Echoes of Hollywood

Back in Los Angeles, after a brief three-day rest, Murphy arrived at a post-production studio at 20th Century Fox's Century City location to begin the post-production work for "Inglourious Basterds."

Post-production also required coordination among multiple departments and teams, and the foundation of all this was undoubtedly editing. It is no exaggeration to say that Murphy, like any director, shoots films to serve the editing process.

This time, Murphy once again collaborated with Jodie Griffiths' editing team.

Before editing began, to be precise, as early as the scriptwriting stage, Murphy already had a very clear idea. Quentin Tarantino's films often employ various editing tricks, especially his famous chapter-based structure. Although Murphy was not a director reliant on traditional editing, he was fundamentally different from Tarantino. This film would not use a chapter-based structure; instead, Murphy would employ parallel montage extensively. This meant that the final cut of "Inglourious Basterds" would be presented in a multi-line narrative format.

This post-production process would revolve around editing, for which Murphy had meticulously prepared.

Some say, "The best editing is the one that goes unnoticed."

This is a major misunderstanding about editing. It should be said that editing that goes unnoticed is "editing that does not create barriers for ordinary audiences to receive information," but it is not necessarily the best editing. After more than a hundred years of development, editing has multiple aesthetic standards and possibilities, with very rich connotations.

Of course, as a commercial film aimed at a wide audience, Murphy inevitably had to maintain smooth editing.

Editing that does not create barriers for ordinary audiences is not about showing off techniques or being obscure.

To maintain smooth editing that the public can accept, the primary task is to determine the appropriate editing points for all shots.

Editing points are the transition points between two shots, including sound or images. Accurately grasping the editing points ensures smooth transitions between shots. Therefore, the choice of editing points was the most fundamental and important task for Murphy and Jodie Griffiths during the rough cut.

The editing points for all the shots in "Inglourious Basterds" could be simply divided into two categories: the first includes visual editing points, action editing points, emotional editing points, and rhythm editing points; the second includes sound editing points, such as dialogue, music, and sound effects.

Most film editing revolves around the characters' actions. Here, "actions" refer not to fighting but to the characters' behavior.

Action editing points are about the continuity of the main action. Action editing serves clear storytelling, but it focuses more on the continuity of actions outside the shots. This continuity can enhance the smoothness between shots.

The selection of action editing points by Murphy and Jodie Griffiths was crucial and would directly impact the final cut.

The rough cut of "Inglourious Basterds" was divided into two parts by Murphy and Jodie Griffiths.

The first step was assembling—using the combination of some shots to produce different feelings.

The second step was cutting—specifically controlling the rhythm and emotions throughout the film.

In film editing, rhythm is very important. However, given Murphy's approach in this film, everything had to adhere to the story and emotions. He and Jodie Griffiths agreed that controlling the rhythm of "Inglourious Basterds" was mainly about emotions. They adjusted the film according to what the emotions required at each point.

During the editing process, Murphy aimed to maintain a relatively objective state, genuinely considering himself an audience member, experiencing the rhythm and details' changes, and evaluating the scenes' watchability.

Whatever suited "Inglourious Basterds," Murphy and Jodie Griffiths would use. The goal was for the audience to be engrossed in the film.

With this approach, Murphy and Jodie Griffiths completed the rough cut in nearly half a month. The next step, the fine cut, was more critical and would directly determine the final film's quality.

As the name suggests, the fine cut is far more complex than the rough cut.

Murphy needed to ensure that the fine cut was tight enough—editing should be tense but not overly brief. This meant cutting unnecessary pauses in actors' dialogues, shortening the blank spaces between lines, and even cutting out lengthy, unimportant dialogue.

Most moviegoers have an attention span that generally doesn't exceed 150 minutes, equivalent to the length of a typical mainstream commercial film. The rough cut of "Inglourious Basterds" was over 300 minutes long and needed to be compressed to about 120 minutes in the fine cut. If the fine cut resulted in a film that was two and a half hours or longer, significant "surgery" would be necessary.

Unlike previous editing processes, Murphy used temporary background music as an aid during editing this time.

This method was suitable for a special film like "Inglourious Basterds," but it shouldn't become a regular practice. Once you fall in love with temporary music during editing, it's hard to find fitting soundtracks that feel right. Murphy usually preferred to edit powerful film scenes and refine them through appropriate editing. If a scene could stand on its own, the soundtrack would enhance it.

"Inglourious Basterds" was an exception in this regard.

During the fine cut, many aspects that were difficult to address in the rough cut had to be considered, such as coordinating actions with visuals. Using actors' gestures, props, eye lines, or positions is one editing method, but the best approach is to let emotions naturally flow or create a smooth narrative rhythm. Technical editing is not the key.

The editor's duty is to immerse the audience in the plot.

There were many pure action shots during filming. For many action scenes, Murphy used moving cameras, and these also needed to be processed in the fine cut.

Moving cameras were the primary method for shooting action scenes. Murphy used dolly cameras, crane cameras, camera stabilizers, and Steadicams. The action scenes in the film had to present a tense atmosphere, so he and Jodie Griffiths edited the shots during camera movements, ensuring each shot transition maintained motion.

This made the action scenes more compact, keeping the audience engaged.

In this shoot, Murphy used pure single-take shots for some scenes, but this was only a part. Most other scenes continued his usual style, using multiple cameras from different angles.

When editing multi-angle shots into the film, you can't always mechanically cut back to the same angle or repeat a recently used series of shots.

Of course, in a dialogue scene between Lieutenant Aldo and Colonel Hans, where only two angles were available, repetitive editing was unavoidable.

Even in these multi-angle switching scenes, Murphy used a group of three, maintaining at least 1.5 to 2 seconds per shot, sometimes longer.

For instance, in the scene where Shoshanna enters Goebbels' banquet hall and looks around, Murphy edited the point-of-view shots in groups of three, visually presenting the entire scene to the audience, mimicking a real-world perspective to immerse the viewers.

In these multi-angle shots, the actors' eyes were the focus of the edits. Actors attract attention on TV, in films, and on stage primarily with their faces, but their eyes are the most important. When editing intense dialogue scenes, Murphy paid close attention to the actors' eyes: were they conveying the appropriate emotions? How were the co-actors reacting? The actors' performances determined this aspect of editing.

Sometimes, Murphy focused more on the main actor delivering the dialogue and cut out the reactions of others.

This was about removing extraneous elements from the actors' performances.

Murphy preferred a tight editing pace, evident from the start, and eliminating unnecessary elements was essential for maintaining this pace.

Most actors overact, emphasizing pauses, adding more errors than the script requires, and prolonging stutters. Editing needed to bring performances back to normal, cutting out lengthy actions and dialogues, making the film realistic without being affected.

So, for an actor to win a performance award, the director and editor are also crucial.

These methods serve to create the film's storyline.

Some say there are three types of movies in the world: script-based, shooting-based, and editing-based. Regardless of the type, the story structure must be highly considered, and one should not be afraid to change the script or shooting content if it adds meaning.

Murphy consistently used storyboards to visually present the storyline, helping Jodie Griffiths determine the most logical way to present the story to the audience.

Finally, Murphy had Jodie Griffiths make her own choices.

Despite their numerous collaborations, they undoubtedly had different views on some scenes and shots. Even the most successful director needs a great editor's assistance, especially to inject different perspectives and correct unnoticed mistakes.

Movies are a team effort, with the director as the helmsman. If other aspects go wrong, the project can still fail.

Returning to the topic, who doesn't make subjective errors and overlook things?

Directors like Murphy wouldn't review every shot during post-production but would modify based on Jodie Griffiths' edited version, regardless of their appreciation for the actors' performances.

If Murphy particularly appreciated an actor's different performance, he would suggest modifying the edit or finding suitable parts from the shot footage. The fresher and more convincingly presented the edited scenes felt, the more Murphy appreciated the editor's skills.

Murphy and Jodie Griffiths continued this work until late May, completing the first version of the fine cut. Much more time and effort were needed to refine it, but Murphy had to temporarily put the work aside to attend a highly significant premiere for Robert Downey Jr.

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