Review of The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004) by Bill C — 10 Sep 2010

Editing was always something I was aware of in the conveyance of timing continuity and emotion, but until I watched this I had no idea of the evolution of the form. Some of my favorite scenes and how the timing made it happen.

For example Spielberg talking about the shots of the shark in Jaws looking fake and how he and his editor counted the number of frames they could keep it believable. 33 frames horrifying, 37 frames fake looking rubber fish.

Speilberg comments on the weeks it took to get this malfunctioning contraption to work and in the finished work 33/24th of a second In addition, the movie covers the originators of film thought it was an amusement until the addition of editing.

Through the 20-40?s were editing was strictly controlled in form. It moves on to Bonnie and Clyde and Trousseau and on into modern digital editing. George Lucas talks about how he was an editor before a director, that explains allot.

If like me you like to absorb and understand all about the movie process to know how thing go right and more specifically why things go wrong this is a must see. Why may I say it?s not five star, surprisingly the editing of the interviews is not very good and they run a little long winded.