The Rough Cut

• Published in: Directing Vol. 1; pp. 481 - 497
• Main Authors: Rabiger, Michael, Hurbis-Cherrier, Mick
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2020
• Edition: 6
• Subjects: Superb; Reaction Shots; Hirokazu Koreeda; Invisible Storyteller; Tv Sitcom; Playback; Rough Cut; Transitional Devices; Long Shots; ADR; Concerned Observer; Dense; Character POV; Clipped; Young Men; Unnatural Seams; Fruitvale Station; Assembly Edit; Main Character; Subjective POV; Krzysztof Kieslowski; MCU
• ISBN: 0815394314; 0815394306; 9780815394310; 9780815394303
• DOI: 10.4324/9781351186391-42

You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances ... You help the director bring all the hard work of those who made the film to fruition. You give their work rhythm and pace and sometimes adjust the structure to make the film work-to make it start to flow up there on the screen.1 -Thelma Schoonmaker A rough cut is an evolving version of the film in which the full range of material and storytelling techniques are used to implement the goals decided after scrutinizing the assembly edit. The rough-cut stage is the heart and soul of editing. Edit according to the characters' attention and eye-line changes, and film directors are working from human behavior rather than from disembodied theory. According to the charisma of film directors' actors and the choices they made in shooting and editing, their audience may identify at different times with one or other of the characters, or with the more embracing perspective of the invisible Storyteller/Observer. A contrapuntal editing device useful for blurring the unnatural seams between straight-cut shots is called the split-edit, also known as a lap cut or L-cut. Each rough cut gets a high degree of scrutiny and especially with early versions it is important to deal only with the largest-scale problems first.