As promised, I will share the most profound lesson I received, which inspired me to write The Rhythm of Silence.
It all started when our beloved teacher in Film Directing, gave us the following exercise:
'I want you to create a short film of a maximum duration of five minutes. The subject is up to you and there are no restrictions but these two rules: You have to shoot it alone and have only one actor playing. Afterward, I will do the editing and you will be the Director guiding me.'
Everyone in the classroom was puzzled.
This exercise was not about Film Direction.
It was about Editing.
.
.
.
The storyline of my short was about a heavy smoker, sitting in a chair and smoking himself to death.
I had to use a one-person crew so I shot it myself.
Also, I had to use only one actor and since I was feeling experimental I decided to be the actor!
During the shoot, I visualized what the finished film would look like.
I imagined the tension building up, bringing anxiety and stress.
The camera movement should be steady at first and as the film story progresses, be frantic and shaky.
I decided to shoot multiple takes of the same scene using both 'fixed' camera positions from various angles and handheld for the close-up shots and details.
When I brought the footage to the editing room, the teacher had another surprise for me.
He said we should edit without music and choose the music track after having our 'picture locked'.
I froze!
Editing without a music reference or a music track was unimaginable to me!
How was I supposed to create stress and anxiety without cutting on top of the music beat???
I have seen a million films and all the stressful moments were accompanied by some music or sound that helped create and exaggerate these feelings.
To make things more interesting, we were cutting on an A-B Roll editing system. This type of editing process was called Linear Editing (*) and required meticulous planning of the shot sequence.
In simple terms, there was no UNDO, Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z.
Well... I couldn't do much other than follow his instructions so we started building the timeline shot by shot.
What followed was the most fulfilling and creative editing session!
I was instructing the editor based on my feelings and my inner sense of rhythm.
What shot should I put next?
What should be the duration of the previous shot?
What is the duration of the next shot?
These simple questions were the basis of the process and soon enough the film was ready!
Well... not exactly...
The music was missing!
The teacher picked up a tape named Music #1 from the rack and put it into the player. The tape, which was part of his music library, had around 50-60 music tracks recorded on it!
We started hearing songs, and after a while, I decided which one of them was 'closer' to the vision I had for my film.
We edited this music under the locked picture' and hit play.
I was in absolute awe when I realized that more than 95% of the film's cuts, were synced with the music beats.
More than 95% of the cuts were spot on, like if I had edited the music track, from the start!
I turned to my teacher to get his interpretation of this strange phenomenon!
He replied:
When you edit with Passion, coming straight from your Heart, and have a clear Vision of how you want your project to feel, the music will always fit!
This happened 20 years ago, but I have failed to find even one case where this phenomenon was not validated.
To find your Inner Melody, edit with Passion and Visualize the edit.
Everything else will fall into place naturally!
-Yannis
(*) Linear Editing is a huge, exciting, and important topic that will be discussed another day.
