Relating Outside Reading to 'The Conductor'

I have been applying things I have learnt through outside reading (mainly Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye) during the editing process of ‘The Conductor’, so I can be more effective and create a better final film.

My main concern for this film, and all short films I edit, is how many cuts will be needed between different shots and whether or not these will work with the pace of the film or if they will be to obvious and to jarring for the audience. “What we do seem to have difficulty accepting are the kind of displacements that are neither subtle nor total.” ^{[1; Pg 6]} What Murch means here is that the audience’s attention will be drawn to the physical nature of each cut if they aren’t too subtle to notice or are completely different from one another.  When the audience recognises these cuts, their immersion and engagement with the story is broken and they become aware that they’re watching a constructed image, instead of being told a story.

Leading on from this, ‘The Conductor’ relies on the audience believing what they see is a visual construct of a daydream, so the audience must be fully immersed is fantasy style world in order to engage with the character and narrative. When I first assembled the film it began with the set up of the character, his location, his reaction to the location, then finally him doing his job (cleaning) before moving into the daydream world. After watching it back and showing it in the rough cut screening I remembered Murch’s rule regarding audience engagement: “Always try to do the most with the least.” “…you want to do only what is necessary to engage the audience—suggestion is always more effective that exposition.”^{[1; Pg 15]} This made me re-assess the cut and realise that almost none of the start was needed and could be stripped down to get the audience into the narrative straight away.

Finally, I’ve always tried to keep an objective view on each film I edit so that the cut isn’t influenced by my involvement with a specific shot or shoot day in any way. However, due to the group sizes of student films, it is almost impossible to be completely objective and distant from pre-production and filming on set so I always try to view it as an audience member, instead of ‘seeing around the edge of the frame’. “The editor… should try to see only what’s on the screen, as the audience will.”^{[1; Pg 24]} I have tried my best to do this throughout the majority of the edit, which I hope will be reflected with the outcome of our final film.

452 Words

Bibliography

1. Murch, Walter (1988); In the Blink of an Eye; New York: Viking Press