A NEW generation of electronic editing is edging its way into movie-making. A combination of video recorders and computers, the new systems do not change what audiences see. But behind the screens, they are altering how a handful of movies and an armload of television shows are made.
Film makers are greeting the technology with a discordant chorus of praise, skepticism and caveats. Some hail it as the start of a technological revolution that will rival the impact of word processing on publishing. Others worriedly cite high price tags, technological ''bugs'' and the shaky financial status of some manufacturers. But almost all agree that the new systems can save hours of time and, in the case of television, thousands of dollars from post-production budgets.
''There is no question that the majority of films will one day be cut electronically.'' said Glorianna Davenport, lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory.
“But until more people use them, the cost of these systems will stay high. And at this point, they are still hugely complicated.''
The most widely used systems are EditDroid, from the Droid Works in San Rafael, Calif., a unit of Lucasfilm Ltd., owned by filmmaker George Lucas; Ediflex, from Cinedco, in Burbank, Calif., and Montage, from The Montage Group, in Keene, N.H. They cost about $150,000 and rent for about $2,500 a week. Droid says it has sold 15 units; Montage, 32. Cinedco, which only rents Ediflex - currently, 25 of them - claims consistent profits. Droid and Montage say revenues have not kept up with costs.
This mini-industry is up against a 40-year editing tradition, the Moviola. Looking like a cross between a sewing machine and a home movie projector, the Moviola, made by the J&R; Film Company in Hollywood, sells for about $11,000, rents for about $65 a week and is the industry standard. It is a standard, say most in industry, that will be hard to displace.
''Sometimes new things that are so valuable are still slow to catch on because they are frightening,'' said actor Alan Alda, who used a Montage to edit ''Sweet Liberty,'' which he wrote and directed. ''I vacillate between being absolutely certain this is the future, and hoping so.''
Two other recent movies -''Power,'' directed by Sidney Lumet, and ''Patriot,'' directed by Frank Harris - were also edited electronically. And the systems are in use on ''Making Mr. Right,'' directed by Susan Seidelman, and ''Full Metal Jacket,'' directed by Stanley Kubrick.
The deepest inroads are being made in television, where skyrocketing costs and static network revenues have producers looking at the systems' cost-cutting potential. Electronic editors are used on 15 percent of this season's prime-time shows -most of which are shot on film for better resolution. The list includes ''Dallas'' and ''The Twilight Zone.''
''The '87-88 season will be the major breakthrough,'' predicted Emory Cohen, president of Pacific Video, a Hollywood editing facility. FILM editing is, to a large degree, a cumbersome trial-and-error process. Movies are not shot from beginning to end, but location by location, camera angle by camera angle, producing hours of short clips that average only 90 seconds.
A working film print, made up of the combined clips, is then repeatedly cut and spliced until an editor and director are satisfied. Making a splice takes about a minute. Finding the right footage can, and often does, take a half-hour, if the material is part of the tangle of film on the editing floor.
In the new electronic editing systems, the work print is made on either videotape or a laser disk and logged, frame by frame, on to a computer. The computer controls several videotape or laser-disk recorders, all loaded with versions of a scene. The Montage uses 17 videotape recorders.
Any movie moment can be found and altered almost instantly by typing in computer commands that activate the playback machines. The system can display different segments from different recorders to show a smooth rendition of a scene - enabling editors to try out many versions before making a decision. When a choice is made, it is stored in the computer. At the end of the process, the system produces a printout of frame numbers, a list of changes to be made.
For feature films, the final changes - along with finishing touches such as dissolves and opening credits -must still be made manually on the film negative. But in the case of television, where programs ultimately wind up on videotape, a floppy disk loaded with computer commands will copy the changes onto broadcast quality tape, allowing finishing touches to be made on tape, too.
This saves thousands of dollars -$15,000 per hour-long episode alone for putting in dissolves and opening titles. The hefty cost cut, as well as the saving of about one-third of an editor's time, is in large part responsible for the new technology's popularity among budget-strapped television producers. ''It's something all production companies are eventually going to have to try,'' said Chuck Silvers, vice president of post-production at Lorimar-Telepictures.
Some TV producers who depend on distribution profits - such as Joseph Dervin Jr., vice president of Aaron Spelling Productions, creator of ''Dynasty'' - are avoiding the systems because they cannot take advantage of the saving involved in putting finishing touches on tape. They finish their work on film to satisfy European buyers who demand film copies.
But other companies say their buyers will accept videotape. Lorimar uses the Ediflex on almost all of its programming, including ''Dallas.'' Paramount Pictures uses the Montage for ''MacGyver.'' Viacom uses the EditDroid on ''Matlock'' and the Ediflex on ''The Return of Perry Mason.'' CBS's ''Twilight Zone'' uses the EditDroid and an in-house system developed by CBS and Sony. COST-CUTTING is less important in movie-making circles that work with multimillion- dollar budgets. Directors and editors of feature films who use it are attracted by the new systems' potential for enhancing their finished products by allowing more time for editing.
Others are not as convinced.
''There is to a certain extent the attitude, 'I'm making this $5 million movie, I don't want to risk my film on a new technology,' '' said William F. Justus, an industry consultant who has worked for Droid Works.
''I knew I was a guinea pig,'' said Andrew Mondshein, who was the first to edit a movie (''Power'') with one of the new machines, a Montage.
Mr. Mondshein is now using the Montage to edit ''Making Mr. Right.'' In his editing room in midtown Manhattan, he held up one of the innovations spawned by his earlier experience with the Montage - a black wand with a red button on top.
“They developed this for me,'' he said. The wand, linked directly to the system, is used to mark cuts precisely. ''Before this, the Montage wasn't frame-accurate; it took the computer a few milliseconds to register a command. That threw things 1 to 10 frames off.''
Most manufacturers agree that the perfect system does not yet exist. And like Montage, they use working editing rooms as their unofficial development labs. Because of its exposure in the editing rooms, ''the EditDroid doesn't really infuriate anybody anymore,'' said Kenneth M. Yas, product manager at Droid Works. ''On its best behavior, it leaves editors agog. But studios have to be comfortable in the knowledge that the device works all the time. We're not there yet.''
The EditDroid has a unique marketing problem. George Lucas has yet to use the system on one of his own films.
A company spokesman says Mr. Lucas plans to. ''Everyone is saying, 'When George uses it, I'll know he has the tool he wanted.' '' said Deborah D. Harter, an industry consultant and former Droid Works employee. ''He should have launched it with one of his own movies.''
Ironically, it was the misconception that Mr. Lucas had used the Droid that led Rick Westover, a film editor, to use it on ''Patriot.''
''I saw a demonstration with footage from 'The Return of the Jedi' and assumed,'' he said.
“When I realized I was the pioneer, that's when paranoia set deep in my heart. I haven't been that paranoid since I was a hippie in the 60's.'' But his electronic work was ''frame perfect,'' he said, and cut his editing time by weeks.
Others in Hollywood seem to have been willing to jump into the new technology with both feet, aware that it was largely untested. When producer Martin Bregman read about the Montage, he immediately phoned Mr. Alda. Intrigued, they arranged for a demonstration. ''When I saw it, I rubbed my hands with glee,'' said Mr. Alda. ''You can look at a scene 10 different ways and play them back all in a row. It's amazing how fast you can pick out which is best.''
Mr. Alda and editor Michael Economou edited ''Sweet Liberty'' for 10 hours a day last fall in a small house in Water Mill, L.I. ''We would be fixed on the video screens and our hands would be flying on the dials and buttons. Sometimes they would have to pull me away because my pasta water was boiling out.''
According to Mr. Alda, ''We wouldn't have been able to experiment the way we did if we were working the old- fashioned way. If I made the same experiments, I would literally still be editing.'' He added: ''If I sing the Montage's praises, it is out of the selfish desire to have it available for my next movie - I don't want the company to go out of business.''
MONTAGE already went out of business once. Founded in 1984 with $4.5 million invested by the Prudential Insurance Corporation and $5 million from Interscope Investments, it was liquidated by Interscope last spring. But Harvey Ray, then a Montage executive, and Simon Haberman, an investor, purchased the assets at auction for $700,000. Mr. Ray and a few volunteers maintained skeletal operations and even managed to sell three systems. Now, pared to 9 employees from 45, Montage is ''actually in the black some months,'' said Mr. Ray.
The ultimate survival of all the manufacturers may depend on their ability to convince film makers that the systems are merely modern Moviolas. Some editors, apprehensive, have turned down work rather than edit electronically, according to the Motion Picture and Video Tape Editors Guild in Los Angeles.
''Some writers still write books by spreading out papers all over their living room floor; they believe the physical component is important to the process,'' said Andrew B. Lippman an associate professor at M.I.T.'s Media Lab.
''It just doesn't feel like editing,'' said Art Repola, post-production director at Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg's company.
''You want to hold the film up to the light, look at the image, feel the perforations going through the sprocket. That's how we've always made films.''
Despite such resistance, even Moviola's marketer, J&R; Film, expects ''to end up sharing the market with the new electronic systems,'' according to Jim Reichow, executive vice president. And some TV producers who initially spurned the systems say they may soon reconsider.
''Next year the equipment may be marketed more cheaply,'' said Mr. Dervin of Aaron Spelling. ''With escalating costs, there is no doubt in my mind that this is all going to make sense pretty quickly.''
ADDING SOUND TO THE PICTURE
Today's electronic picture-editing systems are a second attempt at the technology. Now these new systems are sparking innovation in sound-editing.
The current picture-editors came out of a failed attempt by CMX, a company once owned by CBS and Memorex. The CMX 600 was patented in 1973 and worked much like the new generation of editors. But the system - which showed black and white images only - was far too imperfect to challenge Hollywood's resistance to change.
Its makers, however, went on to create the simpler computer-driven equipment used to edit television shows that are shot chronologically on tape. And the system's creator, Adrian B. Ettlinger, is now senior vice president at Cinedco, which makes Ediflex, one of the latest systems.
It is another of the manufacturers, Droid Works, that is developing a new sound editor, SoundDroid. New England Digital in White River Junction, Vt., has developed the Synclavier.
Sound editing is more complex than film editing - and so is creating equipment for it. Sound is not recorded when film is shot. Even up to 80 percent of dialogue is generated later on sound stages. And a scene in a feature film can contain a hundred elements - dialogue, music, footsteps, the far-off chirping of birds. With current methods, each of these is recorded on magnetic-coated film and loaded on separate playback machines -dubbers. With some elements mixed ahead of time, about 30 dubbers can run at once.
''If a door slam occurs at frame 57,002 in a movie, there is blank film on the dubber up to that point; then 'Clang' - then back to blank film,'' said William Justus, an industry consultant. ''If the door slams a second too late, the editor has to run up and down the bank of dubbers, find the slam and adjust the track by x-number of sprockets.''
Once synchronized, sound is added to film. The new devices - both SoundDroid, which is in the prototype stage, and Synclavier - use a computer-run system that records sound digitally. When a sound comes too soon or too late, it is synchronized at a keyboard. Ultimately, the systems should offer huge savings in labor, time and materials. Both devices can also generate sound and store libraries of sound effects.
But the systems need work. They cannot yet handle enough sound for a feature film. And the savings they offer may not be enough. Kenneth M. Yas, product manager at Droid Works says a model that could handle a big film would be somewhat cheaper than a room full of dubbers. But said Jeff E. Taylor, a Droid engineer, ''the major sound studios, which can afford the new technology, are already set up and have paid for the old.''
The record industry has adopted the Synclavier. So have a dozen television-editing houses, which use it to generate, not edit, sound. Mr. Justus predicts that newer generations of equipment will be better-suited for film. Already, a cheaper, faster audio chip with more memory capacity has been announced by Motorola.
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