British film editor and BAFTA nominee Humphrey Dixon was in Goa recently at the 46th International Film Festival of India where he conducted a masterclass in editing.
“You can't obviously teach someone how to edit a film in 2 hours,” he stated, adding, “but what I'm going to try to impart is something of what I've learned on the business of editing “ how to deal with directors, the move from film to digital, and the changes in the industry over the years.”
The biggest change, of course, are the rapid advances in technology. While Dixon began as a film trainee at Associated-Redifusion, London’s first commercial TV channel, and moved briskly from assistant to freelance film editor, there is no such thing as apprenticeship anymore.
“Technology has changed the way we do a lot of things. Since everything is now done digitally, assistants no longer exist. The opportunity to observe, learn and ask questions is no longer there,” he says. So what's an aspiring film editor to do? “Well they will have to get more enterprising. Get a camera, shoot something. Get some software and play around with it on your laptop,” Dixon advises.
And what about your own personal style? “Editors can't really have a style. You have to adapt to the story of the film and work accordingly,” says Dixon, adding that the easiest films to edit are action sequences while romantic, emotional ones are more challenging simply because these sequences involve choosing the right moment rather than a lot of cutting.
But have films gotten better on account of the availability of so much software at the editor's fingertips? Dixon is not so sure. “We can get quicker results,” he says, “because changes requested by directors/producers can now be made instantaneously, but I don't think the process has changed much. It's become a very sedentary job though. Only our eyeballs and fingers move now as opposed to earlier when there were scores of film reels involved.”
That being said, Dixon does miss those days when everyone would gather in a viewing room every morning to watch the previous days rushes on a large screen. “Now we watch it all on our little computers. It's just not the same anymore and it's what I miss the most,” he asserts.
When asked what it takes to be a good film editor, Dixon names five things. “He must be fast because then he can experiment more, he must be creative, he must be able to tell a story, he must have sound technical knowledge and last but not the least he must be able to be critical “ to see what's working and what's not.”
