Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Cut it within an inch of it's life, Fincher.



I love David Fincher's films, except for Zodiac. The man is a genius, no pun intended.

But I also beleive that long doesn't necessarily mean better, and incline towards a streamlined approach in what I'm watching. You see, I'm a film editor, so naturally this topic is right up my alley.

Some films are just too long. I've seen movies that are three hours (Casino comes to mind) that fly faster than anything under 94 minutes, either because they're so engaging that you're glued or fascinating in the way the story is told. Hitchcock said it best to consider your film's running time by genre expectations, audience expectation, and their bowel movements.

Everyone has a bowel, not every filmmaker is successful at telling a story. If they where, every film would be a masterpiece.

The bigger the filmmaker, the longer the film. There's examples of this in every good filmmaker, Spike Lee, Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson come to mind.

That's the cliche. Good directors know how well a film will play to the audience because they command the language to engage their senses before they even edit it. Good directors stage their scenes with maximum efficiency instead of shooting the shit out of it till something good pops out. The only one who's above all this is teh late, great Stanley Kubrick. His films where long, but every edit was perfect. Others work differently and rely on an editor's sanity to rescue their story from total incoherence. Action films don't subject to this formula, as coherence is not a basis for engagement. An hackeyed action film such as The Bourne Supremacy ends up Winnin the editing Oscar versus measured and seamless pieces like Children Of Men. This goes to prove that you don't need to be up there to know that idiots run the show.

Remember the days of Oliver Stone? he's a reason film editors exist...often at the mercy of the director. If form follows function, good editing is the chess game of intentions.

The secret goal of a film editor is to bring in a film fat free, to trim away all the directorial excess and keep the story told as lean as possible while maintaining the vision of that story. Easier said than done, it takes a lot of skill to do this. During this time, questions are asked, accidents happen, and films are shaped in ways that resemble the script, or radically depart from it. What is essential is how efficient can a story be told without disrupting it's emotional core? that's a director's job ideally. A questioned later answered at the bay...or at the script stage. So many directors don't understand editing, and watching even great movies made by even great filmmakers narrative leaks and edits exist. Every cut is a decision made in the service of telling that story.

Even one frame can make a difference whether a film drags or feels just right, but only people that do what I do notice that. We're the gods between the details.


David Fincher, top 5 greatest Director alive, has been in a locked battle over the lenght of his new 175 million epic, Benjamin Button. The film stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages backwards. It's the move I look forward to seeing the most this holiday season. Now if you've seen Zodiac and aren't a cinephile, you probably found it as laborious to sit through as I did. That movie is what prompted me to write this blog.

You see, Fincher is uncompromising. This is the man who notoriously has his way with the studios, and makes the films he wants to make. This is his best and worse quality as a filmmaker, but I'm a subscriber to the "lenght is dictated by how you stage it" theory. Quoting Fincher, a movie "makes a pact with it's audience". Every bit of information is informed by every cut. The thematic threads of the story and the context of the emotions are formed by the choice of shots, their staging, the performances, and when and how the edit is applied. Sorta like how your brain engages the intellect, if you possess it.

Zodiac's running time was 158 minutes (162 in the DVD). It is neither a historical epic nor does it contain multiple narrative threads. It is also a story with no resolution, given that it's based on the case of the Zodiac which was never solved.

Fincher had final cut in the film, which means after a studio mandated lenght all the creative decisions are his. When you have millions invested in a property, wouldn't you also want your investment to play to as broader an audience as possible? this is the argument that underlines film vs movies, art vs commerce. The both are not mutually exclusive because they must join in order to exist. Back to the movie.

Now, 158 minutes is a lot of time to devote to a movie without a clear resolution. This to me is the main reason why the movie failed at the box office. The movie just lacks momentum, and this is informed by the way Fincher chose to tell the story. Out of my experience with my own work and working with someone else, I often have an internal discussion about how it's playing. I structure the footage six ways to sunday until every single creative avenue has been explored, and the end result is the connective end of all these roads. Reports from a 20 minute preview point out the obvious, that the film poses a challenge to mainstream audiences accustomed to having everything fed to them at a steady pace. Fincher's contract with Paramount (and Warner Bros) gives him final cut at 2 1/2 hours. It was reported that the film irks closer to three hours, and the studio demands more cuts to keep it under 2 1/2. Judging by the trailer, it's a sweeping epic which covers a man's entire lifeline, hence the lenght might be necessary to tell that kind of story. If the movie resembles the pacing of Zodiac in any way, audiences are in for a rude awakening. Bring plenty of coffee, because great films can be ruined by poor pacing. Ever told someone a story and before you got to it they just want to know what happened? audiences are conditioned to read a film this way, because most entertainment is designed this way. Hollywood films are escapist entertainment, but Fincher's films toe the line between art and commerce more successfully without compromising either. Every one of his films are made within an inch of their life, save for Zodiac and his Alien movie (that one doesn't count).

Does the article FEEL long? that's the whole purpose. If it feels long, then it must be long. But is it necessary to tell the story? only time will tell. This is the longest I've had to write to say so little, could it be told by anyone else?

Cut it within an inch of it's life, Fincher, don't let the scenes go on too long.

Trailer for Brad Pitt as an old man below:

1 comment:

William Wren said...

good post im off to put his name on my list