NISIMAZINE JUNE 2009

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NisiMazine June 09

Editing

Editorial After “cameras” last May, we decided to go further with a special focus on “editing”, where we are talking about innovations in the editing technology and the challenging methods of the young editors of our time...

Lev Kuleshov's famous film editing experiment inspired Russian filmmakers to create the “Soviet Montage”. Later, one could easily imagine Elizaveta Svilova’s smile in front of her editing table, a rather primitive machine, playing with her magical hands and cutting together Man With A Movie Camera. Until today and the mesmerizing Papillion d’amour by Nicolas Provost (where he reinterpretes Kurosawa’s famous Rashômon), the editing technology did not improve drasticly (in contrast to camera and shooting technology). But “editing” as an independent issue kept on to force the limits of our consciousness by experimenting with different technics and styles.

Although the hands who created the magic of the film belong to a woman, the name of the movie stayed “The Man with the Movie Camera”. Though I can easily say that the ingredient that makes the movie special for me is the editing style of the images; not the images that these two crazy man shot in the streets of Moscow. If I had a chance I would rename the movie "Woman in front of the Editing Table" !

Shortly, we tried to focus on what the editing makes to the images and to us as audiences…

Enjoy the reading and keep to cut and paste however you wish & feel!!

Gülçin Sahin

For more info on NISI MASA activities, check out www.nisimasa.com!

Agenda June, 10 Selection of the Matter of Taste films June, 30 In all the network Call for participants - Nisimazine Rio

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Next Issue...

NISIMAZINE # 23 ~ July 2009

SPECIAL FOCUS ON VIDEO ART

June, 20 - 26 Brignogan, France Script & Pitch: residential session

Nisimazine is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA. EDITORIAL STAFF Coordinators Maximilien Van Aertryck and Gülçin Sahin Layout Maartje Alders Contributors to this issue Moa Geistrand, Atso Pärnänen, Iulia Rugina, Gülçin Sahin, Maximilien Van Aertryck NISI MASA (European Office) 10 rue de l’Echiquier, 75010, Paris, France; Tel/Fax: + 33 (0)1 53 34 62 78 + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 Email europe@nisimasa.com Website www.nisimasa.com

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Editing Stoneface, je t'aime.

It's not always easy to perceive the editing through a film. Should a good cut be invisible to the eye? Then Kubrick's legendary bone/spaceship match cut is a bad one?

In 2005, cinema audiences laughed to tears watching Bill Murray in Broken Flowers. Two years ago, viewers were numb by fear seeing Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. Bill Murray and Javier Bardem both master the less-is-more art of striking a perfect stone face. But it all began in Soviet.

In 1920, director and film theorist Lev Kuleshov joined the newly established Soviet State Film School, and started a small workshop.

Two years after the revolution, this was a tough period for the film industry. The big film companies Yermoliev and Drankov had left the country, and there was a shortage of film stock.

But instead of waiting for sunny days and loads of film stock, Kuleshov and his students started reediting old films from the Tsar regime, experimenting with new ways of creating meanings. In their most famous experiment, a shot of the actor Ivan Mozhukhin’s expressionless face is alternated with shots of a bowl of soup, a dead body, and a girl. The audience reads Mozhukhin’s expressions as hunger, sorrow or delight, depending on the previous shot. But it’s an illusion created by expectations –Mozhukhin’s blank face is in fact the same shot, repeated again and again.

Kuleshov’s point was that an audience’s response to what they see has more to do with the editing than on the individual shots – an idea to be further developed by his fellow comrades in the Soviet Montage Movement, and films like Sergei Eisenstein’s Potemkin and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. But that’s another story.

What Kuleshov did was also to introduce a very special guest: Mr Stone Face. Sometimes he’s a hero, sometimes not. He comes in different shapes, sometimes with a trench coat and a gun, sometimes in a bat costume, sometimes with a cowboy hat, a cigarette and a horse.

Javier Bardem, stone face, flips a coin - fear. Bill Murray, stone face, with a bouquet of flowers - fun. Lev Kuleshov, rest in peace.

Editing feels like sense of humor. Sometimes you are outraged by a cut, and sometimes you're the only one with a smile in the theater.

1.Which editor edited most of Truffaut's and Godard's films?

2.Which British director started out as an editor and went on to direct huge productions?

3.Has editing been a male dominated profession in the film industry?

4.Dailies are also called...

5.After ROUGH CUT comes....

6.Ingmar Bergman's Steenbeck is now used to edit films by which director?

1.Agnès Guillemot 2.David Lean 3.Traditionally it has been considered as one of the few professions in the industry which has been wide open for women 4.Rushes 5.FINE CUT 6.Aki Kaurismäki

QUIZ

Moa Geistrand

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Editing

Three editing stars If cinema constantly went through technological evolutions during its first century, film editors though had to wait until the mid 90's to work on electronic non-linear-editing systems. And even then, screen resolutions and hard drive capacities were certainly not coming close to the birthday vid made with iMovie today. These are the machines they created masterpieces with before: The

M

oviola

« Born » in 1924, it was invented by Dutchmen Ivan Serrurier in the US and was originally meant to be a home video projector. Though much too expensive for the general public its creator remodelled it to what now looks like a “sewing machine that also sounds like one” (Walter Murch).

It is vertically oriented and remained unchanged until the 70’s, when flatbed machines slowly replaced it (but never completely). The name comes from “Victrola”: a high quality phonograph of that time.

80 years after its creation, the Moviola is still (though rarely) used; editor Michael Kahn received an Academy Award nomination in 2008 for his editing on Spielberg’s Munich, entirely edited on a Moviola.

The

S

teenbeck

The Steenbeck is named after its inventor: Wilhelm Steenbeck from Hamburg, Germany. It is a flatbed (horizontally oriented) film editing suite whose name has become synonymous for… flatbed film editing suites.

A capital point in its utilization is that the film is manipulated in 10 minute rolls. If a scene one is interest in is located on the 8th minute of a roll, the editor must fast forward the roll. As Murch (again) emphasizes it, it offers a different editing experience in that way that the editor is forced to see material he might not have considered if he could have directly accessed what he wanted.

The

K

EM

A German invention, sometime in the 1930’s; the KEM Universal (by Keller-Elektro-Mechanik) didn’t see its time coming before the 70’s, when Hollywood started to use it. The KEM was much better suited to view huge amounts of film and manipulate more than one soundtrack at a time.

Maximilien Van Aertryck

Q&A Steven Worsley 25-year old Steven Worsley is a British editor living in London. He currently edits a movie directed by Paul Greengrass.

He has edited European features and shorts and has gained experience in London and LA.

What interests you in editing?

I love the creativity and problem solving that editing requires. A film to me is like a tapestry, where each thread is a specific element; pace, emotion, character, etc. They all combine to make a beautiful and powerful image but with any thread missing, the image feels incomplete.

Film or digital?

On most features the only place you see film is in the lab as the offline is built from tapes and then conformed back to film. I love working on NLE systems, such as Avid and Final Cut Pro as the free

dom and flexibility they give becomes a powerful tool. However I’ve seen people become so overwhelmed by the options that they don’t know where to begin.

From an assistants point of view, digital editing lets the assistant to sometimes have their own machine to work on, giving them greater experience. This however can give an opposite effect as the assistant can now serve the editor from another room so less time is spent observing the editor at work!

How will editing develop in the near future?

Some people are already predicting the death of cinema and the birth of on demand films for mobile devices. I really hope this isn’t the case.

Every shot will become close-ups as smaller screen sizes really don’t work with wide establishing shots. Televisions have already proven this.

The biggest change I presently see is 3-D. With new technology emerging every day and larger screens with better resolutions who can predict where film will go and where this will take editing.

Atso Pärnänen

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Editing

Nicolas Provost is a Belgian

You must have had a certain amount of footage for Plot Point, how did you proceed during the editing?

The first idea was to join the police in New York during their actions and sometimes ask them to act or reinact situations to blend fiction and reality through each other. When it was clear that I would never get the permission of the commisioner himself I decided to film as much police as I could in the streets and try to make it look like fiction in the editing. I filmed during 5 evenings around Times Square, because the light there feels like a filmstudio, and intuitively kept filmcodes from the thriller genre in mind as I framed people who I thought would look like interesting characters and whom I

How technical or emotional is editing for you? Gravity follows a strict pattern while Plot Point seems to be more emotionally edited.

The technical and emotional always go hand in hand and I always edit with music. I take every sec ond that I filmed serious and I work with the image and sound like a sculptor until the magic starts to happen. The difficult part is to find the right form to convey the idea. For Gravity the first idea was to create a long passionate filmkiss using samples from classic kissing scenes. Only when I started to collect the material I saw that there was a story and that it could work emotionally. In the kissing scenes I found all the elements to tell the story af a relationship with a beginning, a middle and an end. First there's love at first sight, then the giving of one to another, the first kiss, the passion, the problem, the doubt, the drama, the leaving and finally the eternal suffering. I needed to find a form that would translate the passion. By working with the material I found I could blend the images by showing 4 or 5 frames of a scene every 3 frames on top of another scene.

In Plot Point I also needed a story to have the tention curve work until the end. I freewheeled for a very long time until I discovered it worked with the classic scriptwriting rules. An exposure that shows the setup and characters, a first plot point that opens the story, obstacles towards a climax and a feeling of resolution. The solution for Plot Point was very structured but as an emotional guideline. I also realised there was a certain choreography in the movements that I could edit on a hypnotic rhythm.

Š Still from The Divers

could link to each other.

Everything was filmed with a hidden camera, there are no actors or set-ups and I didn't speak to anyone.

I came home with 7 hours of HDV footage and waited a year before editing because I thought this idea would never work.

Later I started editing it down to one hour and 6 versions later to 15 minutes. I think it was in version 5 that I got an idea about how to put it together.

Maximilien Van Aertryck

Provost creates a universe one wishes to stay in forever. Plot Point, Provosts last film, is set in Times Square in the dark of the evening.

The city lights, the NYPD and the pedestrians create a moment on the verge of degenerating. Fiction, documentary and dream become one. How? editing.

Š Still from Plot Point

visual artist living and working in Brussels. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Gent, Belgium and spent 10 years in Oslo, Norway where he first worked as an illustrator, graphic designer and art director.

In the late 1990s he started making video works, which have been screened worldwide and have received awards at many international film festivals.

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Editing

© Still from Gravity

Your short The Divers is a one take shot, how would you define the power of one take shots from an editor's point of view?

In a one take shot you really need to have it from the power of that image, and hope the tension does not drop. For The Divers I was lucky that the idea of the background being the emotional outburst of the shy couple in the foreground worked out well and I was especially lucky with the timing of the fireworks. I wouldn't say The Divers is a lucky shot because I was waiting for this magic to happen, but still, a moment like this doesn't happen often.

Whenever an editor creates an unconventional form of editing (like in Gravity for example), it is called and judged experimental. Would you agree? What do you think of that?

I still don't know in what box I belong but that's only a problem when trying to finance a film. "Experimental film" reminds me of the new visions in the sixties and seventies, or the tradition of scratching film stock. I see myself first as a visual artist but I use cinema as a tool. All I know is that people are moved by stories, whether it is a song, a political speech, a 90 minute film, a sculpture or a pretentious performance that no one understands; they are all stories that move us because we project our memories on them.

Nicolas Provost

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

What interests me is to question the phenomenon of cinema. My work is a reflection on the grammar of cinema; I try to grasp our collective film memory to make poetry.

My biggest inspirations sources are Kubrick, Lynch and Hitchcock, their films are timeless and get under our skin because they investigate dreamlogic and the subconcious. A film should be like a dream that you want to experience over and over again.

A selection of websites, communities and blogs on editing: http://www.artoftheguillotine.com An online film community for film editors. http://en.wordpress.com/tag/basic-film-techniques A quality blog that elaborates basic editing techniques. http://www.filmsite.org/bestfilmediting.html Various films and how they contributed in the evolution of film editing are presented. http://motionographer.com/2009/02/19/tintori-and-nabil-breaking-your-internets What is Data-Moshing? A cheap digital artefact or a revolutionary editing process?

Definitely what the cool kids do now. http://www.berlinale-talentcampus.de/story/80/1580.html Walter Murch gives a lecture in sound and music editing at the Berlinale. http://www.straight8.net One super 8 cartridge – NO editing. A challenge for everybody. http://recycledcinema.blogspot.com/ A research site devoted to the past and future of found footage film. http://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/ A blog focusing on plug-ins for NLE systems.

I and P frames: "Data-Moshed" stills from Invisible Horse © Ambulantic

Latest news NISIMAZINE CANNES WORKSHOP NISIMAZINE CANNES literally stormed the croisette this year, with a grand total of around 18 000 copies - 9 daily issues - distributed around the Palais, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Director’s Fortnight) and Semaine de la Critique (Critics Week) venues.

Our team of European and Latin American journalists braved dawn till dusk screenings (along with the late night soirées) to bring you the good, the bad and the ugly of the different film programmes, focusing especially on parallel sections, young talents, and short film!

Some highlights of prize-winning films include: La Merditude des Choses / I killed my mother / Montparnasse (QR) Adieu Gary / Lost Person’s Area / Whisper with the Wind / Logorama (SIC) Dogtooth / Police, Adjective (Un Certain Regard) You can find all articles, along with a photo gallery, on www.nisimazine.eu!

• NISIMAZINE RIO - call for participants Dear young film critics!

From the 8th to the 30th of June, NISI MASA will be looking for 8 participants for this years

From the 8th to the 30th of June, NISI MASA will be looking for 8 participants for this years 4th film journalism workshop. 8 lucky participants (6 journalists, 1 photographer and 1 video blogger) from Europe and Latin America will cover the largest film festival and film industry event in Latin America: the “Festival do Rio”!

NISI MASA will publish Nisimazine Rio From the 24th of September until the 8th of October.

Check www.nisimasa.com for more information and to download the application form.

• FEST TRAINING GROUND FEST Training Ground is a place where film enthusiast and film makers from all over the world gather in one week to attend a deluxe training, from workshops to master classes, lectured by the industries top experts.

The event will take place between the 22nd and the 27th of June 2009 in Espinho, Portugal; 15 minutes South of Porto.

A wide variety of subjects will be taught in the training; from scriptwriting to sound editing.

More info on: http://www.fest.pt/ then click on " Training Ground"

NISI masa screenings of the month: We will from now on inform you every month about NISI MASA related screenings in your country and Europe!

The Cinetrain films will have their Turkish premiere on the 4th of June in Istanbul, at 8 pm in the French Cultural Center; alongside the Documentarist Film Festival.

A second screening is planned for the 6th of June at 4pm.

For more info email nisimasaturkey@yahoo.com. www.documentar-ist.org/ In Russia the short documentaries will be screened out-ofcompetition during the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sochi on the 11th and 15th of June.

More info on http://www.kinotavr.ru/en/2009/vneconcurs2009/.

With the Lago Film festival and thus "Matter of Taste" approaching, the network is organizing Food related screenings, where you will get a chance to preview our selection of Food films!

MeccaPanza invites you on the 28th of June in De Nieuwe Anita in Amsterdam; the time will be set in the next days and available on www.meccapanza.eu.

Finally, NISI MASA France organizes a screening in Paris at Les Voutes, on the 24th of June at 8.30pm. More info on : http://www.lesvoutes.org/ Archives/juin09.htm.

In the spotlight

C

ONTROL N Cultural Association is one of the new arrivals in the NISI MASA Network. Founded in January 2009 by two screenwriters and one director, Control N is young but willing to go through with all its started projects.

They are mainly focusing on scriptwriting and educating people in the area of filmmaking – with two almost completed scriptwriting workshop for amateurs and one developing project of introducing an optional subject in the high school curriculum: script writing and film education. Control N is taking small steps towards bringing film closer to as many people as possible. As a NISI MASA Observer Member since March 2009, Control N is also organizing the Script Contest and promoting all the NISI MASA activities among the young people in Romania.

WHAT IS CONTROL N?

When the idea to found an association in Romania came to us, the biggest trouble was obviously not deciding what we would do, who would be in or how we’d manage things. The toughest thing was to find a name. After dozens of possibilities we came up with CONTROL N. The reaction when hearing the name is usually: “What does the N stand for?”, “And control?” Well, actually, as our logo so wisely saves it, control is actually “ctrl” and “N” is actually a key on a computer keyboard. Therefore, CONTROL N means NEW. That’s what you press when you want a new document, a new webpage or a new project; if you own a PC, of course. We could function with the Mac alternative name of “Apple N”…

But that would really raise a lot of questions.

Pictures above from the top: Oana, Iulia, Ana, Andrada and Adriana. Texts and pictures by Iulia Rugina. Thanks!

So as an association focusing on NEW things we are doing our best to touch areas not much touched before us. Like bringing film knowledge and education to un-professional(s) - people who have not gone to film school, do not a have a film degree or a strong cultural background in cinema, but who love film as much as we do. We have a permanent script writing workshop for amateurs. We have a future project of introducing film making to teenage gipsy

communities in Romania. And our biggest plan is to organize a Comedy Film Festival in Bucharest, which would bring the wide audience to the festival and the festival to the wide audience.

SOME MEMBERS Oana Rasuceanu – our wonderful president, most organized and most experienced; best at dealing with people. She’s a scriptwriter, film journalist, PR manager and a great coordinator. She loves cats and earrings, she hates cigarette smoke.

Iulia Rugina – our workaholic executive director, and a film director in real life. She smokes a lot, yells a lot and is usually a control freak. But it’s thanks to her that we keep all our deadlines and finish all our applications. She loves cats and chocolate, she hates to be late.

Ana Agopian – our talented vice-president, screenwriting fanatic, finds stories in anything and finds it hard to decide on the best ending all the time.

She writes for film, TV and always keeps us organized. She loves cats and football, she hates to wake up early.

Andrada Romagno – our dedicated project coordinator.

She is focused, great with words and foreign languages, imaginative and sweet. She works as a producer, project developer and designer of handmade souvenirs. She loves cats and artifacts, she hates grumpy people.

Adriana Racasan – our passionate art designer. She is a perfectionist in everything, extremely focused on details and getting things done the right way. She is a coordinator for several festivals, art designer and DTP fanatic. She loves people and Photoshop, she hates driving slowly.

More info on our website! www.controln.ro

© Photo by Leopold Leskovar

PORTRAIT

Joanna Gallardo

Y

ou have seen her in one of the many NISI MASA meetings and might have first thought that she is just a silent girl in the corner who will hand out the reimbursement forms, but soon anyone will notice that Joanna Gallardo is one of the main motors, driving forces of the network. She keeps the numbers in order, books in balance and with expertise goes after functional grants, sponsors, support for the network.

It was at Clermont Ferrand where Joanna got us a deal with Canon and in Cannes she partied all night long with Kusturica just to keep one of our patrons happy.

The route to the heart of NISI MASA started from the cliffs of Normandy. It is a path where cinema has been the guiding light all the time. In Caen she took part in organizing the “5 days in Short” festival from 1999 to 2002.

She first became aware of NISI MASA in Cannes as a participant of the Prix de la Jeunesse when Joanna met a guy who was sending and putting up posters regarding the script competition and she wondered what is this organization and who is this guy? (The guy turned out to be a certain Matthieu Darras). This lead to a series of meetings sometimes by chance and sometimes by plan.

She even happened to take part in giving NISI MASA and award for being an interesting network before soon finding herself in the middle of it all. As her skills were quickly spotted Joanna was elected to the board of the network. A role in which she stayed until 2006.

At NISI MASA Joanna finds the multicultural environment, meeting different people and to be confronted with new ideas a refreshing experience and impor-

tant in fighting the monotony of life. Working at NISI MASA and in the cultural field, with everything related to cinema changes one’s point of view. “You learn to see things from another perspective and you get new ideas”.

Since January 2007 she has been the project manager at the European Office in which her MA thesis on cultural management regarding the role of film festivals in promoting art house cinema is only one part of the knowledge she has brought to and shared with the network alongside with having a background in working for a film distribution company or the work she has done for La Cinémathèque française.

When not busy with excel files of debits and incomes Joanna guides many of the participants of either the European Short Pitch or Script and Pitch through the fantastic experiences that these events create. She often the key figure when it comes to choosing/talking to the possible volunteers and interns that get the chance to work in the European Office. For this, Joanna travelled (voyage, voyage as we know) to Georgia to gain a better understanding of how the EVS and all the rules that the EU has set out with it work. She is a survivor of the Brussels lingo.

In the next few years when you enter the film industry chances are you will be meeting someone who has started her/his career with the help of Joanna or you will be working on something she has been a part of, whether it be script development or an African television channel.

Atso Pärnänen