Making the Final Cut

For nearly a century, they’ve remained the invisible men and women of Hollywood. The public never thinks of them--and few directors cite them on Oscar night, for fear of suggesting a cutting room “save.”

But make no mistake: In the words of one 1997 nominee, “Editing is where a film is really made”--whether it’s capturing the delicate rhythms of a James L. Brooks comedy or navigating “Titanic” to its icy doom.

CONRAD BUFF, JAMES CAMERON, RICHARD A. HARRIS “Titanic”

Writer-director Cameron also hoped to be sole editor of his epic, but faced with a July 4 opening (later moved to December), he enlisted help from past collaborators Buff (“The Abyss,” “Terminator 2,” “True Lies”) and Harris, a four-decade editing veteran who worked on “T2” and “True Lies.”

“Having been through it,” Cameron now observes, “I would say one should never be alone in the edit room on a big picture. It’s too easy to lose your way.”

Using the digital Avid system that allows the rearranging of images without cutting film, the editors worked separately until July; then, Cameron worked alone, “shrink wrapping” a first cut of about three hours, 40 minutes minus credits to the final 3:14. (Taped to the director’s Avid: a razor blade with the words “USE IF FILM SUCKS.”)

Cameron describes Buff, 49, as “an editor who’s good at almost everything: character, structure, action. Richard’s great gift is performance. I shoot a lot of film and I print almost everything, and Richard can pull out the nuggets.”

Harris applied his skill to sequences like Jack and Rose’s dance in steerage, and Jack’s triumphant dinner in first class. “I’m big on facial expressions, eye contact,” Harris says. “The flick of an eye is sometimes stronger than words.”

He admits he did “strike out on one lifeboat sequence. Jim was down shooting in Baja and I’d never run dailies with him; usually running dailies is a big advantage, because you sit with the director and get his impression.

“Jim had shot all this lifeboat material, and somehow I [made it] more of a lifeboat drill--something the Coast Guard would use as a training film! Jim said, ‘What the hell is this?!!’ I said, ‘Give me a D or an incomplete, and I’ll do a makeup paper.”

Meanwhile, Buff’s first task was the climactic, elevator-like descent of the poop deck, cut early to ready it for effects. “The script is always a basis for departure,” notes Buff, “but at some point you ignore it and react emotionally to what’s on screen. You look for key pieces that spark your imagination.”

One image particularly inspired him: “In the final throes of the sinking, there’s a low-angle shot looking up at Jack and Rose, then the camera pushes up past them and becomes an over-the-shoulder shot looking down. [The shot] had no water, no additional people falling, but it was a beautifully choreographed piece, strong and affecting.”

Cameron’s emergency razor blade went unused: The director calls the final edit the most satisfying of his films.

“David Lean said filmmaking is about transitions, and we spent a tremendous time on them. I loved cutting from the peak of Rose being spun around by Jack and hard-cutting picture and sound to the quiet of the smoking room, where all the elite are puffing cigars and running the world. The audience actually laughs at a cut! They’re aware the juxtaposition of two totally different things has a meaning to the story at a fundamental level.”

PETER HONESS “L.A. Confidential”

Born on Britain’s south coast 51 years ago, Honess credits his career to “nepotism--my father was a studio manager at MGM in England, and when I quit school he put me to work in the cutting room as a gofer. I’ve been there ever since.”

The labyrinthian plot of “L.A. Confidential” might suggest an editor’s nightmare, but Honess insists “it was a joy. It was so well written there was only 10 minutes’ difference between the first time I put it together to the final film.”

When Warner Bros. fretted about the film’s 2 1/2-hour length, Honess and director Curtis Hanson tried shorter versions--”but once ortwice when we cut the setup, we shortened it too much. We learned doing three previews that length was not a problem for the audience.”

Previews did raise one plot problem that “flabbergasted” Honess: Viewers were confusing Russell Crowe and Kevin Spacey. As a result, identifying character names were added in post-production.

Honess describes his craft as that of a “picture storyteller. You should never notice the editing.” But he admits to a couple of “bumps” in “Confidential.”

“We did a jump cut where we shortened Russell Crowe getting out of a car; it took him forever, so we lost a bit of the middle of the shot, and in the background you can see some waving trees jump!

“At the premiere, Curtis leaned over to me, and I looked at him, and we knew exactly what that was about--but I still think it’s worth doing. Even if it’s a bit crude technically, if it improves the story I’ll do it every time. I don’t care about something being perfect, because the audience doesn’t, either.

“They want to get on with it, so they want him to get out of the car quicker, too.”

RICHARD FRANCIS-BRUCE “Air Force One”

Resistant to typecasting as an action editor, Francis-Bruce has tackled work ranging from the jumpy bravura of “Seven” to the measured “Shawshank Redemption.” On “Air Force One,” the Australia native followed the usual practice of starting work as shooting began, assembling a rough cut while filming continued.

The total edit took about 10 months: “Typically it’s eight or nine, but we had over 350 visual effects, and you always get some at the last possible moment. I finished the film a day before we were supposed to make final prints.”

Francis-Bruce, 49, says he was drawn to the film by its atypical mix of action and drama. “The drama is cut at a much slower pace, and cutting drama is harder because you’re working with emotions, looking for emotional connections. With action, it’s all about kinetics, keeping it moving.

“We contemplated taking out a few scenes of the president and his family to get to the action faster, like the scene where the president kisses his wife, but those scenes made you feel connected to the family.

“The drama sequence I’m proudest of is the confrontation between Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman; it’s a drama piece with action cuts in it--quick cuts of Harrison’s hand hitting a console, and you don’t know why you’re seeing it. Later you reveal that in his hand is broken glass, and he’s cutting his bonds.”

Francis-Bruce’s first cuts usually run half an hour longer than the final length; working closely with Wolfgang Petersen--who unlike some directors was often in the edit room--he was able to guide “Air Force One” to its intended two-hour running time without any major deletions.

RICHARD MARKS “As Good as It Gets”

No one ever accused James Brooks of under-scripting his films--and no one knows that better than Marks, 53, who was forced to cut an entire character from “Broadcast News” and snip the songs from “I’ll Do Anything,” and who shaped “Terms of Endearment” into a best-picture winner.

So what were the casualties this time? “Some characters became severely diminished,” admits Marks (“Apocalypse Now,” “Pennies From Heaven”). “Skeet Ulrich’s character originally had a more complex relationship with Greg Kinnear’s character.

“But as you start to look at the film and watch it of a piece, it takeson a life of its own. It tells you what you can spend time with and what you can’t.”

Marks and Brooks also embarked on a “long evolutionary process to find out how far we could take Jack Nicholson’s role without turning off the audience.

“Jim shoots a wide range of performance, and that gives him the option once we start to have more control of the film’s tone. You always run the danger in a comedy, if it’s too comedic, is the audience getting the serious side of the story?”

Marks says he’s “enormously gratified” academy voters have endorsed the non-showy editing of his film, but says even he isn’t sure how the selection is made.

“Why you edit something a certain way has to do with what material you have, the problems you have to deal with. To make a judgment, you have to have access to all the possibilities.”

PIETRO SCALIA “Good Will Hunting”

“Every single director has a different language,” says the Oscar-winning editor of “JFK,” who speaks not only his native Italian but German, French and English.

“Languages have been very easy for me, and in film I become an interpreter. What is a director’s syntax? The grammar of how they shoot?”

Language drew Scalia, 37, to “Good Will Hunting”: “I love cutting dialogue, and I fell in love with the script. People talk on top of each other [in the film], and some sound editors say ‘oh no’--but I like that, because it’s natural. I wanted to retain the music of the words.”

Scalia cites a key scene of Matt Damon and Robin Williams quietly talking on a bench. “At first I cut it trying to use the better takes, getting reactions back and forth. But [director Gus Van Sant] suggested we not over-cut it. And the simplicity actually worked much better.

“If you watch the structure of the scene, the first half is on Robin, telling about himself. Then it switches to Matt’s close-up listening . . . and the switch happens on the word ‘yourself.’ It’s almost symmetrical.” Scalia’s first assembly inspired Van Sant to shoot additional scenes clarifying Damon’s character. Then editor and director spent an “intensive” seven weeks working at Van Sant’s home in Portland: “It was great. Gus would play the guitar in the cutting room, a little detached, but at the same time he knew exactly what I was doing.”

A director’s cut was finished two weeks ahead of schedule. “Editing works on a subconscious level,” concludes Scalia. “You ride a kind of invisible wave, following the coherence, the pacing, the rhythm. And if the emotions work, you feel that wave, and you ride it.”