Hi All,

This is a strange question. I am director and editor. I am currently working with a client that has an in house editor. We are working on a video that has a montage section that will be music driven. the piece then moves into a dialogue section without music. I sent the editor some temp tracks and asked him to cut the montage to them. His response to me was, "I don't edit to music. It's not what I do. I let the picture drive the edits." Honestly, I was a little baffled. I've been directing for ten years, worked with a lot of editors and I've never heard of this editing approach. As an editor myself, I always cut to music. Does anyone else prescribe to this approach and fundamentally avoid editing to music? Is this something new they are teaching in film schools?  Thanks.

You either have a fundamentally unmusical person calling himself an editor, or someone with an attitude problem.

I strongly suggest that you find someone else.

Personally, I have done both. Sometimes, cutting to temp helps getting something together, yet other times it tends to smooth out stuff too much, and you miss out on the actual dynamics of the picture.

Either way, if you would like to see it presented with some sort of temp music that you supplied, this editor should present it to you like that. Whether this person is cutting it to the music, or adds the music afterwards, that is not so relevant. IMHO.

BTW: This thread would fit better in the General Discussions forum rather than the MC-Mac forum.

stokesmm:

I sent the editor some temp tracks and asked him to cut the montage to them. His response to me was, "I don't edit to music. It's not what I do. I let the picture drive the edits."

Hi,

Sounds a little weird, but I suppose everyone has their own approach to things.  Have you seen the resulting montage yet?

good luck,
Carl

Well, it's a technique to use, like anything else.  It depends on what you're doing.  If I were cutting a dialog or action scene, I'd probably cut the scene first, then lay in the music and maybe make tweaks depending on where the music hits (although quite often the music hits pretty closely by total coincidence, for some strange reason).  But I wouldn't call that approach cutting to music.

It would depend on the scene, but if a montage were supposed to be driven by music, I would think you'd have to have the music as a guide while cutting, so you could at least match the pacing to the beat of the music.  Although, you could just cut the scene, and trim it later with the music in so that it matches the music.  Either way would work, I think, and it would just depend on whether you preferred to take a "top down" or "bottom up" approach to editing the scene.  But the end result should be pretty much the same--a scene that's matched to the music.  I think the editor should be able to use whatever technique he's most comfortable with.

But if the editor is saying that he just won't cut the scene to match the music, then I'd say he's not doing his job.  Even in a non-montage scene, music is an integral part when it's used, and refusing to integrate the music smoothly into the scene seems to me like failing to take out director voices or not setting levels on your audio.  It's just doing a sloppy, incomplete job.

   I would say that seems more like an "old school" approach rather than something new they are teaching in schools these days. While your situation makes sense to have edits and music cues to help puncuate the edits. You can often dig yourself into a hole when cutting to music, dialogue driven scenes need to have the edits push the emotion of the scene not match up to musical beats, your story comes first, but in a montage scene, nothing wrong at all to cut to music.

    What I don't get it, is if your the director, and you ask to cut to the music, then the editor should cut to music, and if an editor is really full of piss and vinegar he could atleast come up with a reason why he wants to cut the scene differently than how you want it done. Best of Luck