Ep. 97: The Teacher As Filmmaker/Film Editing Part One
Transcript:
Melissa Milner 0:09
In this Teacher As Filmmaker minisode, I switch from film director to film editor. In January 2020, I started seriously thinking about creating a podcast. I enjoyed listening to podcasts on a variety of topics and I thought a podcast for teachers would be cool, but I didn't have the concept yet, and I wanted it to be different from the other teacher podcasts. I've always been a movie lover and my idea for the podcast came from reading an amazing book by a film editor. I want to share the section of the introduction that sparked my interest in the podcast being about different professions and their parallels to teaching.
Melissa Milner 0:45
The book is called A long time ago in a cutting room far far away by film editor Paul Hirsch. And you can probably guess one of the movies that he edited. Reading this book led me to reading other film editing books, which I may share in these minisodes as well. Fascinating stuff. Unbeknownst to me at the time, film editing has so many strong parallels to the process of planning that teachers go through from pacing and planning for the year, individual units of study all the way down to planning at the lesson level, and the teacher moves in the moment during a lesson... all parallels to film editors. I will most likely be sharing a lot of these minisodes from Hirsch's book. So after reading what I'm about to share with you from the introduction of Hirsch's book, I turned to my husband and shared that I think the podcast will be called The Teacher As... blank, and it will focus on parallels to teaching and professions that have those parallels.
Melissa Milner 1:46
So the section reads, "Editing is a bit of a misnomer. Just as the pocket computers we all carry are called phones. Even though making phone calls is just a fraction of what we use them for, editing film is just one facet of the job. We editors spend a great deal of time building up the first cut. It's as if we are given a big box containing all the parts needed to put together a gizmo of some kind. Except there is a lot of other junk in the box as well. We sift through all the footage shot each day looking for and extracting the useful parts of each angle or setup. We then cut these together into longer and longer sequences or scenes."
Melissa Milner 2:32
And then it skips down, "Context is everything, you can take the most effecting moment of a four hanky movie and cut it into the middle of a broad comedy and it will seem absurd."
Melissa Milner 2:44
This is a biggie, "We must choose with care how to frame the best moments. Looking through dailies, the raw footage shot on a particular day, is hunting for jewels. And once they're found, we have to mount them to maximum effect. What precedes a shot is critical. And the art of editing is in part, how to make each shot achieve its full potential in the sequence."
Melissa Milner 3:16
That just really rung Teacher, Teacher, Teacher to me, and I'm going to be breaking down... he goes into a lot of detail in the following chapters. So I think each minisode I'll probably break down one piece of it and then share the parallel to teaching. So that's it for now. But I'm very excited for these film editing minisodes. Thanks for listening. For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned visit my website at www.theteacheras.com You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap