Short Film Editing: Is This Scene Boring?
I spent a lot of time experimenting with footage from 17 West’s upcoming short film The Climb. When we shot the film, the intention was always to try different things and evolve as an editor. The majority of my editing experience lies in the fast paced world of live television. As you can imagine, there are few occasions when you can spend months working on one piece. But the experimentation can only last so long and a few weeks ago, I finally buckled down to finish the film once and for all.
During my month long break from blogging, I edited and finalized 80% of the film including… The Scene.
I think every film has one scene that can make or break it. In this case, The Climb has a scene that’s 9 1/2 pages long consisting of two characters under a bridge… Talking. We shot the scene from a variety of angles and allowed our actors to go through the entire scene each time. These shots wound up being roughly 8-10 minutes each. That’s pretty long considering I wanted the final film to be less than 15 minutes. So I knew some dialogue would have to go eventually.
When we finished the masters, we went in for closeups and really focused on key moments during the scene. By the time I finished editing the scene, it was 6 1/2 minutes long… And it was boring.
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FIXING YOUR BORING SCENE
It’s amazing how different the writing on the page can be when you are watching the results on screen. Honestly, the scene was just too long. Lets face it, long scenes like this are difficult to pull off.
However, I hadn’t really cut much out of it yet and that is why I love editing.
If something isn’t working you have to step back, identify the problems and find a way to solve them creatively.
In this situation, I went through the scene and cut every line I could to tighten things up as much as possible. While I was completing that process, I had a moment of inspiration. I knew how to fix the scene.
I had to be careful because it was such a pivotal scene but my idea was simple. In the film, after a long conversation, my main character spends some time at a beach considering his options. I decided to inter cut that footage with my long scene. Combining those two scenes was a great way to pick up the pace while allowing me options to cut out lines without worrying about continuity and such. It also elevated the sequence visually.
It was the perfect solution and by the time I was finished, all remnants of my boring scene had vanished.
The trick was finding a way to have the film convey the same message in a more economical way. So instead of having 2 separate scenes, I had one sequence that was infinitely more effective. If you find yourself stuck, take a moment and really think about what you want the film to be and consider every single option you can come up with. In fact, take it a step further and TRY every option you can come up with. If it doesn’t work so be it. At least you tried. The benefit to that approach is kick starting your brain. When that happens, anything is possible.
For me, all that stands in my way now is the ending. I’m sure there will be more challenges and problems to solve but I can’t wait to tackle them on.
Check out The Climb’s new poster below.
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I read your post with great interest. I’m finding shorts to be filled with promise and, way too often, dashed hopes.
For starters, I’ve cut around 9 shorts in the past couple years. But three in particular became sad and classic examples of what happens to way too many of them.
One was the story of a returning Iraqi veteran that was written and directed by a Middle Eastern woman. Another was a meditation on a gay teen running from home and then meeting up with a mystical id at a desolate motel. The third about a defrocked priest falling for young girl who’s the victim of domestic violence.
Three fascinating stories told from honest and unique perspectives. All too long.
The end result was that shorts deserving quality festival exposure found themselves screening either nowhere or at venues of diminished distinction.
What they all shared in common was the classic “You can’t take that out because…”. And that because became “she’s a name actress” “he’s a close friend” “the audience needs this moment to appreciate the character arc”. But most telling of all was the concern that a short that’s too short will not impress producers, agents, investors, etc looking to attach themselves to new talent.
Here’s what I feel becomes immutable edit truth. Shorts and features all share the necessity of pairing down time, before the audience loses interest because of dramatic redundancy. And while that may be difficult to reconcile for feature directors, it seems impossibly so for short directors.
As an editor, I truly understand that many are made as showcase to attract interest for vertical feature moves. But understand that brevity allows us as audience members to insert our emotional stake into the story. And power viewers in search of exciting young talent have no interest in purveyors of drawn out pieces.
The saddest statistic I know is that I have worked with far too many first time only time directors who could not reconcile the “time” element to their story.
I think in both the article and the comment above it sounds more like it was the screenplay that needed to be “paired down”. As an editor myself I have had to cut down or rearrange shorts. And I’m known for being pretty good at it. But there comes a point when you can only go so far before the film starts to play out “chopped up” or watered down.
It’s really the screenplay that needs to be tighter. When you strive for brevity in the screenplay you can weave scenes together, fix plot continuity caused by rearranging scenes or dialog, and add missing scenes or beats. Luxuries you don’t have in the edit.
Jay, I have not seen The Climb yet, but from your description of the scene above it sounds like it could have benefitted from being “travelled” rather than the entire conversation taking place with the two characters sitting in one location. This would have maybe lended itself to replacing some of the dialog with actions that expressed the same ideas.
Also a common thing that can make a long dialog scene boring is, well, long dialog. Characters that ramble on in long sentences. The same sentences can often be chopped up into smaller, more natural sounding ones, while still expressing the same ideas.
Another possibility is that the scene is mostly exposition and not beats.
I know you can’t change the screenplay now, but analyzing the scene for these things may help you avoid editing problems like this in the future, and it may also help you break down what parts of the scene are essential so you can make the best of your edit this time.
Seriously, start traveling your dialog scenes! If your screenwriter side starts traveling your dialog scenes your editor side will stop cursing him and start loving what he’s given him to work with. And the end product will be so much better for it.