Ce qu'il dit du montage | ![]() |
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Master class
Subtitles
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Disk 1
Introduction
Disk 2
Generalities
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[DISK 1]
Jean-Pierre Masse, filmmaker
We made a movie called
A movie with three parts:
He edited fictions, documentaries and animated films.
Through his personal journey,
People told us: This movie is interesting
So we made this DVD which allows us to be more didactic.
With the menu,
You can start with fiction,
Since it’s not linear,
Whenever Werner speaks about editing,
There is no recipe, each movie is unique.
An ever-evolving art like painting,
By the way it is edited, a movie can be dated
Every form of art has its basic laws and
Think about it !
Master class by Werner Nold
Thank you for coming.
Editing is a lesser-known trade.
The audience cannot know what happens there.
First, all the clips that I’m about to present
I, the editor, am the surrogate mother
I’m going to talk about the different relations
10:03:28:04
The movie Zea has a direct relation
Zea shows the collaboration between cameraman,
Be patient, this film lasts 5 minutes.
Here are a few facts about the shooting.
We used a camera Hy-Cam
…capable of recording
A 100mm extension ring allowed
Besides, we also had to take the high
The more you want a deep focus, the
so they set it up to F11
400 000 candle feet is a
The only possible solution was the sun.
The sun and a magnifying glass.
With a magnifying glass and the sun?
The glass concentrates the sunlight
…and it does not just light it, it cooks it.
We also found out that the best oil
A 10-minute film roll at 5000 frames/second...
Therefore, each corn seed must pop
If we start shooting at the wrong moment
…there won’t be enough light nor heat
When I started editing,
It takes ten minutes to watch
There were lots of unsuccessful corn pops.
It takes a lot of concentration
I watched all of it.
Sometimes there were no explosions but
Every segment that I kept gave
I was already building this progression
What could be used in the beginning of the movie,
Then I would hang the clips for the middle
On the lasts nails, I put all the explosions
The movie contains about 200 shots.
The oil drop only lasts 5 frames.
I wanted to make a smooth edit
Director Jean-Jacques Leduc told me:
Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis
…because it’s a double concerto
Being longer than our 5-minute movie,
Then, I placed the first clip, second clip,
When I was satisfied, we showed the result
He said: It’s magnificent but
I told him:
Are you crazy?
I said: Explain it to him, try to bargain
We sent him the movie in England,
Mariner said: Just pay the musicians and
It cost us $10,000. A true gift.
Zea is the Latin name for corn,
10:15:52:09
The best method is to watch all the takes
I give him my impressions
It shows him my sensibility toward
He would say: Werner, you got it or
When Marcel Carrière filmed fictions,
In a scene around a table
…he would do a master shot with the
Then he would film a close-up on each,
Imagine having to work with
Rushes :
This shot from the first character,
Then the second character, beginning,
Then the master shot. Should I show
Ti-Mine, Bernie pis la gang
Smells like lemon.
It’s a flower.
Hey it stings!
It’s good… real good.
This wine is not sweet enough,
My biggest fear is: did I throw away
Hitchcock would leave an overlap
he would not leave you
You had to find the best moment within
It was relatively easy.
But when the scene is entirely filmed
I never wanted to be present
Jean Lapointe is a funny guy.
Before we would say Action!,
Right after Cut!, He would tell another joke,
In the editing room the director would
Explain to me what is funny.
We then discovered that it was
…not what I had on my screen.
Another example: you’re shooting
You stop traffic, you set the camera
it’s minus 30 degrees, the camera
In the editing room, the director
Try then to eliminate the scene
And that, with my directors, has
When watching the rushes, we get
You choose it.
Six months later, another take
It’s not true. You must stick to your
That second take will seem better
…but it won’t be as good
Besides, a shot can loose its value if
…it can loose its nature.
I would ask my assistant to put together
It allows us to discover the continuity
I would say: I don’t understand the
…and this character,
The director would film additional shots
It’s not possible anymore. The editors
I would hate to edit a movie
I don’t want him over my shoulder
I want to impress him.
He is my first audience.
After working 8 hours on a scene,
You could turn around and
Unfortunately people have a tendency
Never do that.
In the '70s, we shot too much and ended
Movies like Gone with the Wind that can
We needed to cut. But cutting a scene
If a certain character is useless, click,
But since he was in previous scenes,
Sometimes, it’s impossible and
Balancing the length is very complex.
In the ‘70, we didn’t master fiction
Today, we know from the start
It’s way easier.
Drama
10:27:17:12
To edit fiction,
You need to go back and forth from being
When I edit a fiction,
…sometimes the character who reacts
Once upon a hunt
Good morning.
Do you always work this much ?
No, today I’ll be off at five.
Still it seems like a lot.
It’s not always like this.
This time of year is always busy
The winter’s quiet.
I took a piece of chicken from the refrigerator last night.
Forget it.
No I want to pay, really.
Otherwise you’ll think I’m a thief.
Well…
Would you like coffee ?
That would be great.
What do you do during the winter ?
Hardly anything. I sometimes work at the grocery store. This place isn’t open.
And at night ?
There’s not much to do but I love it.
I lived in the city once…
…but I really like the country better.
I don’t know whether I’d be happy here
My wife would be miserable.
But I think I could.
It would be nice to come here
It’s quiet here. No noise, no screams.
Is the little boy your son ?
Michael, yes.
I have two other boys besides him.
Mike’s not strong.
My wife thought it would be good for him
But aren’t you married ?
No, I’m not the kind of girl
Come on.
They’ve got no taste obviously.
And your wife ?
It’s hard with so many kids to raise.
Her life is not easy.
I don’t make as much money as we need.
And I don’t work at home.
She really gets worn out.
Dad, when do we leave ?
10:33:10:04
We can’t accelerate the rhythm
I discovered it mostly with IXE-13.
People said : This movie is too long.
So I said: We are going to shorten it.
…but psychologically it was still too long.
I’m passing in front of the screen
I took that rythm.
Instead of starting from the beginning,
I shortened the shot by 50% but…
A good fiction director…
…knows that as you get closer
you must accelerate the story…
It’s too late for information;
Everything must become
If you re-edit a fiction,
…you have to re-edit
If I make a movie about you,
Suppose the conversation we’re having
I don’t need to show the room again
I can show one character, two characters.
The hardest part about editing…
…is to put yourself in the place of a viewer
For IXE-13, I tried to speed things up
Toward the end of the movie,
We tried to accelerate the rhythm
The narrator says: “she added”,
IXE-13
Idiot! get rid of this one!
Just like you got rid of West?
Jawohl, my little Ginette,
Sometimes life brings you down.
Don’t want to.
Was haben Sie gesagt.
Shnell !
Drug is right but blood is not right
My little Ginette, you’re into it and
OK OK.
You have your hunting knife?
You want to get my carpet dirty
It makes to much noise!
It’s a two-shot. We can’t cut it.
If I had two cameras on that shot,
…with only one shot with
I am stuck with the dialog.
So we used this trick to make it better.
10:37:15:23
I’ll let you watch the clip
and then I’ll explain it.
Stop making noise.
You’ll scare the animals away.
Once upon a hunt
Damn branches.
He can’t even stand on his own two feet.
No, it was delightful !
The point is to show the long wait
The hunters drink beer, they wait
The little boy is fed up, he doesn’t drink;
In the scenario, it’s a little boy
I tried to build a drama…
…a premonition that someone
Michel Brault did a 360° shot…
…where the little boy is turning around
Then he did a second take
I edited those plans opposing one another
In the scenario, the boy is firing, bang, bang,
When I watch it today,
With my old-pro eyes, I’m thinking:
But I have to live with that;
Most of you were not even born yet!
10:41:12:13
Two young girls arrive in Quebec City
The boy is Louise’s boyfriend.
They go tobogganing in front of
They’re holding each other
Geneviève
Louise doesn’t get up the day after.
Geneviève, the little rascal, meets Bernard
I’m always fascinated by what
What happened during the ride?
Many shots were recorded.
I thought: I won’t show the actors;
I could cut but I’m not going to.
I will let the ride get to the end,
It was not easy doing that.
There is no music at all ?
No, there’s only the sound of the sleigh.
When working with directors like Michel Brault,
When I showed it to him,
I told myself: Good thing I didn’t cut it.
His reaction was like a benediction.
If he had told me that I couldn’t do that,
Because I wasn’t even sure about it myself.
During editing, I would provoke
And here is the result of this sleigh ride.
Poor Louise was left by herself.
They filmed when Louise arrives,
In the cut, we only see Louise when they
It’s more emotional. The time factor is there,
It hurts more.
Documentary
10:48:27:24
With documentaries,
…then you go fishing
Nothing tells you how
If we make a documentary about Suroît —
Suroît : Thermic Station project contested by the population.
You film Caillé, President of Hydro-
Who should be first in the movie?
Usually, I assemble a reel; an interview
I edit that reel, I shorten it,
and I try to get the essential
I cut it down to 2, 3 minutes
I will do the same with the union,
Then we tell ourselves:
And we plan to shoot some more.
Should we ask Montreal citizens, Quebecois,
Should we shoot something
…and nuclear to compare?
So we shoot that, make small reels and
We discuss a lot. If you start with
…you can tell right away which angle
If you say Caillé is good, nobody knows
Usually, it’s easy to find the right way
We place them in order and
Then we comment: Starting off with Caillé,
it would be better to start
And then, we restructure the movie.
We realize there are some ups and downs.
A film can be an investigation
We need to create a dramatic effect,
We can’t start off high and strong
…because everything would then
You say: That segment is so great
You move it and you see the result.
But you just changed the meaning
You were against the Suroît,
It’s that subtle and complicated.
We work intellectually and
We can very well make a movie
…the visual, the emotional and
You have to try again.
I read good research but I rarely see
I usually develop at least 5 different structures
A movie’s progression is made
It is a slow process, a maturation of the subject;
Documentaries get their shape that way.
two segments can change.
It’s by trying that you end up
Games of the XXI Olympiad
The marathon was the central plotline.
It lasts two hours and
The first shot, after the opening ceremony,
…and the marathon begins.
I tried to regularly come back
…but every time it was like
It was all edited in that spirit,
I prefer working on documentaries
…I would rather be a writer
Editing two documentaries, one fiction,
…it would have been paradise.
In the opening shot of With Drums and Trumpets,
This image is very strong and very funny.
Starting that way sets the bar so high…
With Drums and Trumpets
...It’s hard to keep that full quality.
What are the distinctive qualities
He is a devout Catholic,
What is the main obligation of a Zouave?
Discipline, promptitude and precision
A dramatic scenario based on that
Reality goes farther than fiction.
to see funny things until the end.
One moment !
Take him to Dr. Martel’s infirmary.
To Dr. Beauchamp, hurry !
He is gone…do the necessary.
What a procession!
I’m furious, doctor!
Are you in a hurry to get killed?
It’s no fun watching the dead and
At the proper moment,
He has his reasons.
Obscure reasons, I must say.
Patience, Baron! Patience, Baron!
The war was over when they arrived
But their play pretends
The play lasts 50 minutes.
I condensed it to 6 minutes.
To give it prestige, we filmed the play at
Was there an audience to watch the play?
Not at all.
They acted like Zouaves in real life.
Nowadays, a movie like that,
No, because every participant
A participant might say:
But he signed and
I am covered. He can always sue us…
… and if he wins,
Every time we see his face,
But we showed the movie to the Zouaves
Hey ! this guy is from Quebec !
Hey ! that guy is from Montreal !
The movie made us question ourselves.
Do we have the right to do that to people?
They were happy to see the movie
…at the Zouaves' expense or
I liked those Zouaves, I wasn’t laughing
For years, I wore white gloves so the film
I see this Zouave with my white gloves,
Why doesn’t he take them off?
Guy Daò : On the Way (1980)
In China, they made movies
…and here we made movies about China.
The movie needed to be
I watched the rushes and
I needed an interpreter.
Angela translated a few lines.
I said to myself: Shit, she is going to
I won’t have any control on the movie.
I need a recorder that will roll in sync
I went to the NFB’s engineering department.
It’s not easy as pie.
My producer was starting to get angry,
I told him he could go…!
After three months I finally got my machine
Georges Dufaux shot his movie on 16mm.
I had the original Chinese soundtrack.
After the clap we could roll the two tracks
Angela translated what they said.
I would place a mark
The engineers invented a device that took
…and send them to the 16mm recorder.
Afterwards, I would take Angela’s translation
…with a synchronization mark and
When we cut the image,
Every Monday,
She did 2, 3 sequences in one day
This is Comrade Li.
Please take a seat.
Why not proceed this way.
I suggest: This young woman will draw
The other one will reproduce
Both will start at the same time. OK ?
Can you tell us when to begin ?
Start now !
I edited this with music mostly
Otherwise it would have been too long.
Learning the Chinese railway system
…is not that interesting…
Show me please.
11:08:48:09
It often happens that you get
an outstanding shot and …
…you try it in every sequence
The movie is over and you tell yourself:
It’s painful for the editor, the director,
Jean-Claude Labrecque, Director
This shot was so powerful we had to
In the middle, it would have stopped
Jean-Claude Labrecque used
The 1000mm has a compression effect.
It’s risky to start like that
If I can’t keep up the interest,
Everything you place in the movie
You can always place it somewhere else,
Closed Circuit
Jean-Claude Labrecque and Bernard Gosselin
They didn’t know what to do
I watched it and I told them: Let me try.
I saw 50 minutes of bicycles, well edited,
I discovered that the faster shots
A few lone cyclists come before the pack
Then comes the pack
I picked all the shots that go very fast.
If it had been a drama, I would have taken
I build a drama, a passing dog,
then the touc, touc, touc, touc, touc,
If I hadn’t had the accident,
Why the shot of the girl kissing the guy?
I was a young cineast and for me,
He can see himself winning.
It was not a premonition,
It’s funny how it is placed.
But it allows us to change
It might be strange
I just wanted to have your impressions.
There are a lot of things that I see here that
But 40 years ago, it took boldness.
But where do you stop your boldness?
Before the kiss, after the kiss,
Why the cyclists who are going too fast?
Some things I do instinctively and
… it might not be the real explanation,
If those crazy guys battle for this closed circuit,
It’s not for the accident,
Today I’m not sure I would take it out,
I would think I have lost my boldness.
You have to go to the edge of
[DISK 2]
12:00:00:07
1 - Sounds and ambiances
I edited Mario for Jean Beaudin.
There were 14 sound tracks
Mario
There was one microphone aiming
…one for the boy’s breathing,
You tell yourself: It’s too much;
Then you fight with the audio guy…
Watch out, it’s heavy!
I find that soundtracks nowadays
It’s wall to wall, there are no silences anymore,
Sometimes it’s fun to be out
2 – Music
With Trumpets and Drums
To make a contrast,
Here, the tents are erected
When music changes, action changes.
It’s music from the Napoleonic era
It was a Folkways record
As for Zea,
At the time, there were 4 full-time musicians
We had the partition rewritten,
…and we doubled it and doubled it and
3 – Speech: dialogue and commentaries
Many believe that commentaries
…but they can be very beautiful.
Le Pays rêvé
One day your parents send you
It’s a small village,
But for you, it’s the Orient.
It’s summer’s long vacations
Time that can stretch,
and nature…
…like the Lady of the Lake,
…and bring you to
Commentaries are bad when
But if a commentary brings us to a new level,
12:06:18:27
It’s hard to stay sober.
Saying something in one sentence is
We tend to write three pages
Writing and editing is a bit similar.
I was editing Massabielle
I had written an article for the
I left it in my editing room and
I said: Go ahead ! He read it and said:
I was proud: a writer, a scriptwriter
He added: Do you mind if I punctuate it?
He didn’t change a word but he placed
…he changed paragraphs.
It was so easy to read,
Today, I still have the feeling
They are my words, but edited
He just put commas, and spaces,
With nothing! No, not with nothing,
A straight cut is a cut
It can also be done with dialogs,
by going from one character to another.
A character goes off screen.
You can cut him when he is still halfway
You can also let him clear the screen…
…and let the next character
All the empty screens add up.
An empty screen is 10 frames,
58 empty screens in a regular movie…
…add up to about 20-30 seconds
The audience will think the movie is long.
Because every time you show an empty screen,
You can cut within an action…
Without going from one step to another.
The cinematic language has evolved.
50 years ago, you couldn’t be here
A jump cut is a bad cut.
I film a close-up, I stop the camera
Or I cut one sentence in the shot
It jumps !
But there is a way to cut right;
You raise your hand and three sentences later,
Within the arm’s move, I can cut,
Some people need a mix to be able
When you change locations,
We often use the fade in
I really started to associate
So I totally eliminated it from my work
Le Steak
A leopard cut is an action started
Of whales, the Moon and Men
A woman jumps from the boat and…
…a little girl jumping from a tree
The movies made lately for television
What are talking heads?
Talking heads are close-ups of someone
When we have a movie with talking heads,
So every time we have a bad cut,
But that insert isn’t where it should be.
it is where there is a bad cut…
…not to help the dramatic progression.
And you can feel it.
Sometimes I watch a movie
There is a form of music
I always try to break that rhythm
When I first started with the NFB,
It was slow. It took time
Some editors from the old gang
…and would say: This shot is a number 4.
They gave a grade to every shot.
They would put their filmstrips
…then count 1, 2, 3, 4.
The brake was instantaneous !
They cut according to the grade
Then another one: 1, 2, 3 cut!
Then they put everything together
Those were the '60s.
In an interview on television, everybody
…to be sure that we understand.
Finding the redundancies
The audience gets bored when they hear
Werner is actually redundant !
I watch the screen and attach the next
At the end of the shot,
I find in the next shot the moment where
so we don’t have to look here and there.
Otherwise, you have to scan the entire
On a small television screen it’s tolerable,
…it gets tiring to always have to move
12:18:57:08
One day, I was editing a movie
I had a sort of color progression
In my basket, I had a color spectrum,
…to have the progression of the day
Wow ! It was magnificent !
I brought that to the laboratory.
There, the colour timer does
He removes the “excess” of blue,
So he succeeded – he was a very good
An editor says: I have 25 clips;
It’s very very difficult to resist.
Everyone pulls the blanket his way,
It gives chopped, chopped editings, even
A virtuoso of the splicer seduces even me.
But we have to simplify things.
If we can express the idea in one shot,
I edited Geneviève, it was right
I still had outs of that film in my editing
In the first scene of Geneviève, two girls
They are in the train,
We see images filmed for Of Whales, the
Nobody knows it beside you… and me.
I added music from Arthur Lamothe’s
So I took material from other movies that
Genevieve and Louise live in Montreal.
Geneviève
12:23:27:06
Go back to 1963 and
We were preoccupied by censorship
Michel Brault and I set it aside.
We made a lot of test screenings and
I double taped the film to be sure it would
I had the laboratory clean my reels.
I had two days off before a screening so,
Important people were coming to those
Radio-Canada who put money in the
…and Pierre Juneau, Director of the
At the screening, when that sequence
I was watching my Commissioner
Michel Brault didn’t know about it,
I was thinking: I may have gone too far
I was still expecting someone to tell me:
But no, no one ever asked me
Self-censorship is often stronger
Of Whales, the moon and men
We’ve seen it all. The habitants see
Terrible.
When the time comes,
People and roosters —
Not a rooster. He does it all year long.
Take my rooster.
He mounted 3 hens…
…in the space of 3 minutes !
It’s unbelievable!
But he’s still got it!
Here is another anecdote
I was recording sounds
Michel Brault told me: Did you know
How could we manage to record them?
Michel said: Let’s put the microphone
I said: good idea. We stopped
Michel said: Werner, go buy a condom.
For me, in 1963, a protestant, a Calvinist,
I screw up my courage, I go in and this
Hmm… I need, hmm… a condom. I turn
She goes behind her counter,
She looks at me, I feel she is judging me.
I say: You know, it’s not for me,
She thought I was even crazier
I left with my condom, put it over the
The porpoise never talked.
It saw the microphone and didn’t say:
12:29:14:15
Some editors were very “in”, very flashy,
But for an important movie, NFB said: We
I wasn’t “in”. Styles just come and go.
A cameraman might have a huge success.
Everybody wants to shoot with him
But if you can’t take chances, you ask
Then you are sure it will be good.
12:29:51:20
I told you I have been influenced by
I was really influenced by that movie
Plagiarism is a shot someone copies
Norman McLaren made Pas de deux,
Pas de deux
He worked two or three years
Six months after it hit the theatres,
I found my editing of the Olympic movie
They copied the structure, the ending
The title was Running,
Now, I would like to show you
Jeux de la XXIe olympiade
Professional relations
12:34:14:27
Claude Jutra was the only one
He made his first film at 16.
He taught us the biggest part of our work.
One day Claude watched one of my work
I liked it but this shot X, why is it there?
He described the shot and I said:
A sequence? I had so shortened the
For me it was still a sequence but Claude,
I had a useless shot in the movie;
I could have rebuilt the sequence, but...
I did the same for Claude Jutra.
When he was near the end of a movie,
Asking questions forces the filmmaker
We worked this way.
I worked on a lot of movies
When you are doing a director’s sixth,
With Jacques Godbout, I didn’t even sit
A good editor is a chameleon.
My boy-scout nickname shouldn’t have
Because I absorbed their world.
It might stun you to know that with
With Georges Dufaux,
Before working with a director, I should
It was a lot later
Jutra had eczema on his face.
The more you work with a guy, the less
I provoked them too.
When I wasn’t sure about a shot, I cut it
Sometimes I would even cut off
Sometimes the director wouldn’t even
Or he would say : you dirty rat,
I said : Why was it in there in the first
A director who wants to keep something
Once I understood why it was there
It was from lack of certainty
Or he would say: Werner, you’re right,
I often settled things this way,
The worst editor is someone
He should find another career.
The first time you edit with a director
…because you don’t know what he wants.
Mankiewicz, in his first movie, didn’t know
He has a good script, I find it interesting
Francis Mankiewicz was very stubborn.
I edited a sequence and he would say:
I said: You will see, you will like it!
Two or three days later, he would say:
I would do some changes and: If you
Then I would try and he was right.
My relationship with him was very
I always tried to make the director’s
As long as he had a good idea, I was
If you ask me: Do you want to edit my
I will edit a one-hour long movie
Even the first cut isn’t done the same
Marc-André Forcier asked me to edit
I told him: Marc-André, I would be happy
He brings me the script.
The NFB asked for some changes. He
He brought me 5 or 6 versions of the
At the end I said: Marc-André, your movie
I saw the script getting screwed up bit by
When everybody gets involved, when the
…it’s like a house of card falling apart.
The finished movie isn’t bad but it’s day
According to you, his first script was
If you take the craziness out of a guy, he
He loses his spontaneity.
I make jewels for my wife. She prefers
Same thing with a script, there’s pep, it
A producer, a distributor, a committee,
At the NFB all the directors could not
When there was not enough money for
They held him three, four years like that.
It was before L’eau chaude, l’eau frette?
No, long after.
L’eau chaude, l’eau frette is a great
He made it in the private industry with a
The craziness of L’eau chaude, l’eau frette
The craziness of Kalamazoo was there in
It’s like if they had asked Francis
At the time, people were afraid
So we couldn’t have made Francis’ movie
It’s within the people, this way to express
What you’re saying is important, Werner.
but they didn’t have the money.
Three years later, they didn’t have the
Was that how it happened?
That’s the way I see it, knowing the NFB
As a former member of the program
When Jean Beaudin saw he couldn’t shoot
Denys Arcand left the NFB.
A lot of directors left.
Many had made documentaries and they
Everybody gets tempted, at some point,
12:45:49:13
When I was told:
I did not ask who directed it,
Some cameramen are easy to edit,
Michel Brault was good with
…because he knew when not to.
60% of Michel’s footage was shot
People say Michel Brault only shoots with
You cannot shoot buildings for one hour,
Michel Brault understood that.
Some cameramen know where to cut
I had an extraordinary experience
He always let the characters out of the
Then he makes 3-4 movies with someone
Every time he finishes a shot,
He doesn’t leave me any choice.
He had bad experiences with editors who
So we had a discussion. Then he resumed
When we watched George Dufaux’s
I’ll try to demonstrate it for you.
Georges is like an oak tree with a camera
He frames someone, listens hard.
When the person is done talking,
He is solid as a rock.
So before I started to edit,
I took all the shit out, all the shifting
Then, it was as if it was shot with
It’s the most perfect camera work
Martin Leclerc is crazy with a camera.
During set-ups, Martin is shooting.
What he shoots has nothing to do
But it gives me lots of footage
Michel Moreau was getting ready
It allowed me to create an atmosphere.
I used what he shot.
Le Pays rêvé
This place is sacred for me.
There, behind my father’s window,
But now nostalgia hits me at full speed.
The ghastly hearse brought faithful
We knew the name of every dog
…but now, human relations
The National 7 crossroad
But the gendarme’s ghost is there,
Ha ha, traffic is not a joke. Alas!
Suddenly comes from the left,
nicknamed the Red Vicar…
…whose thoughts are as progressive
I suspect that every immigrant possesses,
…a little corner of land that he loved.
Here’s a typical case. Martin took all the
…while Michel Moreau was setting up
Martin was shooting the butcher going in,
On my side, I cut the butcher shot
…I tried to create a village atmosphere
But without Martin Leclerc’s help,
They are all stolen shots.
12:52:04:06
My assistant-editor is my first viewer.
Michelle Guérin, Louise Surprenant,
Their responsibility is to keep control
My assistants taught me
The first time an assistant asked me:
I answered: Because!
It’s an intuition, it’s a premonition;
They forced me to verbalize what I did.
Conclusion
This scissor was made at the NFB to edit
Of Whales, the Moon and Men.
When we used the hot splicer…
...we scraped the film,
...put acetone-based cement,
…hot-pressed it,
…and we had a solid splice.
When we wanted to change
…since we can’t undo the splice,
Michel Brault said: Let’s find a way
With perforated splicing tape like this one,
but transparent,...
we can take it off…
…and put the shot elsewhere
I used to keep 15 frames at each end of a
After watching the movie 58 times with 15
Six months later I would watch the movie:
It’s too long ! It was frustrating.
In 1964, Jean-Claude Labrecque went
He brought me back an Italian splicer.
It cuts between two frames with
It was like a miracle. I could take the shot
I paid $80 from my pocket for that splicer.
Let me introduce you to the Moviola.
This recent one is green.
The one from the twenties had optical
It was possible to edit the picture with or
This one also has an optical soundtrack.
It is noisy because of the sprocket drive.
The Moviola worked at 24 frames/second…
…and at high speed at 36 frames/second.
We had to decide where to cut pretty fast
I had my first Steenbeck at the NFB
This is 35mm...
...and this is 16mm.
You can have sound on 35 or 16mm
You simply change the rollers.
This is 35mm...
...and this is 16mm.
This is a viewer with a magnifying glass to
The Steenbeck was so fast.
By the time I took a decision, I had to go
The transition between the Moviola
…between the Steenbeck and digital.
That’s evolution.
And I go further back. I began editing
You could see the sound
At the far right,
Here’s the beep
When magnetic came, the editors yelled:
With optical sound, you see exactly where
With magnetic, you have to find
You had to spot it, often on only two
There was a lot of manual labor
Synchronizing sound and picture.
Both tracks need to have the same length
This synchronizer measures the length of
If we cut the image track,...
...we have to cut the same length on the
But while we were manipulating,
Today, we have dictionaries
We browse for the word Present
With AVID it’s the same thing;
you look for a shot,
Your shot appears.
I had my bin and
I looked through the shots
Ah, this one might be better than
Then I would try it and
So the manual aspect is extremely
Every time there’s a technological
The older they are, the more they
When I edited sound myself,
For a half-hour long movie,
I had 16 soundtracks and
…and play the 16 soundtracks
We split the movie into ten-minute rolls.
You had two mixers, one for sound effects
We played a roll and
The guys were stressed. At the ninth
We would stop, rewind everything,
...put it on the start mark and start back
Whenever there was an error, we had to
13:06:41:22
The ideal editing would be
I always try to hide the editing
I rarely succeed but once in a while I do.
Norman McLaren knocks on my door.
Norman, who was our God, tells me:
Werner, I have a problem with a cut.
Here’s my chance to show McLaren
I worked a lot and I couldn’t do better
Pas de deux
Norman said: If we can’t do better,
From that moment on,
13:08:18:02
I have never saved a movie.
I made bad movies pass as good
When some one gives me a piece of shit,
I don’t go further than that but it’s more
Even odorless and color-free,
Saving a movie can be done only
If the movie is bad because
...filming this important scene
But it’s not really saving the movie,
You’re not just editing,
If I had to make an editor pass a test, I
If it’s not bad, I would say: Show me your
A young assistant was in a hurry to do
He edits the sequence, I watch it and then
Now compare what I did with the outs.
You see how much reflexion and he
...because he was unable to do
The reading of the rushes takes a lot
What an extraordinary life
Each movie is a new challenge...
...whether it’s human relations, the film
I edited around 120 movies.
Americans probably make 500 movies per
Do you think there are 50 good American
Aim for 10% and
On a hundred directors, 10% might be
What are the qualities required
One hundred times over,
Keep a fresh viewpoint.
Do not edit your own movie
And a bit of passion won’t hurt you!
And… I have nothing more to tell you,
EDITING ACCORDING TO WERNER
Direction and Editing
Image and Sound
Original score
Sound editing and mix
On-line editing
Translation
Subtitles
Consultant for the subtitles
Titles, graphic design and DVD authoring
NFB Coordinator
NFB films and excerpts
60 cycles
Avec tambours et trompettes
Geneviève
Gui Daò, sur la voie
IXE-13
Jeux de la XXIe Olympiade
Mario
Pas de deux
Le Pays rêvé
Of whales, the Moon and Men
Le Steak
Once upon a Hunt
Ti-Mine, Bernie pis la gang
Zea
The content of this master class and dvd
Stills
Many thanks to
The master class was organized by
Production
With the collaboration of
And with the assistance of the
Distribution : National Film Board of
© 2009 Production Le Conifère têtu |