December 20, 2016

Amir Shehata

Editing a scene can save or ruin it. I knew that, and the more I edit scenes the better feel I get for the best timing of the cuts. I also take an iterative approach to editing. As I mentioned before, immediately after a shoot, I download all my dailies and I do an initial rough edit to make sure I got all the shots I wanted. This saved me on more than one occasion. If I didn't do that I would've lost my opportunity to get the missing shots. 

The rough edit is usually my first attempt. I don't usually go beyond the rough edit during production. What I did with Turning Point is put together each episode as I completed filming each scene. Beyond just finding out the missing shots, this allowed me to get a feel for the flow of the story.

Once I completed production and sat down to concentrate on the editing, the hardest part followed, cutting; and I mean ripping shots/scenes away and throwing them on the cutting room floor, so to speak. With small productions such as Turning Point, where the director is also the editor, this process is even more difficult. The director usually invests a lot of blood and sweat in getting the shot just the way s/he wanted it, to end up cutting it out from the final episode is torture. Let me tell you, that's so true.

The original length of the 1st episode was 25 mins, I cut it down to 20 mins. The original length of the 2nd episode with 20 mins, I cut it down to 18. The original length of the 3rd and final episode was 50 mins, I cut it down to 33 mins. Lots of torture there.

Now when cutting down such a large amount of time from the episodes, this is not just to tighten up the episode, this is effectively a rewrite of the story. Let me give you a few examples.

In the first episode there was an entire sequence that explained how Sam was kidnapped, and had a chip implanted in her brain. This sequence had a lot of VFX in it. It was scored and color corrected, but then when I kept watching it and got feedback on it, I arrived to the conclusion that it doesn't add much to the story, on the contrary it slows it down. On the cutting room floor it went. 

Also in the first episode we filmed two scenes when it was pouring rain. Actually that day of filming caused some tension between me and the Sam actor. These scenes attempted to develop Sam's character a bit more. They showed how she is invested in other's well being. Again, it slowed down the episode so it was cut.

It was originally planned to start the development of the relationship between Sam and her x-partner, Ethan,  in the second episode. We had a vision sequence about Ethan. We also had a friendlier tone between Sam and Allison. This was all filmed. But in the editing room, when I looked at the entire story and how things went down in the third episode, it didn't make sense to keep these story-lines. I ended up cutting out all the Sam/Ethan storyline for reasons explained below. I also opted for creating more animosity between Sam and Allison.

The largest number of edit rewrites happened in the 3rd episode. Originally I had an extensive plot-line that developed the Sam and Ethan characters. How they used to be partners, and how Ethan fell from "grace" and became Reaver. We filmed a few of these scenes, but then when the Sam actor broke her foot, we couldn't film the rest of the scenes. So I re-wrote those scenes to concentrate on the Ethan/Reaver character, and how evil he has become, but again in the editing room it just didn't flow and I cut out the entire sequence.

Also in the 3rd episode the whole UltraMed break-in sequence was cut short to keep the pace of the edit up. 

We filmed an entire sequence of scenes that showed two employees in Morningstar as they directed the controlled individuals. This also was cut out because of a couple of reasons: introducing two extra characters felt that it confused the story, and the VFX required to make these scenes work was beyond my ability.

You see how all these cuts spelled an actual rewrite of the story-line. In fact editing is the last opportunity we have with a movie to make sure it works the way we want it. 

A couple of people I worked with aided in opening my eyes to details that made the edit work better; Dudley Christian and David Mesiha. Dudley directed the 3rd episode with me and he provided lots of valuable feedback. David, is an award winning composer, who worked on the Turning Point score. He provided lots of ideas on the edit that helped me tighten up the final edit. It was great.

Lessons learnt, when you put your editing hat on be objective. Don't let your feelings and pride get in the way of making a good edit. Look for people who have a good sense of what makes a great edit and get their feedback. Make your primary goal be the best cut episode you can arrive to. If you have to cut scenes, then it must be done. Don't feel bad about it. It's better to cut it and end up with a watchable episode, rather than keep it and lose audience.

I have an entire section on the website dedicated to all the deleted scenes. It's interesting to watch them and understand why they were cut.