Mulan's Terrible Editing - A Breakdown

this video is brought to you by audible the disney live action remake of mulan has some pretty terrible editing at first i wasn't going to make this video because i felt like it would overlap too much with what i've already covered in my video about bohemian rhapsody's terrible editing but i think the editing in mulan is bad in a slightly different way and i think there's an opportunity to talk here about not just what's bad about mulan's editing but about why bad editing happens and whose fault it is a much more complex and difficult question to answer most of mulan's editing isn't that bad while it's not winning any awards it's also not mind-numbing or super distracting but there are several scenes that sort of boggle the mind the first is the opening set piece where mulan runs through her village chasing a [Music] chicken the issue with this scene is that it often breaks continuity of action breaking continuity isn't always bad but it can cause problems when it makes it unclear what action is happening or when the audience notices the break in the continuity and it creates an unwanted jarring effect let's focus in on just a couple sections [Music] this cut right here is essentially a jump cut you can obscure a significant jump forward in time by cutting to a different angle but this cut isn't to another angle it looks like it's probably just a digital zoom and such a small amount of zoom isn't nearly enough to cover such a big discontinuity in action to make matters worse there are two of these cuts back to back both breaking continuity and creating a jump cut effect the second cut is especially offensive because it's a cut back in time instead of forward which makes it even more jarring let's look at another section [Music] [Music] between these shots mulan suddenly changes the direction she's facing and these cuts skip more significant portions of action this close-up of her leg is especially puzzling to me it's not well composed for what it's showing it's not really necessary to understand the action and it's kind of confusing in conjunction with the other shots it seems like the main focus of the action here would be on her upper body and her face as she pulls herself up onto the ledge but that's just completely missing from the scene altogether a few continuity issues in a scene are usually not a big deal very good editing will often have small continuity issues in the action look at this cut from my favorite scene in the godfather where the hand lowering the cigarette breaks continuity this kind of thing happens all the time in movies and you usually don't notice it but there are two reasons why these continuity errors stand out in mulan the first is that there are so many back to back at such a fast pace the second is that this is an action scene and the continuity issues are with the primary action continuity issues are usually more forgivable when the focus of the scene is on a conversation drama or an emotion when we're focusing on people's faces we tend to be blind to small continuity errors in the action but this scene in mulan is put forth as an action scene so when you disrupt that action visibly it's much more noticeable because the action is what we're focusing on you might notice that part of the problem with these scenes is that they're edited so quickly and while that's definitely a problem here fast editing isn't inherently bad it just tends to amplify other issues in editing so i want to mainly focus on those issues that the fast pace of editing is merely exacerbating let's return to the section i showed you at the beginning of the video what is even going on here it just looks like chaos if we slow it down and look at just a small section at a time we can see what was attempted and where it's going wrong this first cut isn't that bad even this one's mostly fine but this one completely interrupts the flow of action to help hide cuts editors often time a cut in the middle of an action because your eyes are following the continuing action from shot to shot the cut becomes less noticeable when it's placed in the middle of that action while this cut is technically in the middle of a single motion it happens right as that motion is changing direction so when the cut happens the action continues in a direction that is different from the one you're expecting which makes it confusing the biggest defender then comes right here the direction of action in this shot seems to be setting up a blow to this soldier with her staff but in the next shot she actually seems to be hitting him with her arm i say seems to because you can clearly see that she doesn't usually filmmakers will use an angle for a strike like this that actually hides the lack of contact between the stunt people but here they choose a full profile for some reason that completely reveals the artifice of the moment then we cut away to a wide if you look closely continuity is technically maintained here the soldier is falling away properly behind her and her hand is moving away in the right place but when the clip is moving at full speed you can't tell because the composition blocks out the view of the continuing action so the effect is that there's no continuity of movement even though there technically is then she reaches in to grab this guy's neck another action which is mostly obscured by the composition we then cut directly across the 360 degree line of action something that's okay sometimes but in this case just adds to the confusion in the midst of an already fast-paced and chaotic scene we then immediately cut to this shot which not only doesn't add any new information to the scene at the cost of the slight disorientation of a cut but it's actually a worse shot the subject of the shot her face is out of focus i could continue to break down each cut showing how all these little problems add into this giant mess but that would be tedious and long and repetitive instead i think it's more interesting to start trying to figure out why the editing is like this the easy answer you might jump to is the editor is a bad editor but it's not that simple sure this could be the case but in filmmaking it's not safe to assume that the editor is necessarily the cause of these problems if we look at some of the other scenes in the film david coulson the editor of the film clearly can edit a scene there's nothing wrong with this scene for example you must be courageous for your mother and your sister for me we also know that coulson has 44 editing credits to his name and while experience doesn't guarantee skill it's unlikely he's just a bad editor sometimes a scene will come out like this because the editor just doesn't have the right material to work with or is being forced to try to cover up other issues with the filmmaking in a scene like this the issues could be bad cinematography this shot would seem to indicate that that might be one problem if a wide that clearly shows the choreographed action is never shot the editor just can't cut to it i think bad cinematography is actually the main issue in this scene the camera is all over the place it's on the ground it's on the roof and almost every cut seems to introduce a new angle and perspective in this village and it creates an incredibly spatially jarring scene something that's only amplified by the breaks and continuity and the pace it could also be bad stunt choreography or performance if the actions aren't choreographed well it will be more difficult to properly shoot and edit and more mistakes or obvious fakeness will have to be covered over in the edit we can see some evidence that this might be the case in moments like this one here she seems to grab the soldier's throat but then a few shots later she's obviously not is this a flaw in performance is it bad choreography if issues like this are visible within the film who knows what kind of issues were there that we can't see because they had to be covered over in the editing bad sound design can also factor in for this shot look at the trajectory of the throw star the shot doesn't track with the movement and the star clearly hits before we hear the impact and the stun actor flies backward well after the impact has happened all of this adds to the jarring confusion of the scene and none of it is the fault of the editor all of these things are things that it's the editor's job to try to overcome but the editor can't make something out of nothing or work magic on top of that toss in a producer or director who might be telling the editor to spice things up and make it faster or more exciting while working in an environment that is pressuring you to get things done quickly and meet deadlines all of this together and you can easily see how the bad editing in a scene like this may not be the fault of the editor at all to complicate things it's possible to lose sight of a scene as you're working on it just in making this video i've looked at these scenes so much that i know the action the characters are going to take and this knowledge makes the scene make more sense to me and feel less jarring than they did the first few times i watched them but i have to trust the experience i had watching them the first few times this is something called exposure blindness and when it happens an editor can lose sight of what it's really like for someone to watch a scene for the first time this is a trap that editors have to work to avoid and i think it's one that even experienced editors can fall into from time to time it's why it's so important to bring in fresh eyes to see your work but whether it's the editor's fault or not we can't really know unless we have an objective and complete view of the films behind the scenes we're just left to speculate ultimately we're faced with the fact that when we talk about editing and film we're really referring to two different things the progression from one shot to another on the screen and the act of editing performed by the editor if we think about it in that way we can say this scene has bad editing but we can't necessarily infer from that that david coulson is a bad editor in fact given the material he had and the problems he had to try to solve this might have been the best he could have done thank you to audible for sponsoring this video start listening with a 30-day free audible trial with that trial you get one audio book that's yours to keep forever and access to the entire plus catalog absolutely free it's spooky season so i want to recommend one of my favorite horror audiobooks the area x trilogy by jeff vandermeer is the series that the film annihilation was based on it's not traditional horror but it's a sort of lovecrafty and existential horror sci-fi that i really really enjoyed the plus catalog has audiobooks podcasts audible originals guided fitness meditation programs and sleep tracks all of that as well as a credit for an audiobook every month is yours when you become a member at audible.com thomasflight that's audible.com thomasflight or text thomasflight2500 500. i'm a big fan of audible and i want to thank them again for sponsoring this video start your free trial at audible.com thomasflight or text thomasflight to 500 500. right now i'm letting patrons choose a movie for me to watch every month last month they made me watch naked by mike thulis which i reviewed as my bonus patron video for that month if you're interested in joining the discord and getting in on the discussion go to patreon.com thomasflight

Channel: Thomas Flight

Views: 335,814

Keywords: Video Essay, Thomas Flight, Bohemian Rhapsody Editing, Bad Editing, Editing Breakdown, Mulan, Mulan Editing, Disney Mulan, Mulan Bad Editing, Mulan Scene, Mulan Video Essay, Disney, Mulan 2020, Mulan Live Action, Bohemian Rhapsody, Bad Editing Breakdown, terrible editing

Id: Fqksc-mDxGk

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020