First, I'd like to thank everyone for their kind and generous words in relation to Frames of Reference and give a special thanks to those who chose to link or embed it on their own blogs: Dennis, Jim, Larry, Brian, Bob, Hedwig, Alonzo, Jozef and fellow pseudonymous blogger Arbogast. I can only go by what technorati gives me, and they're infamously slow, so if I missed anyone I apologize. And now for a little background.
Watching the montage probably didn't give the viewer a good enough idea of just how anal I am when it comes to editing, and that's probably a good thing. I'm the kind of editor that will work for extended periods of time tweaking something that I know only I will notice. And yet I do it anyway. Of course I want someone to notice, starved for attention as I am, and with my blog I now have the luxury of pointing out those things to everyone. But don't worry, I'm not going to go through the whole movie. However, I will give you one example. At the 4:25 mark we cut from The Ruling Class to Singin' in the Rain. It's not a random cut. I tweaked and tweaked until I got it to the exact point it's at. You see, the split second before we cut to Singin' in the Rain Peter O'Toole kicks his right leg out and at that moment we cut to Gene Kelly completing the kick with his right leg. And it happens at the moment of a snare drum hit as well. Watch it again and you'll see it. I then go back to The Ruling Class because I wanted to frame Peter O'Toole's hilariously amateurish dancing with that of the accomplished Kelly and Astaire. The second cut from O'Toole to Astaire is more obvious: O'Toole does a laughable twirl in the air and Astaire does a masterful twirl with the coatrack. Both O'Toole frames connect to the Kelly/Astaire frame after them, but I suspected only the Astaire one would be noticed. If anyone did notice the Kelly connection before this let me know, it will make me very happy indeed. And if you didn't notice you'll never be able to watch it again now without seeing it. Every time I watch it I hear that snare as the kicks complete each other.
So that's one example of what was going through my mind when putting it together. The obvious purpose was to connect the clips but some connections might not be as apparent as others. Near 
the end of the video I use reaction shots to clips which is not done for the first two thirds. For instance, after the water torture scenes I show a Dennis Weaver reaction shot from Touch of Evil, as if he's watching the water torture, and is horrified. Soon after that, following the whipping scenes, I show a Cary Grant reaction shot as if he were witnessing Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner being whipped like horses by Spencer Tracy. If you want a comedic reaction shot to a barely disguised S&M sexual fantasy sequence from Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Cary Grant's your go-to guy.
Later comes possibly the most tenuous connection. I show Mordred with his lance from Excalibur followed by Christopher Walken with his cane from The Dead Zone smashing a vase. Because of Walken's upturned cape-like collar and the cane I saw him as a knight using his sword. A stretch, perhaps, but for the curious, that was the connection there. Then the man 
being flung against the wall was meant to follow and continue the momentum of the vase smash.
And finally, one shot in the movie references only the music. The opening shot from Army of Shadows is used in reference to the music itself, not to any other movie, as the music adopts the strains of an ominous march. Since "ominous march" is what I thought of hearing the music at that point, the Nazis marching in Paris seemed a perfect, if dark, fit.
As for the clips used almost all came from my DVD collection. There were about five or six that I loaded up in the Netflix queue for particular shots but everything else came from my homebase. I only used shots that worked for the movie so I was not then, nor now, concerned that I was not using Casablanca, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Third Man, Nosferatu and so on. 
I love them all but nothing jumped out at me from them that I wanted to use for this particular piece. It doesn't mean I couldn't have found something, but using the biggest movies wasn't my first concern. And then there are all the clips that I ripped from a DVD only to have them go unused in the end. A reaction shot from Ernest Borgnine in The Wild Bunch, Keith Carradine being shot on the bridge in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the merry-go-round of cars and buses at the end of Playtime to be used with the merry-go-round at the end of Strangers on a Train (I tried it, it just didn't work). In fact, there was another connection with Jaques Tati that I was going to use as well that didn't work. In Mon Oncle, near the end, he lights his pipe with a car lighter and then tosses it out the window, just like John Belushi in The Blues Brothers. It worked okay, but where I was with the movie at that point it just didn't fit the music.
And speaking of the music...
It's not all there. If you seek out Complex City after watching Frames of Reference (and I hope you do) you will notice it's a good minute and a half longer than what you hear in my movie. That's another thing about me as an editor: I believe less is more. If I ever do become a recognized film director and you see a DVD of mine labeled as "Director's Cut" it will most likely
mean that I have made the film shorter for the DVD release. I like films to leave you wanting more, not looking at your watch. Complex City is a great piece of music, but at over eight minutes it was simply too long for my purposes. At the 4:40 mark, when Dick Wesson of Destination Moon is opening the door with a smile on his face, a piano solo begins. It ends a minute or so later and then the horns take back over. Musically it works beautifully. Filmically, it brought the whole damn thing to a halt. So I cut it and patched the first section to the second section, sans piano solo. But I did start work on it before giving up. I even had a clip of Fredric March playing the organ from Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. In the end though, it worked too much against the rhythm of the movie.
And now for the list of movies used which is going to turn this into one long damn post. It was enough to type all these in, I don't have the energy to parenthetically list each director and year as well. Sorry. For movies that have more than one version, however, I have listed their year. I used 106 different movies for a total of 158 separate clips (if your number differs from mine it may come from the fact that I'm not counting when two or more clips from the same movie are used consecutively, like the Au Hasard Balthazar slaps or the succession of shots from The Day the Earth Caught Fire - to me, those count as a single clip because nothing separates them).
And so, without further ado, here are the movies used in order of their appearance in Frames of Reference:
1. Le Mépris (Contempt)
2. Walkabout
3. Black Narcissus
4. The Shining
5. The Trial
6. Weekend
7. Walkabout
8. The Pawnbroker
9. Bride of Frankenstein
10. Intolerance
11. Stroszek
12. The Edge of the World
13. La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast -1946)
14. Peeping Tom
15. La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast - 1946)
16. Alien
17. Altered States
18. The Black Stallion
19. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
20. The Wizard of Oz
21. The French Connection
22. The Exorcist
23. Jaws
24. Black Narcissus
25. Vertigo
26. Bridge on the River Kwai
27. Bad Day at Black Rock
28. The Devil and Daniel Webster
29. The Maltese Falcon
30. Lawrence of Arabia
31. The Spy Who Loved Me
32. The Wizard of Oz
33. Vertigo
34. Bridge on the River Kwai
35. Amadeus
36. Singin' in the Rain
37. The Band Wagon
38. 8 1/2
39. Bande à part (Band of Outsiders)
40. Body Heat
41. Local Hero
42. The Right Stuff
43. Touch of Evil
44. Body Heat
45. Bande à part (Band of Outsiders)
46. Dr. Strangelove
47. The Big Lebowski
48. 8 1/2
49. The Red Shoes
50. Don't Look Now
51. Hiroshima, Mon Amour
52. Citizen Kane
53. Gun Crazy
54. Out of the Past
55. Dracula (1931 American Version)
56. Metropolis
57. Black Narcissus
58. Dracula (1931 Spanish Version)
59. Mon Oncle
60. The Trial
61. Dead End
62. Walkabout
63. Medium Cool
64. The Pawnbroker
65. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
66. Black Narcissus
67. The Shining
68. Army of Shadows
69. The Lost World (1925)
70. Lawrence of Arabia
71. 2001: A Space Odyssey
72. The Day the Earth Caught Fire (5 consecutive clips)
73. The Invisible Man
74. Airplane
75. 8 1/2
76. Cutter's Way
77. Excalibur
78. Peter Pan (1924)
79. Royal Wedding
80. Peeping Tom
81. Down Argentine Way
82. Au Hasard Balthazar (2 consecutive clips)
83. The Ruling Class
84. Singin' in the Rain
85. The Ruling Class
86. Royal Wedding
87. Network
88. Bad Day at Black Rock
89. Medium Cool
90. Destination Moon
91. A Clockwork Orange
92. La Règle du jeu (Rules of the Game)
93. Out of the Past
94. Last Tango in Paris
95. Lost Horizon
96. Singin' in the Rain
97. Taxi Driver
98. Wizard of Oz
99. A Clockwork Orange
100. Double Indemnity
101. The Big Lebowski
102. Raiders of the Lost Ark
103. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
104. The Great Escape
105. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
106. The Great Escape
107. Topper
108. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
109. Touch of Evil
110. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc - 1928)
111. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (1931)
112. Dinner at Eight
113. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (1941)
114. Lost Horizon
115. North by Northwest
116. The Searchers
117. The Dead Zone
118. Some Like it Hot
119. Last Tango in Paris
120. The Trial
121. Bad Day at Black Rock
122. Raiders of the Lost Ark
123. Wild Strawberries
124. La Règle du jeu (Rules of the Game)
125. Out of the Past
126. A Christmas Story
127. Gun Crazy
128. Jaws
129. No Country for Old Men
130. Apocalypse Now
131. Forbidden Planet
132. Last Tango in Paris
133. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
134. The Twelve Chairs
135. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
136. The Bride of Frankenstein
137. A Clockwork Orange
138. The Battle of Algiers
139. Touch of Evil
140. Planet of the Apes
141. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (1941)
142. Arsenic and Old Lace
143. Dead End
144. North by Northwest
145. Topper
146. Witness for the Prosecution
147. Nashville
148. The Battle of Algiers
149. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc - 1928)
150. Excalibur
151. The Dead Zone
152. The Legend of Drunken Master
153. M.A.S.H
154. Au Hasard Balthazar
155. Witness
156. The Godfather, Part II
157. Gun Crazy
158. Contempt
