chapTer 21 the art and technique of editing 447 in practice follow them, in a trailing van, as they drive from the jailhouse to the home of the Ahankhah family on a small motorcycle (Figure 21-3). The first moment is shattering. When Sabzian encounters Makhmalbaf outside the jail, he breaks down in tears and embraces his idol, whom he imper- sonated. But then, as Kiarostami tells it, Makhmalbaf dominated the conversation and it veered into ter- ritory that dissipated the intensity and honesty of Sabzian's moment. Kiarostami felt that his climac- tic scene was ruined and with it his entire film. This was not a scene that could possibly be reshot, and he felt that he had lost the only possible ending for his movie. Kiarostami says that he went four sleep- less nights wondering how he could salvage his film. Then the solution came to him: creative postpro- duction sound mixing. Kiarostami created a staticky sound effect as if there was a bad microphone con- nection, which allowed him to simply cut the sound intermittently whenever he chose. He then inserted the off-screen voices of the ostensible "director" and the "sound man," from the trailing van, complain- ing about the bad connection and about the sound coming in an out. The contrived sound equipment malfunction allowed Kiarostami to preserve what Figure 21-3 A faux microphone malfunction, created in postproduction, allowed Kiarostami to salvage the emotional climax at the end of his film Close Up (1990). was best about the scene and eliminate what might have destroyed it. It was also a device completely in keeping with the vérité style of the movie. In the end the climax remains Sabzian's moment--utterly mov- ing. Close Up went on to establish Kiarostami as one of the foremost directors in the world. The film- maker himself has said that this is one of his favorite moments in all of his films. Why We ediT i: narraTive order and emphasis For my style, for my vision of cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it is the aspect. Orson Welles (From Cahiers du Cinéma, n°84, 1958) As an editor, you decide the meaning the spectator is going to get from the combina- tion of pictures and sounds you give. Film [is not] a film until it is edited and that's so important you almost don't see it. Mathilde Bonnefoy (editor, Run, Lola, Run) (From Edgecodes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing [2004; directed by A. Shuper]) I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of filmmaking. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit. Editing is the only unique aspect of filmmaking which does not resemble any other art form--a point so important it cannot be overstressed. (I know I've already stressed it!) It can make or break a film. Stanley Kubrick (From Stanley Kubrick Directs, by Alexander Walker) When I was a student, I remember taking an introductory editing class in which the teacher gave seven students exactly the same batch of found footage (which, in fact, consisted of outtakes from several films). Using the outtakes, each student created a film. It was a surprise to the students that the same footage yielded seven very different films; one was even a comedy, while another was edited as a mystery. Now, as a professor, having seen this phenomenon repeated many times, the range of films that can emerge from the very same footage comes as no surprise at all. The differences between all of those student films, made from the same raw materials, were the result of the conceptual plasticity and creative flexibility of the editing process.