Figuring out Michael J. Duthie, his whole editing vibe, it’s not what you think. It’s not just about putting shots in order, not by a long shot. People talk about flashy cuts, but with him, it felt deeper, more about the bones of the story.
You know, I actually got into this whole Duthie deep-dive because I was in a real jam. I was working on this tiny little project, basically no budget, just me and a couple of friends trying to make something cool. We had all this footage, and I was supposed to be the one to stitch it all together. And man, it was just falling flat. Every cut felt wrong, every scene dragged. I was pulling my hair out, seriously.
So, what was the plan?
One night, I’m just flipping through old movies, trying to get some inspiration, anything. And I stumbled upon “Conan the Barbarian.” Hadn’t seen it in years. And it just grabbed me. Not just the story, but the way it was told. The rhythm. I looked up the editor – Michael J. Duthie. And I thought, okay, this guy, he gets it. I need to figure out what he was doing.
So, the next day, I decided this was my new mission. My big Duthie investigation. Here’s what I did:
- I got a decent copy of “Conan.” Watched it once, just to let it wash over me, no pressure.
- Then, I started watching it again, but this time, I was really looking. I had a notepad. I was trying to see why he’d stay on a shot, or why a sequence of really short shots worked so well.
- I’d pause it, rewind, watch bits over and over. I wasn’t using any fancy software, just my eyes and trying to feel the pace. I remember focusing a lot on how he built up to the action, not just the action itself.
- I even looked at some of his other stuff, like “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” to see if there were common threads. And there were, but also, each film felt like its own thing.
It wasn’t like I was trying to become a film scholar overnight. It was more like I was an apprentice, trying to learn from a master by just observing, really closely. Some of his choices seemed really bold, even a bit old-fashioned by today’s standards, but they always served the story, you know? It wasn’t just editing for editing’s sake.
And the thing is, after all that watching and note-taking, I didn’t magically discover some secret Duthie technique that I could just copy and paste into my own crappy footage. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, use a J-cut here and a long take there, and boom, instant classic!’ Nah, it wasn’t that simple.
But what it did do was change how I thought about editing. It made me realize it’s more than just technical skill. It’s about instinct, about feeling the rhythm of the story you’re trying to tell. It’s about being brave enough to hold a shot if it needs holding, or quicken the pace if the energy demands it. My little project? It didn’t suddenly win any awards, haha. But I approached the rest of the edit with a different mindset. I started trusting my gut a bit more, trying to find the pulse of each scene instead of just assembling shots by numbers. And that, I guess, was the real lesson from my Duthie obsession. Sometimes you just gotta go back and really look at how the pros did it, just to remind yourself what good storytelling feels like.