Many of the most respected names in the movie business believe that editing is where the film actually gets "made". Filming is just the prelude; FX, sound design, and music are the finishing touches. Editing is where you decide just what, exactly, the audience will be seeing and hearing (in terms of dialogue, anyway) from moment to moment. Which angle, which take, how long it will be on screen, whether you show the door opening or just have the actor begin in the room, whether the teardrop falls from her face or just slides down her cheek, whether he actually sweeps everything off the table in a fit of anger or just contemplates it in a silent rage, and so on.
A film is made of thousands of these little choices, each of which - taken on its own - is relatively insignificant, but which add up to the whole. It is the equivalent in creative writing of figuring out which words to use, which to leave out, how long to let sentences run, how thoroughly to describe a setting, etc. Each of this little decisions adds up to something that either succeeds or fails collectively. It's not that the writing, casting, shooting, set design, costumes, locations, and performances are unimportant. Goodness no! All of them (especially the writing!) are critical elements. But consider this:
Suppose you took the raw footage of any great film of any era, and went out of your way to pick the worst takes, the most mangled lines, and the technical mistakes, then used them to cut together your version of the film. Don't worry about pace - cut scenes off willy-nilly, or let them run as long you can. Don't think about the dramatic impact of each choice. Just slap the thing together and be done with it. How do you suppose it would come out? I have a feeling even Casablanca, Amadeus, or 2001: A Space Odyssey would turn out pretty poorly.
Great editing can make the most of a mediocre film - even "save" it in some cases. But poor editing can utterly destroy the best written, most compellingly acted and photographed effort. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. Consider Hitchcock's Rope, a play-like film paced entirely in 20-minute takes with no "editing" in the conventional sense.
Let's look at the typical post-production work flow as I learned it (which was through self-study and actually doing it) to illustrate the how's and why's of many of these choices. Some readers (especially younger ones, or those schooled primarily in video) may take issue with them, and not without reason. The world of film production is changing quickly, and even in traditional "old school" film production (from which I draw these post-production steps) the lines are often less distinct than I present them here. With that said, a film in post-production generally progresses like this:
ROUGH CUT: the rough cut is put together with very little awareness of pacing. The idea is not to create a "complete" film but to see if what you have is working dramatically. It emphasizes the performances, not the montage. The goal is to see where things are weak or strong "out of the box"; where the acting and dialogue can carry things without much help, and where they need the assistance of other departments (additional photography, music, special effects, tricky editing) to shore them up. Most rough cuts are unwatchable to the average film-goer. But they are valuable in evaluating your material and making crucial decisions about finishing.
I did not let anyone but the cast and crew watch the rough cut of Kanashimi, because it's frankly pretty crummy, in places. The parts that really work are the ones where the acting and writing are strong enough to "punch through". That's the point of a rough cut, though: to be able to evaluate the material without the distraction of artsy editing or glitzy effects to distract you from the writing and acting. You do pick your best takes, and you do try to put together the best moments from them. But - by design - they get no other help. They stand or fall on their own merits.
WORK PRINT: this is the part where you spend the most time, and this is the phase Kanashimi is entering. The term comes from the days when most films were actually made on film and temporary "work" prints were made from the camera negative with little or no color-correction so that the editor can "play with" the film with impunity. He or she can cut, re-cut, cut again, add stock sound effects and temp music; screen it, evaluate it, and keep playing with it generally until it starts to look like something. An advanced version of the work print is what most people think of as a "rough cut", but that's more a marketing thing to drum-up word of mouth, than a formal definition. Work prints are often shown as "rough cuts" in major cities at surprise screenings both to get feedback from audiences and to get word-of-mouth going for the film. An actual rough-cut (as I define it here) would NEVER be shown like this, unless the studio marketing department is suicidal.
FX-laden films (science fiction, fantasy, and - increasingly - every other genre) will sometimes have low-resolution, quickly-rendered "placeholder" shots, or animatics, or just shots of the storyboards cut in to inform viewers of what is supposed to go where, since these elements are usually just beginning serious work.
FINE CUT: (as opposed to "final" cut). This is really a very worked-over workprint with most or all of the completed effects shots, opticals (dissolves and such, which are mostly done digitally, now), and sound effects put in. But NOT the music, although there is probably a temp track! By this point, color correction has been done (though usually not final grading). The film is very close to what general audiences will actually see at this point. This is where you really let people (the stakeholders, formal test audiences) look it over. Adjustments are typically small from here on out. A lot of effort has been put into polishing and bringing out the little moments that make the film work. Or fail to, as the case may be.
FINAL CUT: when the fine cut is "locked", and no more changes are anticipated, the "final cut" has arrived. The composer and sound designer get hold of it to compose the score and perform the sound mix with all the effects, and any re-recorded dialogue. The reason these things happen so late is that the sound and music must be in sync with the picture, and cutting scenes longer or shorter will require re-working them. You don't want to pay a 100-piece orchestra to record a new version of the background score unless you absolutely HAVE to!
ANSWER PRINT: again, a term from the days when films were exclusively shot and edited on film. It used to be the actual camera negative ("original negative", or "o-neg") would get cut together (or "conformed") to match the final cut, then it would be printed by the lab, along with the completed sound track, for screening by the makers to ensure that everything is fine and dandy. If so, then the process of making prints for theatrical distribution would happen next. If not, then more adjustments would be made (usually to the sound mix or the color-correction) and a new answer print would be struck, until everyone was happy.
Digital technology has has made these boundaries quite slippery. It's now common to never even touch the camera negative (if the film was even shot on, well, film), even to make a work print. It's transferred directly to hard disks for FX work, color grading, editing, and everything else. A printing negative is made from the digital sources, or (more and more, these days) copies are made on digital media for electronic projection. Or even just beamed to the theaters over encrypted digital satellite links.
Nonetheless, each of these stages have some equivalency in the new world of digital film production, and so I shall use them as a reference point in Kanmashimi's post-production.
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