161 Edits
Posted: Thursday, March 29, 2007 5:33 PM by Jen Brown
(From Guy Ludwig, TODAY producer)
“That seems wrong,” said a film company executive. “Are you sure?” asked a Today Show colleague. “Come On!” jeered an anchorperson, remembering his days as a producer. I had to admit I understood their skepticism. After all, how could a single Critic’s Corner, just two minutes in length, possibly contain 161 edits?
Even I was surprised but, as Gene Shalit’s producer here at Today, I counted ‘em myself and sure enough, that was the number I came up with. (I never was very good at math, but that’s another story.)
Speaking of story, the spot in question is the present BLADES OF GLORY review. In many ways, this is a typical Gene Shalit movie review – but since nothing in the World of Shalit is “typical”, perhaps that’s a misnomer. All Critic’s Corners begin and end with Gene’s text – but what begins at the beginning is ever so different from what we’ve got at the end. It starts long – many, many hundreds of words - which Gene then shapes, hones and molds.
The rest get thrown into left field. Getting the copy down to 14 or so sentences takes numerous revisions. Let’s say 10.
Now, we’ve got a “shooting script”. But being on the set doesn’t stop the editing process. Once Gene “hears” what he has written, more adjustments are made.Suggestions from the crew, the water-cooler-repair man, the Federal Express driver, and Gene’s barber all get a fair hearing. That’s 15 more “edits.”
We’re up to 25 and we haven’t begun cutting the spot yet.
After we record Gene’s part, he and I continue the discussion. “Should this sentence go?” he asks. “If music begins here, I should start here,” he declares. “What in heaven’s name do you DO for a living?” he demands (of me, it turns out).
More changes. Maybe two. Call it five. Where’s my calculator? Our grand total so far: 30 edits.
Now comes the time to move into NLE 517. (NLE stands for Non-Linear Editing;
I haven’t any idea what 517 stands for). This is our regular production suite and the home of long-suffering editor Walter Whitney. Over the last 18 or so years, Walter has chopped, diced, sliced, pruned and cut ‘way over 1000 reviews…every one of them with me. Some of our colleagues say Walter has had side effects from this, but I don’t notice any. And for BLADES OF GLORY, we began our day as usual:
I walked into 517, Walter slipped on his straitjacket and we set to work. It is here in this historic corner of the GE building that we combine Gene’s “parts” with those given to us by the movie company – in this case, Paramount – to create the review you see on TV. ‘Seems simple enough. How can we possibly cram 131 edits into what’s left to do? Well, here goes:
Gene says good morning and asks a question. That’s an edit for sound, an edit for picture
and a cut at the end (pix and sound). That makes four. We cut to a clip of Will Ferrell’s character who’s supposed to be drunk. But the clip is too long. We have to “pull it up”. three edits inside the clip plus two more (pix and sound) to bring Gene back on camera (5). Gene asks another question. And again we cut. Two to get him off. On to another clip, this time with an interior audio adjustment with three edits (7). Back to GS on camera – we’re nine seconds in and we’ve made – how many? – 21 edits!
But now, standby: we’re going to insert a “graphic” – the title of the movie, using artwork from the film itself, at the moment Gene says it. This graphic must be captured (1), sized (6), inserted on cue (1), given a bit of animation visually – it “slides” into view (2) and also, aurally – when it “slides” into view, we hear the sound of skate on ice (1). Oops! We’ve gotta go capture that sound effect from somewhere ELSE in our movie material and move it to where we want it (2).
So, by the time Gene says “Blades of Glory”, we’ve made over 40 edits. (I left out a couple of cuts to and from the movie at the beginning, but you can count them yourself if you view the spot). Combine those with the “text” edits we made before we got into the editing room, and we’ve got more than 70. We’re twenty seconds into our spot.
Portions of Gene’s text then become narration. Walter and I mechanically stop him from talking momentarily to allow action to occur – for example, Ferrell and Heder doing a double axel. This adds six more slices. Later, we remove a few milliseconds of time between Gene’s words so he “syncs” up the skaters as they twirl on the ice. Three more edits, plus all the cuts from Gene to the movie and back to Gene.
Hmm. I notice your eyes are glazing over. Mine, too. So, add them all up and you get: 161! (Not fair? Well, do you really want to know how, when Ferrell swings Heder around in a practice sequence, we shortened each shot, added ice skate audio and resized the picture? I didn’t think so, but that added 11 edits. OR, did you really want to know that when we were all done we went back to “sweeten” the whole thing? We adjusted color hue, rebalanced the audio and re-trimmed some of our previous cuts, adding 8 more.)
Funny, it now appears your eyes are CROSSED….
One of the things people say, when they visit us in good old NLE 517 is “Where’s the commissary?” Oh, but that’s off the point. Another thing they say is, “Do you ever see Tina Fey shooting ’30 Rock’ outside the door?” Huh. That’s off the point, too. ANOTHER thing they say is, “Gee whiz, it takes you guys SO LONG to do two minutes of TV! Do your bosses know about this?” Well, I guess they do now.
But for Gene, Walter and me, that’s part of the real fun of the Critic’s Corner. It may
take a while to do, and it may involve lots of editing, but in the end it needs to look and feel like it “just happens”. Come to think of it, it DOES “just happen” … right, Gene?
… right Walter?
