principles of editing

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Principles of Editing Post Production. Editing. SFX. Mechanical Distortions. Classical Cutting. Subjective Editing. Montage. Crosscutting. Graphic, Spacial and Temporal Continuity and Discontinuity. Video Production

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Accompanies a lecture in video production at Montana Tech.

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Page 1: Principles of Editing

Principles of EditingPost Production. Editing. SFX. Mechanical Distortions. Classical Cutting. Subjective Editing. Montage. Crosscutting. Graphic, Spacial and Temporal Continuity and Discontinuity.

Video Production

Page 2: Principles of Editing

Lola Rennt (Tom Tykwer, 1998)

Writing credits Tom Tykwer Genre: Drama / Thriller / Crime / Romance (more)Tagline: Jeden Tag, jede Sekunde triffst Du

eine Entscheidung, die Dein Leben verändern kann.

Plot Outline: Lola runs. To save her boyfriend's life.

Cast overview, first billed only: Franka Potente .... LolaMoritz Bleibtreu .... Manni Herbert Knaup .... VaterNina Petri .... Frau Hansen

From imdb

Page 3: Principles of Editing

Mechanical DistortionsMechanical Distortions

1. Animation: Each frame photographed separately at 24 fps.Watch for this in Run Lola Run (Lola Rentt)

2. Fast Motion: Events photographed at slower speed than 24fps or manipulated in post-production -- humourous effect.

3. Slow Motion: Events photographed at faster speed than 24fps or manipulated in post -- tragic/languid effect. Watch for this in Lola.

4. Reverse Motion

5. Freeze Frame.

Film Aesthetics -- “Movement” in Post Production. Giannetti pg. 171 - 179.

Page 4: Principles of Editing

Sequence Shots contain no editing.

Early cinema relied entirely on “long-take” shot.

“Long Take” is not the same as “long shot.” A “take” is one run of the camera that records a single shot.

Usually filmmakers use the long take selectively. One scene will rely heavily on editing, another will be a long take. This permits the director to associate certain aspects of narrative form with different stylistic options (usually doco).

Example: Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend and FROG.

Before we get into “EDITING” let’s review …

Duration of the Image -- Sequence Shot

Page 5: Principles of Editing

“Editing is an art.”

• The basic building block of editing is the “shot” and the fundamental tool is the “cut.”

• Editing, the basic creative force of film, is the process by which the editor combines and coordinates individual shots into a cinematic whole.

• “Art of rejection.” Not uncommon in Hollywood for ratio of unused to used footage to be as high as 20 to 1. Apocalypse Now was 100 to 1.

Page 6: Principles of Editing

REALISM CLASSICISM FORMALISM

FROGManufactured Landscapes

styles

Editing Styles

Sequence Shot(Long Take)

Up in the Air

Cutting toContinuity

The Birth of a Nation

ClassicalCutting

Battleship Potemkin

ThematicMontage

Un Chien Andalou

Abstract Cutting

Page 7: Principles of Editing

Continuity Editing

“Cutting to Continuity” tries to preserve the fluidity of an event without literally showing all of it.

For example, a 45-minute action might take ten seconds of screen time yet nothing essential is left out. “Unobtrusive condensation.”

Cause and effect relationships are clearly set forth.

Example: V for Vendetta

Page 8: Principles of Editing

Classical Editing -- DW Griffiths

Classical editing involves editing for dramatic intensity and emotional emphasis rather than purely physical reasons.

In Birth of a Nation, by carefully selecting and juxtaposing long, medium, and close shots, Griffiths constantly shifted the spectator’s point of view -- consolidating, connecting, contrasting, paralleling and so on.

The space and time continuum is radically altered “Thematic montage” that stress the association of ideas.

Also perfected the conventions of the chase making use of parallel editing-- alternation of shots of one scene with a different location.

Page 9: Principles of Editing

Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffiths, 1915)

AKA The KlansmenCredits Thomas F. Dixon Jr. (novel)Thomas F. Dixon Jr. (play) Genre: Drama / War (more) Tagline: The dawn of a new art! Plot Outline: The Civil War divides friends and

destroys families, but that's nothing compared to the anarchy in the black-ruled South after the war.

Cast overview, first billed only: Lillian Gish .... Elsie StonemanMae Marsh .... Flora CameronHenry B. Walthall .... Col. Ben CameronMiriam Cooper .... Margaret Cameron

From imdb

Page 10: Principles of Editing

Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

Page 11: Principles of Editing

Montage “to assemble” Soviet formalist filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was interested in

exploring general principles that could be applied to a variety of apparently different forms of creative activity.

He believed the function of artists is to capture a dynamic collision of opposites -- to incorporate dialectical conflicts not only in the subject matter of art but its techniques and forms.

He felt cinema was most comprehensive of the arts — incorporates visual conflicts of painting and photography, the kinetic conflicts of dance, the tonal conflicts of music, the verbal conflicts of language, and character and action conflicts of fiction and drama.

He placed special emphasis on the art of editing. Battleship Potemkin was conceived as an editing construction and it is most famous for “The Odessa Steps” scene.

Editing Styles -- Giannetti, Pages 184 - 186

Page 12: Principles of Editing

Un chien andalou (Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali, 1929)

Style: Avant Garde Formalism/SurrealismPlot Outline: Un Chien Andalou consists of seventeen

minutes of abstract, surreal images and is a startling example that almost any interpretation can be drawn from the juxtaposed image montage. Every scene is random and unconcerned with any other, but there are items which are present throughout the film. In some ways the repeated glimpses of these things in situations where they shouldn't be adds to the confused feel, enhanced by the off-putting and nonsensical time-markers deployed.

From imdb