Viewing page 1 of 7

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:00:00]
–Which was to be performed by a different worker or group of workers.

[00:00:06]
I argue that the phenomenon of woman cutters and assemblers has to do with the nature of their work - cutting and assembling with such that women can hold these jobs without upsetting the patriarchal system.

[00:00:17]
This work involves skills associated with domestic labor, it hid the accomplishments of the worker, and it placed the worker in a subordinate position.

[00:00:26]
Cutting and assembling involves skills associated with domestic labor which is traditionally performed by females.

[00:00:32]
Roseland, Baxadell, et al. point out that "much of the creative work that women do is an extension of their family work: sewing, cleaning, supporting, restoring, caring."

[00:00:43]
Cutting and assembling, like sewing, are detail work involving attaching things together and requiring much patience.

[00:00:50]
Ruth recalled that "cutting negative filled my eye, having to match the action was very tedious work."

[00:00:56]
"Close ups of Lillian Gish in Orphans of the Storm would go on for miles and they'd be very similar."

[00:01:01]
{laughter}

[00:01:07]
[[something?]]family industries during the transition to capitalism, processing raw materials and finishing the end product were women's tasks.

[00:01:15]
In the cutting rooms of the film industry, women continued this traditional separation of labor rules by sex, finishing and polishing the director's work.

[00:01:23]
Cutters were to proofread the films, watching for unintentional inconsistencies and details, for example, in dress.

[00:01:30]
This is from a book by Anita Loos and John Emerson. Starting the hero downstairs in light shoes, and letting him arrive at the bottom in steps.

[00:01:38]
Cutters cleaned up every story. Their job was to create a coherent hall out of thousands of feet of film. Most feature films were 5 to 7 reels in length, one reel consisting of approximately 1,000 feet.

[00:01:50]
A cost-efficiency study of the motion-picture industry in 1916, recommended women to the amount of footage shot to twice the anticipated length of the finished film, but acknowledged that workers have been known to shoot up to 6 times as much film as the length of the edited negative.

[00:02:07]
Other sources report that directors exposed anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 feet of raw film, for a 5-7 reel film, and up to 200,000 feet for a 10 reel.

[00:02:19]
Refining 20 to 200 reels of film down to 5 to 10 reels was no easy task, and shooting practices in the silent period did not make it any easier.

[00:02:29]
Most scenes were shot with only one or two cameras; only scenes in especially expensive productions, or in large and spectacular sets might be photographed from many angles.

[00:02:40]
For example, at the Chaplain Studios three cameras were used for every scene.

[00:02:45]
Cecil B. DeMille had four cameras photographing the attack on a fortress in his 'Joan the Woman', 1917.

[00:02:51]
The lack of variety in camera angles and distances from the subject - long, medium, or close-up shots - made it difficult for cutters to create coherent, exciting films.

[00:03:01]
In addition to "matching scenes, inserting close-ups, flashes, and titles, creating suspense, covering up plot inconsistencies, bad acting, and the absence of necessary shots. Cutters had to avoid offending the star, the director, or the author."

[00:03:15]
[Laughter]

[00:03:20]
Directors might have favorite shots, actors might appear in only certain scenes, and writers might object to changes in plot or emphasis.

[00:03:27]
Cleaning up and finishing, being tactful with others, and patient with involved detail work, Cutters could use their homemaking skills in survival.

[00:03:36]
For Patriarchy to survive women's efforts were to remain invisible.

[00:03:40]
"Many of the services that women provide, unlike products are not readily apparent to the public or to themselves".

[00:03:47]
The cutting in Hollywood narrative films, the finishing of a product, is also the definition and intention-invisible.

[00:03:56]
"The purpose of editing was to cover its traces".

[00:04:00]
Despite the skill and creativity involved in cutting, Bells Bohr and Still Bear, most conspicuously the names of male directors and producers.

[00:04:07]
Cutters or editors' names appearing if at all, in small print along with the technicians.

[00:04:13]
Editor Ralph Rosenbloom who began his career in the 1940s feels that this happens because acknowledging the cutters or editors' contribution would, "cut too close to the heart of the director's importance".

[00:04:24]
Rosenbloom describes the personality of the career editor as, "one of modest ambition, and little urge personal credit".

[00:04:32]
I guess you have to take into account that he's an editor himself, so you know take it with a grain of salt.

[00:04:39]
Um whether or not the women cutters of the silent feature film period wanted personal credit, they did not receive it.

[00:04:45]
Elizabeth Pickett, after writing and directing her own short, too-real film "King of the Turf", in Kentucky; was permitted to edit and title John Fords Kentucky Pride 1925, which he based on her film.

[00:04:58]
Contemporary filmmaker Shirley Clark notes that "women have been editors for years, they have also allowed women to write films so the original idea is a women's as well as the finished product, but she gets no equal credit".

[00:05:10]
The subordinate nature of the cutting job made this position permissible for women.

[00:05:14]
Rosenbloom explains that women working as cutters did not threaten Patriarchal relations-

[00:05:19]
This is what he says

[00:05:20]
-trained from childhood to think of themselves as assistants rather than as originators they found in editing a safe outlet for their genius, and directors found in them the ideal combinations of aptitude and submission.

[00:05:34]
In the earliest years of the feature film directors cut their own films until Clarance grabs a book written in 1915, Director Morrice Turner had been cutting his own film-

[00:05:44]
-articles about studios in 1915 and 1960 mention divisions set aside "for the exclusive use of the directors when cutting down the productions".

[00:05:54]
By 1917 and 1918 directors were supervising cutting.

[00:05:58]
Screenwriter Peter Mill wrote in 1922, " while cutting and editing are not exactly a part of a director's duties he exercises a certain amount of supervision over the process".

[00:06:09]
These directors were nearly all men, a list of 346 directors of silent films includes the names of only 8 women.

[00:06:17]
Women could be cutters because they were subordinate to male directors thereby fitting into the patriarchal societal order.

[00:06:23]
The ultimate illustration of this is the relationship of Josephine Lovett and John Robertson.

[00:06:28]
At work she wrote and cut the films he directed, at home, they were husband and wife. Associated with domestic labor, an inconspicuous and subordinate position, cutting was a low-status job.

[00:06:42]
When in the Soviet Union in 1922, Esther Shub began editing and timeline foreign in pre-revolution and Russian films "she brought intelligence, taste, and a sense of social responsibility into this generally despised employment".

[00:06:58]
Here in the United States in 1922 the Andrews recommended assembling and cutting as ways of, "breaking into the movies" he went on to say, "once inside the studio as a worker, in any capacity, there's no telling what the result maybe if you are really qualified to do other and more important work".

[00:07:17]
Cutting was a dead-end job, a way for industry to exploit the skills and ideas of creative women without upsetting the patriarchy.

[00:07:23]
In Hartman's analysis of capitalism and patriarchy, she concludes that a patriarchal system existed prior to the development of capitalism.

[00:07:32]
Before capitalism, men control women's labor in the family production unit.

[00:07:37]
With the emergence of capitalism, men had difficulty maintaining their control over the labor power of women.

[00:07:43]
"A direct personal system of control is translated into an indirect impersonal system of control, mediated by society-wide institutions".

[00:07:52]
One means of maintaining the dominant position of men without hindering the growth of capitalism was to segregate women from men in the labor market.

[00:08:00]
Assigning women to only certain aspects of the divided labor process.

[00:08:05]
The jobs women could hold were "lower paid, considered less skilled, and often involved less exercised of authority or control".

[00:08:14]
I was unable to find any evidence pertaining to cutters' wages, but the rest of the statement does indeed describe the position of a silent feature film cutter.

[00:08:22]
Cutting, although it involved dexterity and creative judgment was considered a low-status job.

[00:08:27]
Given little or no credit for their efforts, cutters performed work similar to domestic labor under the supervision of males.

[00:08:33]
The woman film cutter fit safely into her patriarchal society.

[00:08:37]
[Clapping]

[00:08:44]
-Democratic Party

[00:08:48]
I reluctantly become a contributor.

[00:08:52]
Exercise one of the French lesson.

[00:08:55]
[[French]] Je vais parler, Je suis apprends à parler, Je viens de parler

[00:09:03]
I- I am going to speak, I am learning to speak, I am able to speak.

[00:09:10]
Umm

[00:09:11]
L’heure: il est une heure, il est trois heures, il est neuf heures, il est midi ou minuit, il est une heure et quart, il est trois heures et demi, il est neuf heures moins le quart, il est midi vingt ou minuit vingt.

Transcription Notes:
Needs French transcription. ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-07-31 23:16:27