How are awards given in the editing category?
How are awards are given in the editing category? In 2013, *Argo (2012)* won an Oscar for editing. I saw the movie, but I didn't notice any noticeable editing effects like **rapid cut** sticking out, like I experienced in *Requiem for a Dream (2000)* (these did not compete against each other, though).Then how are awards given in the editing category? What are the **objective criteria or process** for choosing nominees and winners in this category for the Academy Awards? Are there any general criteria that define "good" editing?
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1 Expert Answer
Dante W. answered • 08/04/19
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Film Director, Poet, Screenwriter, and Author. I love creativity!
Your question can easily be applied to any of the Academy Award categories, unfortunately. So, the academy's only criteria can be found on their website, which is that there has to be a certain amount of theatrical screenings for a certain length of time to be nominated for an Oscar. However, the selection process is entirely up to the opinions of the Academy leaders (who change frequently enough). A film is first nominated for a nomination, then the selection committee decides whether it should be admitted (and while all of the committee are industry professionals, not every profession is necessarily represented). So, based on either a wealth of hands-on experience or just a quick synopsis of what they're looking for, they choose the nominees. Then the voting occurs.
The Academy is comprised of thousands of people, including people from every field within filmmaking. But considering that actors make up the majority of film crews, they make up the majority of the Academy, and actors are not required to know the professions of the other categories to be adopted by the Academy. Therefor, when they are called on to vote, they are just being asked? "Which has the best editing?" Then thousands of people, most of whom have never edited before, select their favorite. Another piece of the puzzle is that they are not actually required to have seen the film in its entirety. They'll watch a clip and decide from the one clip or sometimes not watch anything at all. So it all depends on whether the Academy members care enough on the given year, but they often just vote for their friends or what their kids/grandkids say was good for categories outside of the big 6 (Picture, Director, Lead/Supporting Actor/Actress).
It's kind of an unfair mess for the smaller awards.
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Max M.
I'm commenting rather than answering, because if a professional editor sees this, they'll give a much better answer than mine. But I've produced a few films, so I may not be totally unqualified. First of all, the easy part of your question. There are no objective criteria for any awards (other than the Academy defines a short film as 40 minutes or under), so there are no objective criteria for nominating editors any more than there are for nominating actors. Your work is nominated if enough of your peers choose to put it on their nomination ballots. Now for the hard part: what makes good editing? Editing is a major component of the storytelling process. If you go all the way back and look at Aristotle's Poetics and his 6 elements of a play, you'll find they still apply, and editing plays strongly into all of them. Plot: editing can make the events of the story clear or obscure--did the chosen takes show all the basic information the audience needs to understand the events? In the latest "A Star Is Born," I could barely tell what happened in the early bar scene when Lady Gaga punches the guy. I don't know whether that's because Cooper didn't shoot it from a closer angle, or whether he did and the editor chose not to use it, but that kind of thing can be an editing issue. Character: How long we stay on a character, and what we see right before and after determines a lot about what we know about them. Hitchcock did a great example of this--youtube "Hitchcock demonstrates montage" and you should find what I'm talking about. Thought: AKA theme. How we get from one shot to another, and what the first and last images of a sequence are might have some poetic or metaphorical meaning. If you look at the scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where they sign their big record deal, at first there are a lot of individual shots of the guys, but by the end, we're seeing two-shots and group shots. Maybe the editing is subtly showing us that they're becoming a collective here. Diction: This is more about writing than editing, but what we see when we hear words can have a big influence on what those words mean. Dynamics: Maybe the most important concern for editors--how does the movie or show move? If a scene is exciting, scary, funny, moving, or intense, a big reason why is how the shots were put together. Spectacle: Does it look cool or beautiful or otherwise impressive? Aristotle said this is the least important of the 6, but it's not unimportant. And those rapid cut sequences you're talking about in Aronofsky's work are part of what makes his work interesting. The same goes for the split screen montages in Guy Ritchie's early work. For all of these things, the director, and sometimes the producer and studio / network will also be involved in the creative decisions, but that goes for everything else too, from script to design to acting, and like those categories, someone still has to execute the ideas, and they can execute them well or poorly. Many have suggested that the difference between George Lucas's "good" Star Wars movie--New Hope is the only one of the originals he directed, and the "bad" prequels was that the first one was edited by his wife Marcia Lucas. As a very general rule, movies (and plays and TV shows) work best when all the elements work together. When one element is really noticeable, even in a good way, that can be a weakness. If you're watching something and suddenly say, "these costumes are fantastic!" the designer may appreciate it, but it's a sign that you've become detached from the movie as a whole. It's usually better when the costumes put your focus on the characters and the story rather than themselves. The same is true of editing.06/06/19