.
Comedy Case Study:
Tonightly and The Sunday Night Project
Spencer Doane has nearly twenty years’ experience editing live TV shows. His most recent projects include Tonightly, The Sunday Night Project and 8 Out Of 10 Cats.
You edit the show in the way you think is funny. Then everyone comes in and puts their tuppence in. You hope that it’s still funny, but I don’t think anyone knows in the end. Each stage is hopefully enhancing it. You have to believe the process will achieve the results.
As the editor, you become really close to the show because you’ve watched it a hundred times over the past few days. How the hell do you know if it’s funny? You don’t. The people on The Sunday Night Project think I only like knob jokes.
It’s important to have someone make a decision who’s not caught up in the day-to-day process. It’s easy to get swept away with an idea, and because you’ve just seen it so many times you can’t be objective about it.
You have to do the best you can, but you can’t be precious about your work. I’ve been thrown out of an edit-suite before. The truth is, if you don’t do what the Series Producer wants, you won’t last very long.
There’s so much more to being an editor than just cutting things together. With Tonightly, I watch the first part of the show and have a system of marking footage. That stuff goes straight into the edit. Jason [Mansford] sometimes says, “Hang on, I’ve just thought of a new joke.” They’re literally coming up with jokes as they’re recording it. So to make the edit faster, I have an assistant marking points where anything was taken out or where they stopped and started again.
Tonightly is quite good because you could always save a joke and put it in the next day. This will happen less on a weekly show, because obviously the material isn’t new anymore. All these things get marked, so you can find it later.
One of the hardest things to do is make live and as-live shows seem and look live. The last thing you want to see is an edit and go, ‘Urgh, that was weird,’ which I see all the time. It’s something you can only learn by doing it. Three years ago, I didn’t have those skills at all. I didn’t know I didn’t have them; I thought I could edit anything. Three years on, I realise it’s a difficult thing to master.
Advertising Case Study: KFC, Vodafone and Pantene
Jonathan Pearson is an award-winning director who’s shot commercials for the likes of KFC, Pantene and Vodafone. He’s currently working on an online drama project.
You make a film three times. Once when you write it, once when you shoot it and once when you edit it.
With commercial editing, you’re working with an agency with their own agenda. There was one brand who, after we shot their advert, came to us with a completely different script and said, “Now make this film.” We had to use a lot of voiceover and pictures and edit around the person speaking, so you couldn’t see them speaking. Fortunately I’d covered it with a lot of cameras, so had a lot of footage.
One of the things you learn when you work for a production company is to pick your battles. The nature of our work is that someone is paying for it. There are always going to be people putting in their ten-pence worth. You have to get used to that. There’s no point getting into deadlock over it.
With editing, some things are so fine that either of two options can work. But then conversely, one little cut can make all the difference. There’s no rule of thumb when judging whether something is funny or looks great. You just need to know what it’s in your head and think, ‘Is that what I was aiming for?’
So many times I’ve shot a film in one way, but gone a different route in the edit. In the edit you can explore other avenues, but you need to know what you’re aiming for because every frame counts. Every second is like gold. You’ve got something like 60 seconds to get the message across.
Sometimes you get attached to one tiny little shot that you’re so proud of, and you have to discipline yourself to let go. Sometimes full scenes need to be chopped out. You have to be ruthless. It goes back to the idea of making a film for the third time. You have to approach it with fresh eyes.
The best adverts are great films. So you need to have a good sense of story-telling, and understand how narrative works. Also a good sense of pace and rhythm is important. You can completely muck up an edit by jarring it at the wrong time. Sometimes I’ve watched a rough-cut and it’s like, ‘Oh God, that’s horrible. Why did they cut there?’ It’s like a needle screeching across a record.
