JOCELYNE CHAPUT - FILM EDITOR
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"insist on geography"

11/3/2016

 
I was completely transfixed by Best of Luck With the Wall, a recent offering from Field of Vision. Technically impressive and buoyed by a sharp original score, the only words you'll find in the film are in the title; the rest is a sweeping visual assertion unlike anything I've seen this whole election season. 
What would it mean to try to “see” the entire southwest border at once? To travel the whole 1,954 miles in, say, six minutes?
Might simply looking at a place that has been so heavily politicized — a place abstracted into a sound bite — give a small amount of texture and meaning to a phrase like “build that wall”?
The southern border is a space that has been almost entirely reduced to metaphor. It is not even a geography. Part of my intention with this film is to insist on that geography.
By focusing on the physical landscape, I hope viewers might gain a sense of the enormity of it all, and perhaps imagine what it would mean to be a political subject of that terrain.

- Josh Begley, director of Best of Luck With the Wall. Full article here.

didacticism denied

9/13/2016

 
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from the book 'Story' by Robert McKee
* thanks to a dear mentor Manfred Becker for sharing this with me.

Victoria, whoa!

8/3/2016

 
2015's Victoria, directed by Sebastian Schipper, is not the first one-shot wonder, but it's the first THRILLING one-shot wonder. In addition to the incredible camerawork that follows multiple characters, locations and rhythms, the film is crowned by phenomenal performances and writing. In terms of picture editing, the only decision was to choose which of the 3 takes would be used. How difficult was that choice?
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a still from Victoria

a formally inventive heart-rending portrait of one person's resilience in America

7/14/2016

 

Ten Days: A Modern Success Story from Ryan Booth on Vimeo.

datamoshing

7/6/2016

 
I caught my second Chairlift show a few months back at the Biltmore Cabaret. Everything about this band is top-notch: their weird wonderful range of sounds, masterful arrangements conducive to dancing or kicking back, clever lyrics, wildly original music videos and lead singer Caroline Polachek's outstanding voice. After the show I had a chance to briefly chat with Polachek about one of my favorite music videos of all time, from their first record:
That hypnotizing glitch effect is a technique called datamoshing, which I'm sure will be of special interest to any codec nerds out there.  Here's a great website about it, including how-tos. Curious what else could be done with this. I sense a lot of potential, e.g. used as device within feature films. Apparently the team behind the video was racing to release it before their peers, who were using the same technique for Kanye West. Yeezy's video came out second. Still excellent:

Rich Hill is and isn't a misnomer

6/13/2016

 
Flashback to one of my favorite films from Hot Docs 2014. Wonderfully edited, it is a poignant window into the lives of three teenage boys and the town in which they live: Rich Hill, Missouri. Each grapples with severe socioeconomic disadvantages of one shape or form, and thankfully the filmmakers go beyond the surfaces and allow us to know them, learn from them, feel for them, and care that much more about them. Though most reviews are positive I was surprised to find a number of writers criticizing the film's visual splendor and aesthetic grace. Here's a passage from Roger Ebert's review that addresses these criticisms. Couldn't say it better:
One of the first things that deserve to be noted about “Rich Hill”—and that may make it controversial in some quarters—is its beauty. Any description of the film that only describes its people and events would largely miss what it feels like to experience it. From its first moments, when several jump-cut shots of a teenage boy getting ready for school give way to lyrical views of Rich Hill as it comes to life in the morning, the combination of editing rhythms, Nathan Halpern’s music and Palermo’s strikingly luminous images conjure a world that seems to pulse with its own inner warmth and radiance.
Yet any charge that this approach inappropriately prettifies a bleak social landscape would be entirely misplaced. The filmmakers are both native Missourians (Dragos’ father was from Rich Hill and she spent summers there), and the film’s stylistic tone first of all reflects their feelings about a native landscape and communities they know first hand. And, rather than simply being a surface value, it helps establish an empathy that invites us to see not only the hardship but the beauty in lives that are buffeted by difficulty from many directions.
[...]
​On the one hand, we can see the pluck and resilience of Harley, Apachee and Andrew to the extent of imagining that these qualities and their individual talents might rescue them from bad later lives. Yet, coming at a time when the dire effects of America’s economic inequality are more and more in the news, we’re given potent reminders of how limited and bleak the chances of such kids usually are.Some viewers might prefer a film that embraces only one side of that paradox, just as others might prefer a movie about poor people to offer only unrelieved grimness, not beauty. But “Rich Hill” asks us to think about complex issues in a way that avoids simplicities and clichés, and that helps make it a documentary to rank alongside such classics about indigence and family as “Grey Gardens” and “Hoop Dreams.”

a tremendously moving portrait that can only do your heart good

3/23/2016

 
I love that there is nothing flashy going on here, stylistically speaking. The simple scenes that revolve around the piano suffice to fly. 

some insights from talk with Joshua Oppenheimer

1/20/2016

 
I was lucky to catch a discussion with Joshua Oppenheimer in Vancouver  before a screening of The Look of Silence. Along with its precursor The Act of Killing, these two films are staggering companion pieces, must-sees that are having very real impacts on filmmakers, politicians, societies, etc. For in-depth pieces, try this one from The Atlantic, or this one from The Independent. 
Since most who attended the talk are involved in filmmaking, he indulged our curiosity about the particulars of his process and techniques. Here are a few highlights :

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Jules et Jim revisited

1/15/2016

 
Tonight I re-watched Jules et Jim, a choice made after spotting the excellent poster at a coffee shop (excellent because it depicts Catherine, not the titulary Jules and Jim.... clever), and realizing I had large gaps in my memory to refill.
​
The film is a free-spirited rendition of sweet and free going sour and confined, on many levels. It's a radiant reminder that cinematic freedom can be exercised in every department, and meaningfully. 
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Truffaut embraces contradiction to create meaning—Jules and Jim is sad yet humorous, breathless yet contemplative, universal yet hermetic, based on a book by a man in his 70s yet directed by a man in his 20s. It knows of life's folly so intimately that it is impossibly naïve, and its selfless love of the cinema borders on narcissistic.

​[...]

This is not a great film because it equals the sum of its parts, but because it so fully embodies the altruism of its maker. It represents some of the first and most essential steps into a new age of filmmaking, one that you wish would endure still.

- Chuck Rudolph, for Slant Magazine

they live on

1/14/2016

 
When a public luminary leaves us suddenly, it hits hard because they never withdrew from their vital role in present-day humanity. Today I thank: David Bowie, Oliver Sacks and Karen Schmeer. Their stars will never dim.

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editing Fast, Cheap & Out of Control

1/10/2016

 
I didn't realize (but am not so surprised) it took 5 years to build and finesse this masterpiece of overlapping patterns that span highly distinctive lifestyles and life forms.

​"That's the big joke. It wasn't fast at all, and it wasn't cheap, but it was out of control." (Karen Schmeer)

Karen Schmeer discusses editing "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" from Schmeer Fellowship on Vimeo.

highlights from interview with editors of new Star Wars

1/9/2016

 

Mary Jo: A first cut is never a first cut. It's usually my fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth cut by the time I'm ready to show it to J.J.. It's one reason why I absolutely detest the term 'editor's assembly'. We are taking a point of view, and cutting something with intent. We are not 'assembling' anything.
[...]
Creative COW: Out of curiosity, were either of you Star Wars fans in a major way before this?

Maryann: I was a big Star Wars fan.
[...]

Mary Jo: I was not a fan. I mean, it's not that I was anti-Star Wars, I just wasn't particularly into the films and I didn't see them until it turned out that I was going to be working on them.
[...]
I also think there was an actual advantage to that. I didn't have this feeling of things being sacred. I could just look at it, maybe at times a little more dispassionately. "Well even if it is true that you're making this reference to this thing that you all hold near and dear, it's not really working here," or whatever. 


And I think J.J. felt that too. In fact, when I first told him that I hadn't seen the Star Wars movies, he said he didn't want me to see them. That was his first response. "Oh that's great! Don't see them! You'll be be like the person we want to attract who's never seen the movies."

[...]
Mary Jo: We started with the dialog between the characters, and their actions. We might have something to slot in if there was a previz done for the scene, but most of the time, we didn't have that. The fact that we start with the actions of characters creates a personal way into the action of the scene. 

Maryann: Any action sequence is better if you're in it WITH the character.​

​https://library.creativecow.net/wilson_tim/Editing_Star-Wars-The-Force-Awakens/1

The Wolfpack

11/28/2015

 
brilliant documentary, impressive editing. Great conversation piece. So much to think about and feel. Heartbreaking and haunting but ultimately uplifting because creativity/ imagination / love win in the end. Most importantly there's a joyous dance scene to Baltimora's Tarzan Boy. 

all Bobby Fischer films not made equal

11/16/2015

 
Saw Pawn Sacrifice and wish I could have the time back. It was formulaic and two-dimensional. I'd suggest sticking with Liz Garbus' Bobby Fischer Against the World, a far more nuanced and respectful take on the chess sensation who fell from grace due to a toxic combo of worsening mental health and ravenous media . Aside from exploring the external events/influences in Fischer's life it also manages to convey the enchantment of chess itself, e.g. more possible chess games than atoms in the universe., allowing a better understanding of chess fanaticism. Another scene that stands out reveals a historic pattern of mental illness in chess prodigies. I didn't know about this but at a base level I am not surprised. Some of my earliest memories of rage and frustration are from losing chess games. All that tension building up inside the body as the mind tries to reduce infinity.   

a companion piece to the previous post...

11/8/2015

 
this is a brilliant engrossing film that takes place entirely on a teenager's computer screen and cellphone screen.

NOAH - 17m Award Winning Short Film from Patrick Cederberg on Vimeo.

quick notes on Ballet 422

10/25/2015

 
observation
minimalism
editorial restraint
no original score (but some sequences flowed as though music was there)
polished cinematography that I associate more with fiction films (e.g. some Soderbergh flicks)
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excellent editing in Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present

9/26/2015

 
Not a small feat to take such a still subject and move it along swiftly and gracefully AND do so for a broad audience. Impressive weaving of present-tense and backstory. It left a stone or two unturned, which bothers some critics but not me. You can only pack in so much before a doc loses focus. Oh to be a fly on the cutting room wall... And this article by Sherry Turkle is a great companion piece.
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© Jenni Morello
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tips from a seasoned assistant editor

8/1/2015

 
Great write-up/slideshow by Eric Gulliver, a seasoned assistant editor for FRONTLINE,  on organizing your files and NLE project. Something to re-read when starting a new project:
5 lessons from the (FRONTLINE) Trenches

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