The shift from film to digital in the world of filmmaking arguably removed many of the constraints that seemed burdensome. Before the advent of infinite digital storage, every second of footage was money spent. Now, armed with hard drives that can store dozens of hours of footage, there’s a temptation to just keep the camera rolling. However, the ability to store unlimited amounts of footage presents a new challenge – what to cut out. The post production process is where creators must develop the discipline of discernment.

Ethical Editing

Every decision about what to cut or what to include in the final product of a video shoot is a storytelling choice. It’s a chance to shape meaning and mood. The timeline on your editing software is where you reflect your biases, beliefs and intentions. It’s a canvas that can be used to shape emotion and perception. Just as a journalist can influence what readers believe about a topic based on what they include or exclude from the story, so too can filmmaker’s shape the viewer’s interpretation of what they’re seeing on the screen.

Postproduction Sets the Tone

Think about movies you’ve watched that created a visceral experience for you – whether it was a feeling of anxiousness, inspiration, or sadness. That’s the power not only of good scripting and acting, but of editing. The cinematic elements of score, sound design, lighting, transitions, frame rate, and motion are the tools that creators can utilise to provoke these reactions from viewers. Even something as simple as changing the song in a video can give it an entirely different feel. Fast cuts from scene to scene can convey energy, urgency, or anxiety. Sometimes filmmakers choose to take the music out of a particular scene and lower the volume of the dialogue to draw the viewers into the scene and create a sense that they need to listen carefully.

Restraint is a Skillset

Many Hollywood films will shoot dozens of hours of footage, only to chop it down to a two-and-a-half-hour movie. Good editors must ask themselves, “What am I trying to emphasise? Maybe instead of cutting a clip, they need to let it linger to create tension and a chance for the audience to hang in suspense. Maybe there are ten shots that look amazing, but the project really only needs one of them. It may be painful to reduce such a large volume of video down to what feels like the bare bones, but this is part of good storytelling. Just as framing a subject during the shoot gives the director of photography a chance to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell,’ the edit is equally important in this phase of production.

Shaping a Story in Silence

Audiences typically think of the acting, screenwriting and cinematography as the elements that make up a good film. However, editing is often the overlooked and underappreciated piece of the puzzle where stories are fine-tuned in silence. It’s true that things like framing, focus, and motion are often done in-camera, but these things are often left to the editor to manipulate. Crafting a final scene leaves a piece of the story up to the audience’s interpretation and doesn’t even always have to include dialogue. 

In Christopher Nolan’s Inception (spoiler alert), Leonardo Dicaprio’s character, Cobb, spins his totem on the table just before walking over to hug his children. The purpose of the totem is to be an anchor for reality; if you’re in the real world, the totem obeys the laws of physics. If Cobb is in reality, his spinning top would eventually topple over – but if he’s in a dream, it would spin endlessly. Just after spinning the top, the camera pans in. The top begins to wobble, and suddenly the scene cuts to black. Was Cobb in a dream or in reality? It’s a question fans of the movie love to debate. Nolan could have included some sort of exposition. Who knows, maybe there was more footage that was meant to come after that. The point is, the audience didn’t need more exposition. It’s what’s not said that makes the story interesting. So instead of thinking about how much you can fit into the editing timeline, think about leaving space for interpretation. Practice restraint. Let every inclusion or exclusion be meaningful and intentional.