The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

Starring: Kathy Bates, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, et al.

"What makes a movie a movie is the editing," says Zach Staenberg, Academy Award winning editor of the Matrix trilogy. Close-ups, flashbacks, parallel action, slow motion, juxtaposition of images - these are just a few tools that make clips from Birth of a Nation to Pulp Fiction, Battleship Potemkin to Gladiator indelible. Narrated by Kathy Bates and with interviews of a who's who of contemporary directors and editors, The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing is, shot for shot and frame after frame, reel magic.

• Format: DVD
• Language: English
• UPC: 012569714298
• Release Date: September 2005
• Rating: Unrated (Not Rated)
• Publisher: Warner Home Video
• Director: Wendy Apple
• Starring: Kathy Bates, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Wes Craven, Paul Verhoven, Lawrence Kasdan, Alexander Payne
• Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes
• Number of Disks: 1
• Other Video Info: Closed-captioned; Color; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Movie editors come out of the closet.

This documentary is a general overview of how film cutters evolved into film editors and took their place among the giants of the film industry. We are introduced to methods and philosophies used throughout the ages, and the metamorphosis from celluloid to digital recordings. As informative as this documentary is, it suffers from sound-bite-itus instead of concentrating on one person or thought; we are leaped back and forth through a collage of people, techniques, and time. This method of presentation can become quite boring after a time. Still, the documentary (which only shows highlights and nothing practical) is worth viewing.