Joel and Ethan Coen:
Editing “Intolerable Cruelty”
Joel and Ethan Coen have always written, directed, edited and produced their own films. But “Intolerable Cruelty” is the first film they edited digitally — and they used the Mac and Final Cut Pro to do it. Opening Oct. 10, “Intolerable Cruelty” stars George Clooney as a wacky but ruthless Beverly Hills divorce attorney who falls for Catherine Zeta-Jones, the gold-digging wife of one of his clients.
No Interruption
“The good thing about this system,” says Ethan of the two Power Macs he and his brother use for editing, “is that it represented for us no interruption of the way we’re used to working. The computers are set up so I can mark up takes in the same way and send them over to Joel’s computer, where he assembles them. That’s one of its big virtues for us. Obviously that’s idiosyncratic to us and how we work, but that was a very welcome thing.”
Ethan and Joel edit their movies, cut by cut, together. Previously, Ethan would examine a reel of film through the small viewfinder of a noisy Moviola to mark cut points in a take. Working nearby with a KEM flatbed editor, Joel would assemble the cuts.
Now, working in their Tribeca studio in lower Manhattan, Ethan peers into the 22-inch Apple Cinema Display of his Power Mac and rapidly makes his selects in Final Cut Pro. Nearby, Joel works with Ethan’s selects at his own Power Mac, also using Final Cut Pro to assemble the cuts with a click of the mouse.
Looking at More
“It’s so much more efficient,” Ethan adds, “and so much easier to mark where you want to mark and review what you’ve marked as opposed to rolling back and forth on a Moviola and using the brake and getting a general idea within a few frames. It’s also infinitely easier to look at alternate takes as opposed to handling all this film. You find yourself looking at more. You find yourself being more comprehensive or exhaustive than you would be if you were still working in film.”
Joel agrees. “You can cut about twice as fast as we’re used to. That’s kind of an issue for us, since we don’t start cutting until after we finish shooting.
That’s another virtue; since we get a late start, it’s good to have a system that’s so efficient.” And, Joel says, cutting on the Mac “is actually a little less tiring physically. Since you’re just essentially moving a mouse around on a mousepad and clicking, it’s actually a little less of an aerobic workout.”
A Pleasant Surprise
“Another pleasant surprise,” Joel points out, “is that the resolution is really good. We were concerned that, maybe when we saw a workprint conformed, we’d be shocked; all the cuts would feel different. That wasn’t the case. In our experience working with film, there were no bad surprises.
“You can cut about twice as fast as we’re used to. That’s kind of an issue for us, since we don’t start cutting until after we finish shooting.”
“And certainly there’s a lot more you can do with the sound, much more easily, on this system than you can on a KEM. First, you can work with more tracks than is physically possible on a KEM. But it certainly gives you an earlier opportunity to assemble and preview effects before the sound people come in and start working on it. You can look at the waveforms, you can cut out garbage more easily, you can cut in more precisely to the first mod of sound.”
“It also helps in swapping out dialog,” says Joel. “If a line is noisy in one take, or if a word is clipped, you can take a word from another take and essentially splice it in. All those things are possible to do with the other system. It’s just that they’re easier to do here.”
Many Ways to Work
Associate film editor Dave Diliberto, who worked with the Coen brothers on “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski,” encouraged them to edit their new film digitally. “Joel and Ethan,” he says, “had a very down-and-dirty way of working that was comfortable for them. And even though the Macs could be set up to accommodate the way Joel and Ethan worked on physical film, it’s a really effective way for editors and directors to work together cutting in a very simple and economical fashion. Final Cut Pro gives you so many ways of working on film in a digital way. We put an enormous movie on it.”
