An inevitable outcome of the social media era is how the popularity of a film’s trailers, promos, and fan edits have become an indicator of its impact. And the ones that the makers of a film depend on to engineer this hype are the editors. Editor Nash, whose recent work includes Ken Karunas’ Youth and the Arjun Das-Aditi Shankar starrer Once More, made waves in the industry by cutting promotional videos. “I worked eight years in 2D Entertainment, making promotional videos for all their films,from Kadaikutty Singam to Retro. Editing promo videos and trailers taught me how to grab audience attention and helped me understand rhythm.”
Nash doubles down on ‘rhythm’ to explain its prominence. “Editing is all about the rhythm.” And how do you understand the rhythm of a film?“That is all about the storytelling,” he smiles. “It is not as simple as saying ‘its an action movie so you need to make it faster’ or ‘its a romance so slow it down.’ Another aspect that acts as a guiding compass for an editor is the ability to be brutally honest with oneself. “There are some scenes that sound amazing on paper but on the editing table, you might feel it isn’t working. It could either be because of the length or the performance but no matter how much you enjoy the idea of it, you have to be honest with yourself and cut it out,” says Nash. A recent observation about the decrease of average shot length in films has sparked a heated debate online. Arguably the biggest film release this year, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, has an average shot length of around 3 seconds while one of Nolan’s favourite films, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) has an average shot length of 9 seconds. Speaking about this attention span crisis, Nash says, “As far as the criticisms against shorter and faster cuts, I think we shouldn’t be alarmed. I think it is just another trend and I think pretty soon, the trend will move towards longer shot lengths soon.” The editor elaborates on his confidence with a personal anecdote. “I was watching an older Kamal (Haasan) sir film and I was shocked by how modern his costume looked. But just ten years ago, those baggy pants would have looked severely outdated. Trends have a way of coming back.” Nash says sometimes, these trends need an audacious spirit to pull them back into the spotlight. “I didn’t think of trends when I was editing Once More. I wanted to edit it like the romantic films from the early 2000s. And I think it worked.”
It is perhaps easier for an audience to recognise the work of a composer or a cinematographer but the nuances in a film’s editing might not necessarily be apparent to spot. Nash explains how he approaches appreciation for editing. “A slower pace is usually associated with action scenes. We love to slow down action to increase hype. But if you look at the scene in Meiyazhagan when Arvind Swamy’s character sees the temple elephant from his childhood, the scene has a deliberate slow pace. I love using that kind of contrast in the editing table,” points out Nash.
As for trends he wishes to be gone, Nash circles back to his favourite topic: trailers. He says, “Trailers are the visiting card for a film. They could make or break a film. If you mess it up, it could severely impact the run of a film. But I am not fond of how we have become precious about spoilers. Hollywood films don’t worry about revealing spoilers in their trailers. But, you only realise how important those scenes were once you see the film. The trick is to use large hype moments in a nonchalant way so that the impact registers but you also don’t start connecting the dots and figure out the story. I particularly loved the trailer of Avengers: Doomsday.” Nash, who is currently working on Rudra-Preethi Asrani’s Yellow Yellow Dirty Fellow and Kishen Das’ next, signs off by revealing his one true philosophy about editing. “You should never edit imagining the audience’s reaction in your mind. You cannot force a viral moment.”