Montage: 40 Films with Kick-Ass Editing

Film editing is not as mysterious as it used to be up until ten years ago when non linear editing softwares were introduced to the consumer market. Today everybody has some basic understanding of editing and can cut a video in a computer. However, this doesn’t mean you’re an editor. There are principles, concepts, theories, techniques and all sorts of tricks that one could fill an entire book on the subject. People usually don’t realize that editing is the material structure of a film combined with its pacing and use of stylistic elements in order to communicate something to a viewer: a narrative story, a poem, a message, a feeling, an idea. Building that structure and giving it the right pacing is where its at, not in a single cut, everybody can make one cut, but to make 500 cuts and more is a serious puzzle that requires study, practice and play.  I attached here the trailers and segments of 40 films that stand out for their awesome editing (among other things) and represent the wider spectrum of film editing in the history of cinema. The list is small and unfortunately I had to make a lot of painful cuts. You will not find The Great Train Robbery here or Battleship Potemkin nor The Birth of a Nation, however those are great films that you should watch if you love movies. The majority of the films attached here are classics and have been very influential to my personal editorial and directorial efforts. There is one film that I could not find on youtube to embed here unfortunately and its a must watch: Errol Morris’ “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” should be on this list. Enjoy the rest!     

Man with the Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov (1929) 

Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl (1938)

Citizen Kane by Orson Welles (1941)

Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa (1951)

The 400 Blows by François Truffaut (1959)

Breathless by Jean-Luc Goddard (1960)

Lawrence of Arabia by David Lean (1962)

The Trial by Orson Welles (1962)

8½ by Federico Fellini (1962)

Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick (1964)

The Good the Bad & the Ugly by Sergio Leone (1966)

The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo (1966)

Persona by Ingmar Bergman (1966)

Rosemary’s Baby by Roman Polanski (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968)

Z by Costa-Gavras (1969)

Easy Rider by Dennis Hopper (1969)

Roma by Federico Fellini (1972)

Don’t Look Now by Nicholas Roeg (1973)

Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola (1979)

All that Jazz by Bob Fosse (1979)

Raging Bull by Martin Scorsese (1980)

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (1982)

Blue Velvet by David Lynch (1986)

Hannah and her Sisters by Woody Allen (1986)

Short Cuts by Robert Altman (1993)

Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone (1994)

Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (1994)

Se7en by David Fincher (1995)

Trainspotting by Danny Boyle (1996)

Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier (1996)

The Big Lebowski by The Coen Brothers (1998)

In the Mood for Love by Wang Kar Wai (2000)

Mulholland Dr by David Lynch (2001)

There will be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)

Antichrist by Lars Von Trier (2009)

The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke (2009)

Biutiful by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2010)

Enter the Void by Gaspar Noe (2010)

The Tree of Life by Terrence Mallick (2011)

Made in Greece

greece may not export much besides feta and fage these days but it has some really cool fuckin bands. these are some of my favs. check these guys out. buy greek.

Student Short Films

Since the two Planet of Zeus music videos came out, I noticed an increase of views on my youtube channel and in my photography fb page. So I thought that maybe some people might enjoy some of the stuff that I did before while in film school. On my last post I shared my thesis short film “Drifter”. I directed a lot of things in 4 years at the school but besides Drifter which was my last one, these other three are the only ones I like enough to share with whoever would like to see them. 

INTERLUDE TO INSPIRATION (2005)

This was the first short I did that I felt I was telling a story I wanted to tell. There is no big concept behind it, its just about inspiration coming through music and the surreal feelings it brings. The Jupiter Symphony by Mozart is what gave the idea. It was shot on color 16mm and it features Gary Agid, Dwaine Spurlin and my friends Grace, Rob and Dave. It was edited by Stu Barnes and photographed by myself. My roommate Daniele helped with everything (like in all my films) from storyboarding shots and crafting the story beats to whistling the tunes and doing foley effects. This is the most student-ish work of the three but also the most special.

PURITY (2005)

Purity was supposed to be more of a real short with plot and dialogue in the traditional short narrative format. I ended up throwing most of the dialogue out cause it was nosy. Its about a priest who sleeps with a hooker and feels guilty about it. It features Alvaro Mujica and Sharise Parviz. It was edited by myself and shot by Drew Nelson who was my main partner in this projet.

APHORISM AND JEALOUSY (2006)

This was my last film before Drifter (thesis). In my class I was given 2 35mm 400 foot rolls and I was expected to turn in a project by the end of the semester, preferably a commercial. 2 rolls of 35 is not enough film to make a movie and I never liked making commercials, so I decided to do something somewhat theatrical, dramatic and abstract. The short is about a pianist playing his piano and a dancer dancing to him playing Moonlight Sonata by the great Ludwig Van. The dance is about jealousy and anger and since he is not paying enough attention to her she kills him with a knife but since his music is the source of her life, she dies as well. This is the least cinematic piece I’ve done, first reason is that we shot the whole thing in 5 hours which was insane, second reason is that it is a theatrical act and as such the essence is not in the shots or the cuts, its in the performances. Claire Pascal and Arthur Hamilton were amazing and if there is any value in this project it is because of them.

DEMO REEL MONTAGE

My next project was Drifter on which I was prepared, organized and dead serious. Up until that point most of the stuff I had done where kinda slow and dramatic, dressed with classical music etc. Drifter though ended up to be much faster, wacky and aggressive. So I decided to keep exploring that route, thus on my reel montage I used Meshuggah instead of something classical and went super crazy on the cutting. Since then I have decided I wanna keep making projects that way and thats one of the reasons why I am interested in modern metal music videos. Film school was fun.