When watching a movie, it’s easy to see all the many ingredients that go into making the story come to life.   Engaging dialogue from a tightly written screenplay, standout performances from the committed actors, and a vision from the director that helps to make the scene feel as authentic as possible.  But, there’s another ingredient thrown into the mix that doesn’t quite capture the intention of the viewer yet it’s the one thing that affects everything else in the finished product by the end.  That crucial ingredient is film edit.  Without the job of a proper edit, a story has no form or character.  It’s just images without reason.  Editing is what brings out the context of the images that we see and shows us how one thing can relate to another.  And, in the grand scheme of things, editing is probably the hardest job of all for a filmmaker.  While a lot of work goes into the writing and the filming of a story, it’s not until the post-production editing process that the filmmakers are able to find the story that they want to tell.  There, they are able to find the emotion through the contrasting of images or tension through the compression of time, and through that, they are able to get creative with the tools that are available to them.  But, strangely enough, the work of the editor is often unheralded, mainly due to the fact that in order for the editor to do their job well, their work must be made invisible to the viewer.  Unless otherwise made to be seen on purpose, essential film editing must work in service to the story and not overwhelm it, thereby causing many of us in the audience to take the work of an editor for granted.  But, in so many cases throughout film history, it’s been the excellent editing of a movie that causes it to stand out.

Now a lot of people probably think that it’s not that hard at all to edit together a movie.  All you need to do is to plan out your cuts ahead of time and follow the blueprint right?  It’s far more complicated than that.  For an editor to do their job, they must first analyze countless hours of footage, depending on the length of the feature.  Even with a scene mapped out in pre-production, the actual filming must take into account all the necessary coverage from multiple angles, as well as the multiple takes that will inevitably happen, since no one is ever satisfied with just one take.  And it’s from that pool of material that the editor must find the story, taking the best takes out of the mix from the best angles and piecing them together to make it feel like one whole piece.  Not only that, but they must be observant with every bit of footage, looking for continuity mistakes that may undermine the flow of the scene.  Lastly, they must also time their edits perfectly, making each cut feel natural and never abrupt; something that may even matter by only a frame or two.  And this is just the essentials for a practical editing job.  There’s a whole bunch of other tricks of the trade that an editor can use to take things in a more creative direction.  Overall, it’s time consuming and often tedious, but when you find the story forming in front of you, it can also be  rewarding and sometimes even surprising process.  I’ve been through it myself before, and it’s often the process where you see the clarity of what you’re creating come through.  Hell, when I was splicing together film stock as a projectionist a while ago, I could easily see the value of how a couple missing frames might affect the overall viewing experience.  It’s a highly precise art, yet one that must also always support everything else.

From the moment that cinema began, filmmakers have been tinkering around with editing.  The turn of the century often relied on single shot moments to showcase the medium, like a train arriving at a station or a vaudeville performer doing their act, but over time, some visionaries discovered how they could use the moving picture camera to tell a story.  Georges Melies created magnificent stories through fixed camera tableau like his 1902 classic A Trip to the Moon, that didn’t feature much in the way of editing shot to shot but did show that the process could be used in the service of other things like visual effects.  Simple editing remained the norm until American filmmaker D.W. Griffith pioneered the concept of cross-cutting images in service of the story.  With his epic scale production of The Birth of a Nation (1915), Griffith created a new film-making language, having different juxtaposed shots edited next to each other to underline a theme or connect multiple story-lines into one.  Every film since then has followed Griffith’s technique and it has become the standard of modern film editing.  Griffith not only broke ground with his first epic feature, but he would continue to push the medium further with his follow-up, Intolerance (1916), which took the bold step of cutting between four different unrelated story-lines, connected solely by their common themes, showing how far the process can go and still work.  What Griffith discovered was that an edit could convey meaning and it’s something that was explored even further by filmmakers in Soviet Russia.  For the propaganda films of the early Soviet Union, an editing process called montage was developed, which used a mix of images related to theme and edited them in a way to provoke a feeling out of the viewer.  The most famous example of this was the Odessa Steps scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, where the recreation of a massacre is given extra poignancy by the inclusion of a falling baby stroller amidst all the chaos.  Even in the days before dialogue, and perhaps more so, filmmakers saw the value of how editing could make their stories come to life.

Though extraordinary surprises could come out of an edit, Hollywood more or less standardized the language of editing around the time sound was introduced to the medium.  Filmmakers could use fancy editing techniques, such as in some of the lavish musical numbers found in Busby Berkeley productions, but the limitations of sound recording led to fewer innovations in the process.  Classic style cutting was the norm for many years, and was often effectively used.  Sometimes, filmmakers would get creative with their edits and used them to set up a punchline and pay it off (watch any Three Stooges short to see what I mean) or use their edits sparingly to immerse the audience into the moment (often seen in many tense one-shot mood setters from Alfred Hitchcock).  Montages were also effectively utilized in early Hollywood, mostly as a way to quickly show a passage of time rather than convey an emotion like the Soviets would do.  But, despite the lack of innovation in the art-form of editing, it didn’t mean that the classic style wasn’t used in meaningful ways during this time.  Just look at the final pivotal scene at the end of Casablanca (1943).  For that brief moment between the lines where Captain Rennault (Claude Rains) says to the Germans “Major Strasser has been shot” and “Round up the usual suspects,” we get two quick close-ups of Rennault and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) looking to one another, and then after the pivotal line, a quick pan across to show Rick smiling back.  It’s a simple but elegant moment that’s made entirely possible through editing, and in those two close ups we are told so much without any words spoken.  This is an example where just a basic editing style can effectively tell a story, and it showed that the standardized style did illustrate that artful editing can be found in the simplest of uses.

But, innovation did become more prevalent once editing tools became more advanced and reliable.  The French New Wave brought in new concepts like smash cutting, freeze frames, and slow-motion into the language of editing, and that in turn influenced the film editing styles in Hollywood.  It became an era where the filmmakers felt more comfortable showing the editing process on screen rather than hiding it.  Abrupt cuts between scenes were popularized in the films of Jean-Luc Goddard and Francois Truffaut, and it was adopted by some of the more counter-cultural filmmakers across the pond, because they felt that it gave their movies a grittier, more modern sensibility.  Even prestigious films picked up on the style.  You can credit that famous cut in Lawrence of Arabia (where Peter O’Toole blows out the match and it cuts to a sunrise) to the influence of the French New Wave.  While these processes were always available to filmmakers before, none had been spotlighted as much, and by taking full advantage of these different tools, the same filmmakers helped to increase the awareness of the value of editing in movies.  In many ways, it gave the audience a keen awareness of different styles that a movie can have, and it helped to differentiate how the movies of their era were different than those of the past.  Form then on, innovation in the editing process would underline the advancements of the industry as a whole.  We would see the character of a film or a cinematic movement come out of it’s editing process, whether it be the renegade style of editing from the maverick 70’s or the stripped back style of the indie movement of the late 80’s and early 90’s.  In many ways, a film was more or less dependent on how well it’s editor was in tune with their era, otherwise they would come across as two old-fashioned or too far ahead of their time.

For many years up to today, the director is often reliant more than ever on the work of their editor.  In the past, the editor would usually sit alone in their editing rooms and compile the films themselves and only get feedback later once their initial work is complete.  Now, the editor and the director work in tandem to hammer out an edit of the film, made much easier now that there is a digital intermediate to work with rather than having to re-splice the same film over and over again.  And it’s through this collaboration that a vision can come out of the project.  An editor may sometimes understand the value of a cut better than the director (who might be too protective of every shot they filmed) and their suggestions often help to reign in the story.  There have been many examples over the years of movies that were saved in the editing room after disastrous productions.  Star Wars is probably the most famous example.  Those who worked on George Lucas grand vision often were lost with regards to what they were doing and where the story was actually leading to, and some said that Lucas himself wasn’t entirely sure of what he was getting into.  But, thanks to an expert editing team (which included Marcia Lucas, George’s then wife), they somehow found the essence of the story and condensed it into the solid adventure that we know today.  Sadly, George Lucas has shown less restraint over the years, and we now know what a lack of controlled editing looks like in the Star Wars universe thanks to the prequels and Special Editions.  Apocalypse Now (1979) is another example of a movie saved by an imaginative edit, which paints a beautiful portrait out of what was a notoriously disastrous shoot.  No film is ever lost unless there is a smart, precise edit done to it.  I think that’s why so many directors often reuse the same editors on each film; they need someone they can trust.  Every Spielberg production has seen the dutiful hands of Michael Kahn on it, as has almost every Scorsese pic with Thelma Schoonmaker, and so on.  Sometimes, if you’re the Coen Brothers or Steven Soderbergh, the edit becomes an entirely singular operation too.  Overall, the final character of the film is determined mostly by how well the editor and the director collaborate together.

But, not every collaboration leads to golden results.  Sometimes, a movie is often hindered by a sometimes overzealous editing job.  This has become especially problematic in the era of MTV music videos and quick paced commercials on television that we’ve now been accustomed to.  Many up and coming filmmakers make the wrong assumption that the more editing they use in their movies the better, because it gives their work a grittier, more frantic style.  Unfortunately, quick editing does more to disorient the viewer than it does to engage them into the film.  While it works for some films, like a war picture or a documentary style drama, it can often feel out of place in most anything else.  Editing is meant to establish setting just as much as it is used to convey momentum and emotion to a scene.  If the edits are too wild and can’t focus on it’s subjects, then the audience feels disconnected from the moment.  I’ve complained about the style of Michael Bay a lot already, but his use of editing is a perfect example of this disorienting quick edit style that serves no purpose.  But, even more restrained editing can become obnoxious if misused in a movie.  Sometime filmmakers like to use montages and flashy editing as a way to create poetry in imagery, and it can often backfire and look pretentious as a result.  Even respected filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Terrence Malick have developed just as many detractors as fans for sometimes getting too fancy with their lyrical editing.  Just look at the pointless long shots of nature in Van Sant’s Last Days (2005) or the showy, meandering editing of Malick’s To the Wonder (2013), and you’ll know what I mean.  Essentially, for an edit to work, there needs to be a purpose behind it, and not just to indulge the filmmaker’s desires.

The editing of a movie is more than anything where the story comes to life.  All the hard work on the production design, the cinematography, the acting, and the dialogue matters little unless it all colludes together as a whole in the editing room.  In the end, the editor’s job is often thankless, but ever so crucial, because they’re mostly responsible for creating the finished product that all of get to see and the success of their job relies on their work not being noticed by the viewer.  Thankfully, with films that celebrate the art of a good edit, we can at least see an editor’s hard work on display occasionally.  In the classic style, it’s always neat to see an edit put the perfect punchline on a well placed gag (Hitchcock’s famous train going into a tunnel innuendo from North by Northwest is a great example).  And in the maverick 60’s and 70’s, it was interesting to see the limits of the art-form explored.  But for me, what I love best about editing is the way that it shows how much even just a few frames of film matter.  There are some moments in movies (like Han Solo’s great surprise arrival at the Death Star late in Star Wars or the final haunting shot of Psycho with Norman’s face superimposed with a skull) that could have been spoiled if they went on just a second longer than they did.  Sometimes it comes down to the one single frame that makes the difference, which is staggering when you consider that 24 frames makes up only a second of film.  My hope is that every filmmaker approaches the editing process with a certain amount of understanding and respect that it deserves.  Play around with what you’re able to do, and you’ll find a completely different story than you might have expected going in.  Many pieces go into the making of a film, but the edit is what puts all those pieces into place and turns that puzzle into the whole picture in the end.

When Hollywood has a movie that is popular, then it’s a beloved asset.  If it’s a story that’s open enough for a sequel, even better.  Building a franchise, more than anything, is what the big studios strive for, because it guarantees them added revenue for years and decades to come.  The only problem is that not every story is well suited for a franchise.  Some movies are better as singular experiences with clear cut conclusions that leaves no loose threads dangling.  And yet, Hollywood will still try to squeeze every last bit of substance they can in order to stretch their success further.  Strangely enough, some of the movies in the last year have shown that with enough creativity and purpose, some franchises can live on and prosper, even after years of dormancy.  With the cases of Star Wars, Mad Max, or Rocky, we are now seeing franchises enter their seventh or fourth iterations, and come out of it even stronger than before.  Not only that, but these movies also make the bold assertion that there will be more to come later.  Of course, with some of these franchises, their continuation makes sense because it’s built into their base levels to be ongoing stories.  But, for that to work, the movies have to bank on the expectations of the audience that they’ll be willing to come back again and again.  And in some cases, when a film series is starting from scratch, it becomes a gamble to have your audiences expect more.  Sadly, some of the biggest misfires that Hollywood has ever made have come from the misguided attempts to build a franchise while forgetting to make the movies stand on their own.

Truth be told, this is far too often the result of having too much story for one movie.  Many franchises we see today are based off of works of literature, particularly the kinds that tell their stories over multiple volumes.  When the story is vast enough to guarantee enough plot for a lot more movies, then it appeals greatly to filmmakers interested in starting up a franchise.  But, when the translation happens, those same filmmakers have to take into account a few things; can they get away with telling only part of the story and is that something that’ll please their audience.  For most of these franchises, they all run into the same problem and that’s the opening film hurdle.  The first film in a franchise, especially one that is supposed to start off a planned series, is always the hardest film to make and it’s by far the one film in each series that makes or breaks the entire operation.  Within it, you must devote a huge amount of run-time purely to set up your main cast of characters, the world they live in, the special rules that pertain to said world, the stakes within, and if you’re lucky, hopefully there will be room for some plot as well.  For many wannabe franchises, this first film is often the stumbling block, just because an insane amount of exposition must be applied in order to set up what comes after.  Exposition is a valuable tool when writing a book and is generally accepted when readers come across it on the page, but in movies, it can often be monster.  When a movie stops to explain something, it grinds the film to a halt, thus making exposition a thing that most screenwriters and directors fear.  This is what defines the biggest problem with most opening films in franchises, and it sadly is what prevents many of them from ever finding their footing.

But, if a franchise does get over that hurdle, then it has a chance of succeeding.  And indeed, the best franchises we’ve seen over the years, at least the ones that come from literary sources, are the ones who managed to establish their worlds and characters successfully.  Once that hurdle has been conquered, then anything is possible and chances can finally be taken.  It was the situation that we saw play out a lot in the early to mid-2000’s when this idea of franchises built from multi-volume literary sources suddenly became the rage in the industry.  In 2001, we saw the start of two series that not only gambled and succeeded with their ambitious first features, but would also go on to set the template for the next decade in Hollywood.  These of course were the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises.  Rings you could argue was the more successful because it was the better stand alone movie, but Potter did well enough at the box office to warrant it’s expected sequels and only later did it finds it’s footing with the sequels that took more chances.  But regardless of how good the first films were, the fact that they succeeded allowed for the franchise to breath a little easier going forward.  Rings and Potter improved as they went along, but, they had to gain the trust of their audiences in order to keep going.  That’s what made their opening films so crucial, because if the audience didn’t buy into the story from the start, what need would they have for it to continue.  Fortunately for Rings and Potter, they had the benefit of capable filmmakers behind them who believed in what they were doing.  Most of the failed franchises weren’t so lucky.

Though a lot of franchises have come and gone over the decades, the 2000’s seemed to be an especially brutal one for “one and done” attempts at building a series.  Mostly, this was a result of many studios trying way too hard to ride the coattails of Rings and Potter.  Those films had the benefit of a built in base of support that saw them through their entire run, and the audiences were even rewarded with some better than expected results.  Other franchises failed because they made no effort to distinguish themselves and merely just tried to copy the formula that had come before.  Sadly, this happened too often to franchises that had potential, but were saddled with lame, amateurish productions.  A good example of this is something like Eragon (2005).  On the outside, this looked like a feature that embodied the same spirit and style of Lord of the Rings.  Written by wunderkind American fantasy writer Christopher Paolini, Eragon had all the makings of a great classic series; high production values, a stellar cast (Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Rachel Weisz), and a beloved source novel.  How could it possibly fail?  With lackluster direction and a 90-minute running time that stripped the story down to it’s bare bones; that’s how.  The movie was a cliche filled mess and it drove audiences away, mainly because there was nothing of interest for them to grab onto.  It was all plot and no heart.  Sadly, the lackluster adaptation stop any chance of the series continuing and all we have now is just the first stand alone film.  It probably failed because it added nothing to the fantasy genre that we already hadn’t seen.  Unfortunately, other franchises would likewise fall into the “one and done” pitfall despite having promise.  The quirkiness of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) should have helped it stand out, as well as the uniqueness of The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) modern day American setting.  And yet, uninspired productions sank these franchises two before they could ever get themselves going.

On the plus side, many of these franchises smartly remembered that they were stand alone films in addition to being parts of a larger narrative.  The biggest mistake that a wannabe franchise can do is to leave itself open-ended, making the misguided assumption that the franchise will have legs beyond one feature.  Sadly, there have been many failed franchises that not only ended up with just one feature, but also ones that had that same one film feel incomplete.  Oddly enough, this is a practice that was following in the footsteps of a successful franchise that somehow worked to it’s own advantage.  In The Lord of the Ring: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the movie left us with an open ending, with the main characters advancing towards the next stage of their journey.  While this was a gamble itself, director Peter Jackson somehow made this acceptable by working everything before feel like a logical conclusion to this phase in the story, allowing the tease at the end to feel more natural.  Unfortunately, not every continuing narrative has these nice and neat breaks to conclude an opening chapter.  Sadly, too many Rings wannabes tried to give themselves these teaser endings to get us excited for what’s next, and having it backfire.  Perhaps the worst attempt at this was a film called The Golden Compass (2007).  Based off the Phillip Pullman novels (which has often been described as Narnia for Atheists), The Golden Compass was New Line Cinema’s misguided attempt to create their own fantasy franchise in the same vein as Rings.  A convoluted adaptation followed and to make it even more infuriating, the movie thought it could conclude open-ended like Rings.  Unfortunately, because they picked a horrible place to cut the story off (which ignores a far more satisfying ending from the book) the movie just feels incomplete as a result instead of being a satisfying experience on it’s own.  This is a perfect example of how not to do a teaser ending, and is the primary reason why The Golden Compass‘ open ending remains so painfully awkward today.

This is perhaps the main reason these failed franchises feel so pathetic in the end; because we know that there is more story to be told and yet we’ll never get to see any of it on the big screen because the openings let us down.  The Golden Compass especially feels irritatingly hollow because it dared to think we’d be clammouring for more in the end, but did nothing to earn it.  But, some movies can get away with it by making each feature feel complete and avoid those ending teasers that only end up infuriating the audience.  Harry Potter had the benefit that each volume of it’s series more or less has it’s own story that only ends up tying together the further into the larger narrative you go.  If the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone (2001) failed and no more were made after, it could still stand on it’s own because the film’s plot was more or less a complete one.  In the end, all films must follow the same act structure as every other film, having a beginning, middle, and ending that all make sense.  Even stories that take in the center of a larger narrative and can get away with it.  Movies that just pick up or leave the story without context will only end up confusing their audience.  That’s what makes every individual Potter film work in the end; their individual narratives.  Some failed franchises withhold elements that could lift the drive of their individual plots in favor of saving them for future installments, and becomes another unnecessary fault that defines them because it robs the urgency of the story.  The only explanation could be that studios want to follow a formula and that doesn’t fit into each stories narrative and you end up with films that feel more like exercises rather than experiences.

The commerce angle behind these franchise makings can also become their downfall.  Sometimes, when the source material is too large to fit into a single feature, or even just a couple, then some productions make the mistake of cramming too much into a movie.  It’s the opposite problem to the hollow withdrawing of material like what happened with The Golden Compass; but it’s no less destructive to the plot of a movie.  Try to tell too much story, and you end up with a plot that never gives the audience a chance to absorb it all, or it tells only a fraction of what’s really there to begin with.  Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events fell victim to this, with many of the 18 novels in the series crammed into a disjointed narrative that never settles into a rhythm.  M. Night Shaymalan’s failed attempt to adapt the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender resulted in a Cliff Notes version of the first season called The Last Airbender (2010) which gave us all the high points with none of the emotion and ended up being loathed by audiences of all kinds.  This is the unfortunate result of trying to force a giant story into the confines of a cinematic format, and again, forcing the story again leads to failure which in turn leads to abandonment.  Thank God George R. R. Martin turned down Hollywood attempts to adapt his Song of Ice and Fire series into a single condensed film, and instead waited for HBO to come calling.  What he proved is that sometimes there are other ways to adapt a lengthy story, including television, and that it matters to give a narrative it’s proper pace and format.  Rings and Potter had their formulas, but they only worked best for their own stories.  Many of these other failed franchises would have done best to establish their own formulas to follow.

In the end, the best thing to do is to think about each film as it’s own story.  Sadly, even ongoing narratives still have to gamble with the changing times.  Harry Potter was lucky to survive for over a decade, mainly by gaining goodwill from the audience by taking chances.  But, even still, time will change perspectives and audiences will ultimately decide if a series is worth continuing.  We did end up with 3 Narnias in this fantasy craze of the 2000’s, but that was short lived, and we may never see the final four that are still waiting.  It’s a gamble in the end, but one that more or less can depend on the willingness of the filmmakers.  If you are purely just in it to follow a fad, then your series will be short lived.  If you believe in the project, and understand the best way to tell the story on screen, then you might have a chance.  Unfortunately, so many franchises make the mistake of putting too much faith in their first film and then abandoning that faith when it doesn’t turn out like they expected.  Eragon, The Golden Compass, and Lemony Snicket are the unfortunate lost children of Hollywood’s make-or-break approach to franchise building.  Their failures are only made more harsh by the fact that they feel more incomplete than the average film, the result of a misguided belief that these stories can only carry over into the next chapters.  The reason why we see series like Star Wars continue to stay strong even after a long absence, and is allowed to conclude each film with a more or less open ending, is because it’s earned the right to.  Each open ending does have a sense fulfillment by the end, and audiences accept it.  Nothing is withheld or forced on us, and the plot has been firmly established with a satisfying three act progression.  That’s why when we see Luke and Leia standing together as they plan a rescue for their friend Han Solo at the conclusion of The Empire Strikes Back, it feels like a natural ending without truly ending.  It’s a story worth the cliffhanger, and sadly the formula doesn’t fit all stories despite Hollywood’s attempts to make it fit. There’s nothing more unfortunate in Hollywood than a story that will never be concluded, and that’s the worst kind of cliffhanger that any storyteller can imagine.