Film Studies

Editing: The Invisible Art

Why Editing is important• Editors cut films to a ratio of 24

frames per second. Quentin Tarantino explains the importance of this

• “For a writer, it’s a word. For a composer or a musician, it’s a note. For an editor and a filmmaker, it’s the frames. The one frame off, or two frames added, or two frames less… it’s the difference between a sour note and a sweet note. It’s the difference between clunky clumsy crap and orgasmic rhythm.”

• Anecdote – Making of Jaws• Example – Lord of the Rings - Beacon

Manipulation• The main aim of editing is to manipulate

an audience to feel what the director wants you to feel.

• A film comes alive with the editing process as directors can tweak their footage to create certain responses from an audience

• In this procedure sound is also another important aspect of the post-production process

• Editing can also radically alter the reading of a film

• Example:• Charlie Brooker – Screenwipe• Mary Poppins recut• The Dark Knight/Toy Story trailer• Breaking Bad/Frozen• Harry Potter/BrokeBack Mountain

Dawn of Cinema• At the end of the 19th century, during cinema’s

infancy, films had no cuts or editing whatsoever. The camera ran for as long as the film reel was. During screening, the 1-minute footage was shown in its entirety to a paying audience. Soon, viewers got bored. The static image was tedious.

• Editing was the solution. Edgar S. Porter, an early film pioneer, experimented heavily on the two main principles of editing: ellipsis and cross cutting. Both techniques contributed for his achievements with the movies Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903) and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1906).

• Example – Life of an American Fireman

Cross Cutting/Parallel Editing• The cutting between two points of

action in one scene to establish the opposing characters or armies

• Parallel editing (cross cutting) is also the technique of alternating two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. If the scenes are simultaneous, they occasionally culminate in a single place, where the relevant parties confront each other.

• Example:• Lord of the Rings – Ride of the Rohan• Silence of the Lambs

Ellipsis• Ellipsis concerns the omission of a section of the story

that is either obvious enough for the public to fill in or concealed for a narrative purpose, such as suspense or mystery.

• Alfred Hitchcock famously said: “What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.”

• Filmmaking is the representation of life but with the boring parts eliminated. With the goal to enlighten, move, and excite a demanding crowd, films must be stripped from all the “dull bits” that could annoy the spectator.

• Screenwriters, with the enter-late-leave-early maxim, are always pressed to pen scripts that don’t include minutia. If a scene opens with a college professor writing on the whiteboard, the audience will assume that earlier that the day, the instructor got up, had breakfast, brushed his teeth, drove to work, parked the car, greeted his colleagues, went to his classroom, greeted the students, rummaged through his briefcase, and grabbed a marker… There is no need to show the obvious and the tedious.

• Example: Hot Fuzz

Kuleshov Experiment

• In the dawn of the 20th century, cinema was a new art form, comprising many techniques that hadn’t been developed. And the ones that had had not been studied to the needed extension. The elements of editing were among them. Filmmakers knew that you could cut and splice the film strip, but they didn’t thoroughly comprehend the purposes of doing so.

• Lev Kuleshov, a Soviet filmmaker, was among the first to dissect the effects of juxtaposition. Through his experiments and research, Kuleshov discovered that depending on how shots are assembled the audience will attach a specific meaning or emotion to it.

• In his experiment, Kuleshov cut an actor with shots of three different subjects: a hot plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, and a pretty woman lying in a couch. The footage of the actor was the same expressionless gaze. Yet the audience raved his performance, saying first he looked hungry, then sad, then lustful.

Kuleshov Continued• The Film Historian's Insight• In a 1964 interview for the show

Telescope, Alfred Hitchcock called this technique “pure cinematics – the assembly of film.” Hitchcock stated that if a close-up of a man smiling is cut with a shot of a woman playing with a baby, the man is portrayed as “kindly” and “sympathetic.” By the same token, if the same shot of the smiling man is cut with a girl in a bikini, the man is portrayed as “dirty.”

• Examples:• Kuleshov’s video• Hitchcock’s talk about Kuleshov

Soviet Montage• After Kuleshov had demonstrated

what could be done with editing, other Russian directors were quick to illustrate the power of editing. The most famous of these was a person called Sergei Eisenstein.

• He argued that "Montage is conflict" where new ideas, emerge from the collision of the images in the montage sequence and furthermore these new emerging ideas are not innate in any of the images of the edited sequence.

• Example – Battleship Potemkin

Montage (Shortening of Time)• Montage is a technique in film editing in

which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. It is usually used to suggest the passage of time, a training session (Rocky) or something that complicated that needs to built

• At the dawn of cinema montage was used by Russian film-makers to create symbolic meanings through the rapid collision of footage placed together

• Example:• Team America• Rocky 3 montage training scene

Continuity Editing• The invisible art of mainstream

Hollywood film-making which allows the viewer to believe in the world crated by the director through the rules of cause and effect

• Editing is disguised (match cuts etc) so the audience are not taken out of the action

• The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots.

Match Cut/Match on Action• A match cut often involves a

graphic match, a smooth transition between scenes and an element of metaphorical (or at least meaningful) comparison between elements in both shots.

• In other words when one cut matches the next, so for example if one person begins to turn around in one cut they will continue to turn around in the next, there is a ‘match on action’

• Example: 2001: A Space Odyssey• The Birds (walking scene)

Eyeline Match• An eyeline match is based on the premise

that the audience will want to see what the character on-screen is seeing. The eyeline match begins with a character looking at something off-screen, followed by a cut to the object or person at which he is looking. For example, a man is looking off-screen to his left, and then the film cuts to a television that he is watching

• Eyeline match also refers to the practice of setting off-camera eyelines for single shots of characters within a scene such that, when these shots are cut together, each of the characters appear to be looking at the correct character, without any confusion.

• Example – Generic example

180 Degree Rule• In filmmaking, the 180-degree rule is a basic

guideline regarding the on-screen relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called crossing the line or jumping the line

• Examples: • Generic explanation• Gollum/Smeogal (Breaking the 180 degree rule)

Shot Reverse Shot

• An editing technique where one character is looking at another character and vice versa (usually done with repeated close ups of their faces)

• Editing technique used to convey conflict or conversation between two or more characters

• Example- Dawn of the Dead

Cut• The simple action of cutting

between scenes/characters/place/time etc in a film

• A single cut can transport an audience from history to the future or simply from one face to another face

• The building blocks of movies• Example:• Reminder of 2001:A Space

Odyssey

Jump Cut• A cut whereby the smoothness of

a match cut is lost, usually made by the action of a cut which is more than 30 degrees away from the preceding cut. The character may appear to jump and is used to show frantic action, a person packing to leave quickly for instance (only one example)

• Example – A Bout De Souffe

Insert• An insert is a shot of part of a scene as

filmed from a different angle and/or focal length from the long shot/establishing shot. Inserts cover action already covered in this long shot, but emphasize a different aspect of that action due to the different framing

• The term "insert" is often confined to views of objects—and body parts, other than the head. Thus: Mid-shot of the gunfighter, INSERT of his hand quivering above the holster, TWO SHOT of his friends watching anxiously, INSERT of the clock ticking.

• Example: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Cutaway• a cutaway shot is the interruption of a

continuously filmed action by inserting a view of something else. The cutaway shot does not necessarily contribute any dramatic content of its own, but is used to help the editor assemble a longer sequence.

• For example, if the main shot is of a man walking down an alley, possible cutaways may include a shot of a cat on a nearby bin or a shot of a person watching from a window overhead.

• The most common use of cutaway shots in dramatic films are to adjust the pace of the main action, to conceal the deletion of some unwanted part of the main shot, or to allow the joining of parts of two versions of that shot

• Cutaways are also used often in older horror films in place of special effects. For example, a shot of a zombie getting its head cut off may, for instance, start with a view of an axe being swung through the air, followed by a close-up of the actor swinging it, then followed by a cut back to the now severed head.

• Example: Use of cutaways in filmmaking (2 examples)

Dissolve• In a dissolve a first image

gradually dissolves and is replaced by another which fades in over it. This type of transition, which is known also as a soft transition (as opposed to the cut), suggests a longer passage of time than a cut.

• It is important to note that when the images dissolve into each other there is no fade to black

• Example: Psycho shower sequence

• Generic example

Fade• A Fade is very similar to a dissolve but

when one image replaces the other image there is a fade to black before the second image appears.

• A fade is used by a director to make the audience think about what is happening in a film, it is like a punctuation mark, or it is used to mark a passage of time (similar to a paragraph)

Fade in/Fade out• Fade ins and fade outs are the second most

common type of transition. Fade outs happen when the picture is gradually replaced by black screen or any other solid colour. Traditionally, fade outs have been used to conclude movies. Fade ins are the opposite: a solid colour gradually gives way to picture, commonly used in the beginning of movies.

• Despite being the second most used transition, fades are seldom adopted by editors. An average feature film will have only a couple of fades, if that. Fades are used sparingly because they imply the end of a major story segment.

• Example: Random funny students example• Opening to the film Apocalypto

Iris• An old-fashioned transition hardly

employed nowadays is the iris, when the film fades to a circular shape in the middle of the screen where the image of the film can still be seen in the circle

• Example:• James Bond opening scenes

Long take• A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a

film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished through the use of a dolly or Steadicam.

• Long takes of a sequence filmed in one shot without any editing are rare in films

• Examples: • Goodfellas• Children of Men

Rapid editing• Fast cuts, similar to the rapid fire of a

machine gun which usually forms the basis of an action scene within a film, to create excitement for the viewer and to maintain momentum for the action scene.

• Example:• Transformers

Slow Motion• The slowing down of the speed of a film to

highlight a particular moment in film.• This moment could be a dramatic death or

pivotal scene. In the film Dredd, slow motion is used to suggest the power of a drug that certain characters use within the narrative (the drug replicates the feeling that life is moving at 1% of its normal speed)

• Examples:• Lord of the Rings – Cave troll• Jackass 3 – Rocky punch• Alan Rickman – throwing water• Reservoir Dogs - opening

Wipe• A wipe is a type of film transition

where one shot replaces another by travelling from one side of the frame to another in a motion which is similar to a windscreen wiper (left to right horizontal motion or right to left motion)

• Rarely used today but was a very common transition back at the dawn of cinema.

• Example: Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith wipes

Expansion of Time• Moments in film that are extended to

allow the viewer to feel the suspense of that said moment of the film.

• A bomb ticking down can be artificially extended for example to allow the audience to feel the peril that the hero must be feeling

• Example:• XXX – Bridge Jump

Post-Production• Post-production is, in fact, many different

processes grouped under one name. These typically include:

• Video editing the picture of a film• Writing, (re)recording, and editing the

soundtrack.• Adding visual special effects - mainly computer-

generated imagery (CGI) and digital copy from which release prints will be made (although this may be made obsolete by digital-cinema technologies).

• Sound design, Sound effects, ADR, Foley and Music, culminating in a process known as sound re-recording or mixing with professional audio equipment.

• Transfer of Colour motion picture film to Video or DPX and color grading (correction) in a color suite.

Post-Production• The post-production phase of creating a film

takes longer than the actual shooting of the film, and can take several months to complete because it includes the complete editing, colour correction and the addition of music and sound. The process of editing a movie is also seen as the second directing because through the post production it is possible to change the intention of the movie. Furthermore through the use of colour correcting tools and the addition of music and sound, the atmosphere of the movie can be heavily influenced. For instance a blue-tinted movie is associated with a cold atmosphere and the choice of music and sound increases the effect of the shown scenes to the audience.