Sunday, April 6, 2014

Invisible Art/Visible Artists








In Allan Holzman’s documentary: Invisible Art/Visible Artists, one is allowed to travel into the world of famous Hollywood editors as they describe their methods and mapping process of editing. As seen in the documentary, there are several ways to approach and accomplish editing in order to maintain continuity within a film and to accurately portray the emotions of shots, scenes, and sequences. One editor that I have admired is Pietro Scalia.
Scalia has accomplished much in his Hollywood career, working on a variety of films and employing different editing techniques along the way. In this documentary, he discusses his tackling of the opening scene of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. He explains that he montaged this opening scene by carefully regarding each shot, but the key factor to accomplishing this scene was achieving its historical context. Scalia secured the context by montaging the scene with multiple music compositions that reminded him of the Roman culture. Although this was not Hans Zimmer’s score, Pietro Scalia was still able to create a masterpiece that truly draws the viewer into the battle with Russell Crowe’s character Maximus. I was thoroughly impressed when Scalia explained this process. The rhythm and beat of the scene is so perfect, and to mold it with music that would not be utilized at all seems rather risky. This method obviously inspires him during the working process and I would be interested to see if he applies this concept to his other movies. 
I really enjoyed having Alan Holzman come and present his work to our class. It was informative and educational; it was especially nice to see all his work. This lecture has sparked an interest in me to look more into the editing process and perhaps experiment with it one day.

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