Hollywood Road

Ask for monthly tickets and recommended tickets!

Back in Los Angeles, after a short break for three days, Murphy came to a post-production studio of 20th Century Fox in Century City to start the post-production work on "Inglourious Basterds".

Post-production also requires the coordination of multiple departments and teams, and the basis of all this is undoubtedly editing. It is no exaggeration to say that Murphy and even any director's shooting are serving editing.

This time, Jody Griffith's editing team is still co-editing with Murphy.

Before editing, to be precise, as early as when writing the script, Murphy already had a very clear idea. Quentin Tarantino’s movies will play a lot of tricks on editing, especially the famous chapter back, Although Murphy is not the kind of director who relies on traditional editing, but unlike Quentin Tarantino, this film will inevitably not use chapters. He will use a lot of parallel montage in editing, that is to say, "Inglourious Basterds" "The final film will be presented in the form of a multi-line narrative.

This post-production, all work will be carried out around editing, and Murphy has also made careful preparations for this.

Some people say that "the best editing is the one where no trace of editing can be found."

This is really the biggest misunderstanding of editing. It should be said that the editing that people can't find is the editing that "makes ordinary audiences have no barriers to receiving information", but it is not the best editing. After more than a hundred years of development, editing has already There are many aesthetic standards and possibilities, and the connotation is very rich.

Of course, as a commercial film, and as much as possible for the public fans, Murphy must maintain the smoothness of editing.

Editing that does not "make ordinary audiences have no barriers to receiving information" is not a show of tricks, let alone obscure.

In order to maintain a smooth editing acceptable to the public, the first thing is to determine the appropriate editing points for all shots.

The cut point is the transition point between two shots, including sound or picture. Accurately grasping the cut point of the shot can ensure the smooth switching of the shot. Therefore, the choice of the cut point is the rough video of Murphy and Jody Griffith. Cut the most important and basic work.

The editing points of all the shots of "Inglourious Basterds" can be simply divided into two categories: the first category is the picture cutting points, action cutting points, emotional cutting points, and rhythm cutting points; the second type is sound cutting points, including dialogue, music , Sound effects editing points.

In a film, most of the editing is carried out around the actions of the characters. The actions here do not refer to fighting, but the behavior of the characters.

The point of action editing is the coherence of the main body’s actions. Action editing is of course also for the sake of clear narrative, but it focuses more on the coherence of actions outside the shots. The coherence of actions can increase the fluency between shots.

Murphy and Jody Griffith's selection of action editing points is very important, which will directly affect the effect that the final film can achieve.

A rough cut of Inglourious Basterds, split in two by Murphy and Jody Griffith.

The first step is collage, and collage means to use the combination of some lenses to produce different types and give people different feelings.

Then the second step is cutting, specifically to control the rhythm, the rhythm and mood of the whole film.

In film editing, rhythm is very important, but in terms of the method used by Murphy in this film, everything still depends on the storyline and mood. He and Jody Griffith agree that controlling "" The most important thing about the rhythm of "Inglourious Basterds" is the emotion. When the emotion reaches this point, what does it need from you, and what kind of changes or solutions do you make?

During the editing process, Murphy hoped that he could maintain a more objective state as much as possible, and really treat himself as an audience, to truly feel the various changes in rhythm and details, whether the play is good or not, and so on.

What kind of "Inglourious Basterds" is suitable for, then he and Jody Griffiths will use what kind of editing techniques, so that the audience can get into the play when they watch it.

Relying on these, Murphy and Jody Griffith spent nearly half a month to complete the rough cut,

The next fine cutting is more important and will directly determine the quality of the film.

It can also be seen from the name that fine cutting is far more complicated than rough cutting.

Murphy has to ensure that the fine cut is tight enough, the editing is tense but the scene is not too short, which means that unnecessary pauses in the actor's dialogue need to be edited, the blank part in the middle of each sentence should be shortened, and even lengthy and unimportant dialogue can be subtracted.

The time most moviegoers can concentrate on is generally no more than 150 minutes, which is equivalent to the length of a general mainstream commercial movie. The rough cut version completed by Murphy and Jody Griffith is more than 300 minutes long. It is compressed to about 120 minutes in the fine editing. If the film is two and a half hours or even longer after the fine editing, then "major surgery" is required.

Unlike the previous cut, Murphy's cut was accompanied by temporary background music as an aid.

This method can be used for special films like "Inglourious Basterds", but it must not be used as a normal way of editing. Once you like the temporary music in the editing, it is difficult to find a suitable soundtrack that feels good. Murphy usually prefers Cutting out a powerful movie scene and making it perfect with proper editing, and if a scene can stand on its own, the soundtrack is the icing on the cake.

Inglourious Basterds is just one exception in this regard.

In fine cutting, many aspects that are difficult to take into account in rough cutting have to be taken into account, such as the coordination of actions and pictures, and the use of actors' gestures, props, line of sight or positioning is one of the editing methods. The best way is to let emotions express naturally, or cut To produce a smooth narrative rhythm, technical editing is not the key.

The job of the editor is to let the audience into the plot.

During the shooting, there were many pure action shots. Murphy used moving shots to shoot many action scenes, and these also needed to be processed through fine editing.

Moving the camera is the main way to shoot action scenes. Murphy successively used orbital cameras, boom cameras, camera stabilizers and Steadicam. The action scenes in the film must present a tense atmosphere. He and Jody Griffey Adams edits while the shots are in motion, ensuring that one shot after another is in motion.

The action scenes cut out in this way are more compact and make the audience dizzy.

In this shooting, Murphy used a purely single-lens shot for some shots, but this is only a part of it. Most of the other scenes continued his usual style of shooting with multiple cameras and multiple angles.

Shots shot from multiple angles are edited into the film, and it is not possible to mechanically cut back to the same angle all the time, or to reread the same series of shots that were used not long ago.

Of course, there are only two angles in a dialogue scene such as Lieutenant Aldo and Colonel Hans, and it is difficult to avoid repeated editing.

When such a multi-angle lens switches scenes, it also needs to be processed. Murphy is in groups of three, and it can be longer than 2 seconds.

For example, in the scene where Sosanna enters Goebbels' banquet hall and looks around, Murphy edits the viewpoint shots in groups of three, which can intuitively show the audience the entire scene seen by the protagonist, imitating the real world and letting the audience experience Immersive.

In these multi-angle shots, the actor's eyes are the focus of the editing. The actor's face attracts attention on TV, in the film and on the stage, but it is the actor's eyes that are most important. When editing intense dialogue scenes, Murphy pays great attention to the eyes of the actors, do they convey the appropriate emotion? How did the actors react to the play? The performance of the actors dictates the cut in this regard.

There are times when Murphy is more focused on conveying the dialogue of the main actors and cutting out the reactions of others.

This is to exclude some irrelevant side details in the actors' performances.

Murphy's penchant for tight editing rhythms is evident from the very beginning, and exclusion is necessary to maintain the rhythm.

Most actors exaggerate more than is appropriate, actors will emphasize pauses, add more mistakes than the script requires, and perform more stuttering for longer periods of time, which requires proper editing to bring the performance back to normal, cutting out The lengthy action and dialogue make the movie real and not artificial.

Therefore, if an actor wants to win a performance award, the director and editor are also the key.

These methods and methods all serve to form the storyline of the film.

Some people say that there are three types of movies in the world: scripted, filmed, and edited. No matter which type of editing, you must pay close attention to the story line, and don’t be afraid to change the script or shooting content, as long as it is meaningful.

Murphy has been using the storyboard as a record to visually present the storyline, which can help Jody Griffith determine the most logical way to present the story to the audience.

In the end, Murphy asked Jody Griffith to make his own choice.

Although the two have collaborated many times, they must have different views on some plots and shots, and no matter how successful a director is, he also needs the assistance of an excellent editor, especially to inject some differences into it, and to correct mistakes that the director did not notice.

Movies have always been the product of teamwork, and the director is only the helmsman in it. If there are problems in other links, it may also fail.

Having said that, is there anyone in this world who doesn't make subjective mistakes and doesn't notice them?

A director like Murphy doesn't review every shot in post-production, but instead revises it based on Jody Griffith's cut version of the performance, whether he appreciates the actor's performance or not.

If he did appreciate a different performance by an actor, he would suggest editing the cut or finding the right part from the framing shot. The more the edited scene feels fresh and convincing, the more the director will identify with the editor's technique.

Murphy and Jody Griffith continued to work on this aspect until the end of May, and then completed the first edition of refined editing, which will take a lot of time and energy to continue editing, but Murphy will temporarily put down work , to attend an all-important premiere for Robert Downey Jr.