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Editing On Films Is Now Being Done On Computers
Like any modern professional, Naomi Geraghty took her laptop with her when she went on a business trip in January. The machine got a lot of use -- but not just for email.
1月份出差時，娜奧米•杰拉蒂(Naomi Geraghty)帶上了她的筆記本電腦──跟時下所有專業人員一樣。她的電腦有很多用途，不僅僅是收發電子郵件。
Ms. Geraghty is a film editor and was spending 10 days at the Irish coastal home of Terry George, director of 'Reservation Road,' starring Joaquin Phoenix, which opened across the U.S. last week. Mr. George couldn't travel for the editing, so Ms. Geraghty loaded a copy of Avid editing software on her Apple PowerBook and went to him.
杰拉蒂是一名電影剪輯師，這次出差的目的地是《救贖之路》(Reservation Road)一片的導演特里•喬治(Terry George)在愛爾蘭的海濱別墅，時間為10天。由于喬治沒辦法遠行，杰拉蒂只好帶著已經安裝了Avid編輯軟件的蘋果PowerBook來找他。這部影片最近在全美上映，華金•費尼克斯(Joaquin Phoenix)在里面扮演角色。
Most people have a mental image of film editors hunched in the dark over editing consoles with lengths of film pinned to the wall behind them. These days, they sit at computers, moving scenes around as easily as paragraphs in a word processor.
提到電影剪輯師，大多數人對他們的印象是：貓在某個昏暗角落的操作臺旁，長長的膠片釘在身后的墻上。如今的剪輯師卻是坐在電腦桌前，他們在屏幕上移動畫面就像用文字處理軟件挪動段落那么輕松。
Video files are so demanding, editing computers used to cost tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars. But as Ms. Geraghty's tale suggests, even relatively low-end personal computers, laptops included, are now so powerful that Hollywood pros have joined student filmmakers and indies in taking advantage of them.
由于視頻文件對電腦配置的要求很高，用來剪輯的電腦過去動輒幾萬甚至幾十萬美元一臺。而現在，即使相對低端的個人電腦，包括筆記本，都已經非常強大。于是，好萊塢的電影專業人士紛紛加入學生制片人和獨立制片人的行列，用起個人電腦──杰拉蒂就是一個典型例子。
It's one more example -- along with music recording and graphic design -- of the way cheap computers are blurring the distinction between professional and amateur tools. Not that just having software makes you good at something, as a quick trip around the Web makes clear.
這個趨勢再次說明廉價電腦正在淡化專業工具和業余工具之間的界限，這一點在音樂錄制和圖形設計領域已經得到體現。但只要在網路上轉一轉就會發現，僅僅有了軟件還不足以成為高手。
Ms. Geraghty says that while she enjoys the comfort of her regular editing studio, a notebook is not without its charms. 'I could look out over a fishing harbor,' she says. 'It was the best view I've ever had from a cutting room.'
杰拉蒂說，雖然在常規剪輯工作室里感覺很舒適，但使用筆記本工作也別有一番情趣。“從窗戶望出去，漁港美景近在眼前，這是過去我在剪輯室內從未享受過的，”她說。
Like 'Reservation Road,' the typical Hollywood feature film these days is an analog-digital hybrid. Reels of film might be developed at a lab such as Technicolor, but then $1.5 million scanners digitize them and put them on a $100 generic USB hard drive. From there, it's on to the editors.
如今，一般的好萊塢故事片都是以模擬－數字混合方式制作的，《救贖之路》就是其中之一。一卷卷膠片在Technicolor這樣的工作室沖洗出來之后，掃描儀（售價高達150萬美元）會對其進行數字化，保存在100美元的普通USB硬碟上，然后才進入剪輯環節。
Editing on computers is so much easier than editing physical film that it's how nearly all movies are now cut. USC's film school once had 50 editing consoles; now it has only two. Indeed, editing may have become too easy. 'You can easily recut your movie 10 times a day,' says Matt Furie, who teaches editing at USC. 'Some students go off the deep end and cut, cut, cut. We tell them they need to discipline themselves to push away from the desk, drop the mouse and just think.'
剪輯數字影片比剪輯膠片要簡單得多，如今差不多所有電影都是用電腦剪輯的。USC電影學校原來有50臺剪輯工作臺，現在已經縮減為兩臺了。的確，剪輯可能變得太容易了。“你一天甚至能剪輯10次，”在USC教授剪輯的馬特•富里(Matt Furie)說。“有些學生大刀闊斧地剪、剪、剪，我們總是提醒他們要控制自己，暫時離開桌子，放下鼠標，什么都不做，靜靜地思考。”
Like others, Mr. Furie suggests that one of the reasons there are so many rapid-fire cuts in today's movies is that editing software has made them so simple to do.
正如很多專業人士指出的那樣，富里表示，目前出現大量剪輯粗糙的影片的原因正是在于編輯軟件使得剪輯工作變得異常輕松。
