“I just witnessed the brutal murder of a film”: How Editing and Scotty P. Didn’t Get Along.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had a cloud of positive buzz around it. I heard many things before watching, how funny it was, how well made it was, how flawlessly glorious the film interpreted the graphic novels.
I disagreed wholeheartedly.
I found the stylization to be amusing, chaotic and, most of all, corny. Various techniques used, like the stylization of one scene to make it sound like an episode of Seinfeld and the battle sequences, were over used. Whereas they would have been successful if used for only half of the time, they overused each and every technique. This made each fun little accessory into an unnecessary addition to the remarkably slow paced film.
Paul Machliss and and Jonathan Amos, the minds behind the kitschy and outrageous editing style in the film, didn’t have many famous films under the belt before taking on this huge project. Perhaps their lack of experience is what contributed to the ill-timed effects, in terms of duration.
Whereas the weakness of the film were overused techniques, edit transitions were the strengths. The highlight of the film was the minute attention to detail scene in the transition between scenes at the beginning. On more than one occasion, a person would walk across screen and a wipe would follow them. This resulted in a very interesting effect.
Most surprising was the initial success of the techniques. For the first 30 minutes, I was enthralled. Then, nothing new happened. Within the opening, Amos and Machliss shattered the glass ceiling, but when you shock and awe within the first, opening minutes, you walk a tight rope. If you shatter expectations in the beginning, they must continue to be exceeded. Instead, the edit built up a momentum, and instead of accelerating and decelerating with the pacing and emotionality of the film, it kept the same general feeling.
Overall, however intriguing the general style was, the editors were unsuccessful in continuing the momentum established within the first section of the film. There was no editing payoff.
Although the audience considers the director to be chief storyteller, that award would have to go to the editor, responsible for taking whatever available and cutting it together to actually tell the story. In a visual medium, the visual storytellers, the editors, have the ultimate power to make or break a film.
In Scotty P.’s case, the editors made the film with the extremely exciting transitions and stylized effects. Then, they savagely beat those effects to death and killed the film in cold blood. I witnessed murder.
