The next day after my meeting, I attended a post production meeting that really I didn't need to attend but it gave me an opportunity to meet the producer that is working with Mike on his film and the chance to go to the library. I had a list of books that, in retrospect, I should have read at the start of the year, one in particular that quite frankly I need to scan a LOT of pages from. So in essence, I started at the very beginning of editing.
I read a very very VERY basic book that has opened my eyes to WHY I make an editing decision and WHEN I should make a cut. This book I really should have read earlier as it's now made me look at films and TV shows in a whole new light. To save myself a ball ache in the future, i'm just going to Harvard Reference all the books I read now so I can just copy and paste. Wait! I lie, i'll start another a post that has them in and i'll just add to it as I read more books or watch more films. This book was Grammar of the Edit by Roy Thompson.
The other books I took a gander at didn't really help me out as much as I thought. One especially I thought it may be helpful as there was a chapter on perspective. Well, although it was on perspective, it was also a history book on film and dealt with the cameras perspective amongst the action and how it adheres to the 180 degree rule. So over all it didn't help me that much. There was some interesting bits of information on the history of film but nothing overly helpful. That book was Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice by Don Fairservice.
The other book I read I only really looked at one chapter because it was intriguing to me and kinda had nothing to do with this project. It was how Alfred Hitchcock experimented with editing in his films and I will agree that he was a smart director and editor. From a young age after visiting Universal Studios where they had a Hitchcock attraction inside a replica Bate's Mansion, which funnily enough was used in Psycho 3 I think, not that I've seen it though, only ever seen the original. Wait, i've gone off here. Yeah, they showed us how they filmed the famous shower scene and it left me amazed. The fact that if you watched it again, you'll notice that you never see the knife touch the skin. The fact that the shots were cut so quickly to reaction shots or result shots as i'll call them (e.g. the blood trickling down the plug hole) allowed the audience to draw the only obvious conclusion without showing too much. Anyway, this has bugger all to do with perspectives so let's move on, yeah?
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