Edititng

What is editing?

Editing is the activity of selecting the scenes to be shown and putting them together to create a film.

editing can be discussed in three different terms:

Order of shots – Continuity/Discontinuity

Transitions

Space, Time and Rhythm

The director needs to film enough shots for the editor to choose to edit together. However to give the editor good shots, they might work with the director to transform it into a masterpiece.

The editors job is to:

Select and reject footage filmed by the director

Organise the various shots filmed by the director into a coherent whole

Co-ordinate one shot with the following shot in order to produce the desired effect on the audience and to keep a narrative moving

Order of shots

The meaning of a sequence can change depending on the order the scene that are edited together.

Putting two shots together can suggest a connection or emphasise contrast.

Soviet montage theory

The kuleshov effect is a concept in film-making created by Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s. He put together a film showing the expression of an actor, edited together with a dead child, soup and a woman in a recliner.

continued by Sergei Eisenstein, the theory is an idea that placing together separate sections of a film could have an impact beyond the individual shots, such as: eye + water = crying, ear + door = listening, mouth + bird = singing.

Transitions

These are the processes of moving from one shot to another, most commonly used one is the cut, which is a straight cut to the next shot.

Fade

The previous shot fades into a black from the following shot emerges

Dissolve or Cross Fade

The previous shot merges into the following shot.

Wipe

A transition where the second shot is revealed over the first shot, horizontal, vertically or diagonally, sometimes shapes like a star or diamond.

Space, Time and Rhythm

Cinematic space is effectively where the movie takes place, a establishing shot. spatial relationships between characters and an object in that shot, and the space of the cinematic space.

Cinematic time is the time given sequence taken place on screen. the time can be extended to make a small moment feel longer, in action this would build suspension or shortened to move the plot along. a good example of this in Shaun of the dead, when they are getting ready in the morning it is only a few seconds long.

Rhythm is the pace of the scene. this could be dictated by music used in the back of a scene or music used in the scene. to build up tension the shots may cut from each other quite quickly were as in a more relaxed scene the shots would cut slower. 

Continuity

cutting shots that tell a story with narrative continuity. Helps the viewer make sense of action by implying spatial relationships and ensuring a smooth shot to shot. creates realism, edit is invisible so action appears real rather than constructed.

types of continuity editing are:

• Eye-line match - is a editing technique , it is based on the premise that an audience will want to see what the character is looking at.
• Shot reverse shot - is a technique where one character is shown looking at another character, which is off screen, then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. This is used usually during conversations.
• Establishing shot - in film is used to establish context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects, or the place in which the scene is taking place.
• Parallel editing - is the technique of alternating between two or more scenes that often are happening at different locations at the same time.
• Match cut - is a cut from one shot to another where the two shots are matched by the action or subject and subject matter.
• Jump cut - is which in two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly if at all.