Last year when I was traveling in New York City, I found myself on Broadway, in the heart of the theater district, and I saw a woman wearing a t-shirt with writing on it. The shirt read, "Theater is Life, Film is Art, and Television is Furniture." I thought she pointed out an interesting distinction there.

Today, we have many forms of entertainment available to us, yet all around the world from England to France, from India to Asia, and throughout the United States, most people would agree that films and filmmaking really is an art form.

I consider film editing as an art form as well, and therefore film editors are artists. It can be argued that creatively, editors contribute just as much to the storytelling process as does the writer, the actors and sometimes even the director. The story's pacing, its tempo, even the amount of information that is revealed to the audience at any one time is decided by the editing. When it comes to documentary filmmaking, the contribution is even more profound. The editor IS the writer, the director, and the entire story teller who decides what we, as the audience, will experience and learn. And to do it well takes all of the talents of a true artist.

Over the last eight years, the computer has made a significant impact on how we edit movies in Hollywood. Rather than focus on the procedural changes, I wanted to focus here on how these computerized non-linear editing systems have effected the creative and aesthetic aspects of film editing. How it changes the way the artist approaches his work, the way a painter approaches his canvas or how the writer approaches the blank page, is of profound interest to me.

If a painter uses the brushes in Photoshop to create an image rather than the traditional horse hair, his final work would be different than if he used physical brushes. The texture would change, the colors might be different, etc. It is therefore reasonable to believe that if the editor's tools changed, then the movie they are editing may change as well. The question is then, if a film is edited on a computer, how would it be different than if it was edited on film? And would it make the movie any better or worse? Does the artist get any better at their craft?

Non-linear editing, of course, is familiar to every film editor. All film editing, since the inception of editing, has been non-linear. It wasn't until video entered the scene, that editing became linear. So with these new digital editing systems, whether you are using Discreet's edit*, Avid or Media 100, the non-linear aspect of computer editing is nothing new to film editors. So the non-linear aspect of these systems wouldn't have any effect on the editing process.

One area I believe that has a huge impact on the artist's process of editing is the ability of the editor to edit faster on these systems. Back in 1993 I edited a full, two hour feature film in just about three weeks on a computer. It was the first time I edited a feature electronically, and it would have taken me at least three months to edit the same movie on a flatbed or movieola.

Did it make the movie any better, however? I believe that it did. Not only was I able to edit it so quickly, but I was able to try things that I never would have been able to try if we had edited in the traditional fashion. The particular director I was working with was a very creative guy who had a hard time making decisions.

When I edited on a flatbed, every time I wanted to compare different versions of a scene for the director to see, I had to send out the cut that I had made to the lab for them to make a copy of my workprint before I could pull it apart and create my second cut. The process cost money and time each time I sent out for the copy to be made, so this kind of creative experimentation was not exactly encouraged by the producers of the movie. And of course, it took about 2 days for me to get the copy back from the lab, which also limited the number of times I would go through the process with the director. But we did not run into any of these problems because we were on a computer. We could explore several ideas at once without any real cost in time or money. This was very freeing for us.

Since then, using digital systems in my work has opened a whole new world of creative experimentation for me. I can now try several versions of one scene, go down unusual and uncommon pathways to find the best way to tell the story in a very short period of time. In the same time it would take to provide my director with two alternatives to a scene previously, I can now edit about a dozen. The sheer speed of digital editing has caused a paradigm shift in the actual experience of editing for me. By having unlimited, instant access to multiple versions of a scene, I believe that it has made me a better editor, and the movies that I work on, better movies. By having this type of experience, it opens up the creative possibilities of storytelling without limiting the creative process for me.

Another significant effect digital editing has had on the movies that I have been going to see is that it seems as if there are now more optical transitions being used in films. This may not come as a surprise to you since it is so much easier to add transitions in a digital system, and a scholar named Michael Brandt found that the actual number of transition effects used in computer edited films is just about double that of traditionally edited Hollywood movies.

That makes a lot of sense. Back in my moviola days, in order to create a simple dissolve, I would close my eyes, count to myself and try to image how it would look to dissolve between the two shots. I couldn't actually show anyone how it would work, usually until the movie was in the finishing stages and the opticals were made. Sure, the grease pencil indicated where the dissolve started and ended, but I lacked the actual experience of seeing it in the context of the movie until it was finished. With electronic editing, however, I was able to see if the transition worked quite quickly, and I would use them as story elements more often than before. I believe that this aspect alone probably has a greater effect on the use of opticals than any other aspect of filmmaking.

Another creative effect of computer-based editing can be seen in the realm of documentary filmmaking. The act of editing a documentary involves what seems like endless editing and re-editing until the story is just right. The act of editing documentary film is different from narrative in that the amount of film generated is huge in comparison.

The organization of this mountain of film is a daunting task in itself, one that digital editing systems do quite nicely. In fact, there is one documentary film that has just been completed using Slingshot and Discreet's edit* here in India by Bina Paul at KSFDC which is slated for release November 5th. Her experience has been a pleasant one, I hear, and I look forward to seeing the movie. By having each frame of footage instantly available at your fingertips, the documentarian, I believe, benefits the most.

In both narrative and documentary film editing , it is much easier to move picture and sound elements around in digital systems as compared to a flatbed or moviola. Creatively, this can open up more windows for the editor. They can try shots from other parts of the movie within a scene that they might not have used under traditional editing scenarios, particularly if they were working without the help of one or more assistant editors. This refers back to the easy accessibility of every piece of film that was shot.

When it comes to working with audio tracks, these digital systems are unparalleled. Editing traditionally, I had only one, maybe two audio tracks I could work with at any one time. If music or sound effects were a key element to an edit, it would be lost on the director until the final mix was completed.

With a computer based editing system, I now have at least 8 audio tracks that I can work with on every film, and this, for me, has added a whole new dimension to my edited product. Part of my background is in music, and the expanded audio capabilities of these new systems has opened a whole new creative world for me.

Now, when I show the director my cut, I have digital sound effects, a temporary music track and ambient sound already in the mix so he can get the full experience of how his movie will look on the big screen. This feature alone has made me a better editor and has increased the amount of fun that I have each time I sit down to edit a scene. Yes, it does take a little more work, but I love this aspect of the storytelling process so much that it is well worth the extra effort .

In conclusion, I believe that we are on the verge of a creative shift in the natural evolution of film editing. I don't see it as a revolution (although scholars years from now may look at it that way) but I do see the addition of digital editing tools as fostering renewed creativity, freedom and higher quality filmmaking. I am anxious to see what the next generation of film editors do with this new-found freedom. Hopefully it will usher in a new era of experimental editing and new styles of filmmaking.

One example of this can be seen in a recent German film called "Run, Lola, Run". The movie is based on a very simple premise of a girl whose boyfriend is in trouble with a drug dealer and she has to figure out a way to save him. As an audience we see the story three different times, with three different outcomes. We are never really given a clue as to which ending is the 'real' one, but this unique story structure also gives rise to unique editing techniques.

Each time Lola goes through her run toward her beau in distress, we see a sequence of rapidly edited images, more like impressions, that tells a whole story in a handful of seconds. In this series of images, we experience the entire back-story of a small handful of characters that adds color and reference to our heroine's life that is not only purely entertaining, but it helps us to make sense of her character without wasting too much screen time in the process.

In fact this style of editing not only serves the story well, but helps add to the tension in the action scenes that is already created by the director and the actors. From an editing standpoint, this film is nothing short of brilliant, in my humble opinion, and indicative, I hope, of some of the new-found creative freedom that putting these tools in the hands of talented artists, talented editors and talented filmmakers will help foster for years to come.

Back home, I know of at least one editor who has a moviola in his editing room that he considers strictly furniture. I'm not saying that we should abandon the traditional forms of editing films, but that by editing digitally it can open up some new, creative avenues for the filmmaker that may not have been available before. Editors are artisans, and by putting better tools into their hands, we will all have better movies for us to enjoy. I thank you for coming today and giving me your time.

Barry Silver can be reached at:
Trakker Technologies Marketing
10478 Alta Sierra Drive Grass Valley, CA. 95949
Email: jeff@trakkertech.com