Chapter 8 – Looking at Movies
What Is Editing?
Editing, the basic creative force of cinema, is the
process by which the editor combines and coordinates
individual shots into a cinematic whole. Orson
Welles said, "For my vision of the cinema, editing is
not simply one aspect. It is the aspect.'"
The technique (or method) is the actual
joining together of two shots- often called cutting
or splicing because, prior to the era of digital editing
software, the editor had to first cut (or splice)
each shot from its respective roll of film before gluing
or taping all the shots together. The craft (skill)
is the ability to join shots and produce a meaning
that does not exist in either one of them individually.
The art of editing, Dancyger declares, "occurs
when the combination of two or more shots takes
meaning to the next level- excitement, insight,
shock, or the epiphany of discovery.'"
The basic building block of film editing is the
shot (as defined in Chapter 6), and its most fundamental
tool is the cut. Each shot has two explicit
values: the first value is determined by what is
within the shot itself; the second value is determined
by how the shot is situated in relation to
other shots. The first value is largely the responsibility
of the director, cinematographer, production
designer, and other collaborators who determine
what is captured on film. The second value is the
product of editing.
The tendency of viewers to interpret shots in
relation to surrounding shots is the most fundamental
assumption behind all film editing. Editing
takes advantage of this psychological tendency in
order to accomplish various effects:



to help tell a story,
to provoke an idea or a feeling,
or to call attention to itself as an element of
cinematic form.
No matter how straightforward a movie may seem,
you can be sure that (with very rare exceptions) the
editor had to make difficult decisions about which
shots to use and how to use them.
The Film Editor
The person primarily responsible fo r such decisions
is the film editor." The bulk of the film editor's
work occurs after the director and collaborators
have shot all of the movie's foo tage. In many major
film productions, however, the editor's responsibilities
as a collaborator begin much earlier in the
process.
A typical Hollywood movie made in the 1940s and
1950s runs approximately 1 to 1'1. hours long and is
composed of about 1,000 shots; today's movies typically
run between 2 and 3 hours, but because they consist of
approximately 2,000 to 3,000 shots, they have a faster
tempo than earlier films had. That factor
alone increases the editor's work of selecting and
arranging the footage. It is not uncommon for the
ratio between unused and used footage in a Hollywood
production to be as high as 20 to 1, meaning
that for every "1" minute you see on the screen,
20 minutes of footage has been discarded. Perhaps the
best-known extreme example is Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now (1979). Working for two years, Walter
Murch and his editorial team eventually shaped 235
hours of footage into a (mostly) coherent movie that
runs 2 hours 33
minutes (resulting in a ratio of unused to used footage of
just under 100 to I).
Clearly, the creative power of the editor comes
close to that of the director.
Consider, the challenges faced by David Tedeschi, the
editor of Martin Scorsese's Shine Q Light (2008), which
documents two Rolling Stones concerts in New York.
Robert Richardson, the director of photography,
supervised eighteen
camera operators and dozens of camera assistants and
lighting technicians. The editor was faced with selecting
and arranging the thousands of feet of live footage that,
in the finished movie, is intercut with archival footage
of the group's career.
The Editor's Responsibilities
The editor is responsible for constructing the overall
form of the movie and helping the production
team realize its collective artistic vision by selecting,
manipulating, and assembling its constituent
visual and aural parts. Specifically, the editor is
responsible for managing the following aspects of
the final film:
> spatial relationships between shots
> temporal relationships between shots
> the overall rhythm of the film
Spatial Relationships between Shots One
of the most powerful effects of film editing is the
creation of a sense of space in the mind of the
viewer. When we are watching any single shot from
a film, our sense of the overall space of the scene is
necessarily limited by the height, width, and depth
of the film frame during that shot. But as other
shots are placed in close proximity to that original
shot, our sense of the overall space in which the
characters are moving shifts and expands. The
juxtaposition of shots within a scene can cause us to
have a fairly complex sense of that overall space
(something like a mental map) even if no single
shot discloses it).
Countless films- especially historical dramas and
science-fiction films- rely heavily on the power of
editing to fool us into perceiving their worlds as vast
and complete even as we are shown only tiny fractions
of the implied space. Because our brains effortlessly
make spatial generalizations from limited visual
information, George Lucas was not required, for
example, to build an entire to-scale model of the
Millennium Falcon to convince us that the characters in
Star Wars are flying (and moving around within) a vast
spaceship.
Instead, a series of cleverly composed shots
filmed on carefully designed (and relatively small)
sets could, when edited together, create the illusion
of a massive, fully functioning spacecraft.
The placement of one shot of a person's reaction
(perhaps a look of concerned shock) after a shot of an
action by another person (falling down a flight of stairs)
immediately creates in our minds the thought that
the two people are occupying the same space, that
the person in the first shot is visible to the person
in the second shot, and that the emotional response
of the person in the second shot is a reaction to
what has happened to the person in the first shot.
The central discovery of Lev Kuleshov, the Soviet film
theorist was that these two shots need not have
any actual relationship at all to one another for this
effect to take place in a viewer's mind. The effect of
perceiving such spatial relationships even when we
are given minimal visual information or when we
are presented with shots filmed at entirely different
times and places is sometimes called the
Kuleshov effect.
Editing Techniques That Maintain Continuity
In addition to the fundamental building blocks- the
master shot and maintaining screen direction with
the 180-degree system- various editing techniques
are used to ensure that graphic, spatial, and temporal
relations are maintained from shot to shot.
Shot/Reverse Shot A shot/reverse shot, one of the most
common and familiar of all editing patterns, is a
technique in which the camera (and editor) switches
between shots of different characters, usually in a
conversation or other interaction. When used in
continuity editing, the shots are typically framed over
each character's shoulder to preserve screen direction.
Thus, in the first shot the camera is behind character A,
is looking right, and records what character B says to A;
in the second shot, the camera is behind character B,
who is looking left, and records that character's
response.
Match Cuts Match cuts- those in which shot
A and shot B are matched in action, subject,
graphic content, or two characters' eye contact help
create a sense of continuity between the two
shots.
Match-on-Action Cut A match-on-action cut
shows us the continuation of a character's or
object's motion through space without actually
showing us the entire action. It is a fairly routine
editorial technique for economizing a movie's
presentation of movement. Of course, the matchonaction cut has both expressive and practical uses.
In David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962; editor:
Anne V. Coates), there is an elliptical match cut
that both wows us and moves the story forward.
Indeed, it's a match cut on a match. T. E. Lawrence
(Peter O'Toole) receives a charge to make a perilous
journey from Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains), a
British officer in Cairo; as he does so, he lights Dryden's
cigarette, holds the match up and watches the
flame burn closer and closer to his fingers (he
enjoys such pain), responds to Dryden's skepticism
about the assignment by saying, "No, Dryden, it's going
to be fun," and blows out the match. The editor
uses a match cut to the rising of the sun above
the desert horizon. It's one of the great pieces of
editing in film history, about which film critic
Anthony Lane writes: "It was a moment that
Steven Spielberg saw at the age of fifteen, and
which, he says, ignited his determination to make
films. If you don't get this cut, if you think it's
cheesy or showy or over the top, and if something
inside you doesn't flare up and burn at the spectacle
that Lean has conjured, then you might as well
give up the movies.'"
Graphic Match Cut In a graphic match cut,
the similarity between shots A and B is in the shape
and form of what we see. In this type of cut, the
shape, color, or texture of objects matches across
the edit, providing continuity. The prologue of
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; editor:
Ray Lovejoy) contains a memorable example of
a graphic match cut in which the action continues
seamlessly from one shot to the next: a cut that
erases millions of years, from a bone weapon of the
Stone Age to an orbiting craft of the Space Age.
The weapon and the spacecraft match not only in
their tubular shapes but also in their rotations.
Graphic matches often exploit basic shapes squares,
circles, triangles- and provide a strong
visual sense of design and order. For example, at
the end of the shower murder sequence in Psycho
(1960; editor: George Tomasini), Hitchcock matches
two circular shapes: the eye of Marion Crane (Janet
Leigh), tears streaming down, with the round
shower drain, blood and water washing down- a
metaphorical visualization of Marion's life ebbing
away.
Eye-fine Match Cut The eye-line match cut
joins shot A, a point-of-view shot of a person looking
offscreen in one direction, and shot B, the
person or object that is the object of that gaze.
Other Transitions between Shots
The Jump Cut The jump cut presents an
instantaneous advance in the action- a sudden,
perhaps illogical, often disorienting ellipsis between
two shots caused by the absence of a portion of the
film that would have provided continuity. Because
such a jump in time can occur either on purpose
or because the filmmakers have failed to follow
continuity
principles, this type of cut has sometimes
been regarded more as an error than as an expressive
technique of shooting and editing.
In one of the first major films of the French New
Wave- Breathless (1960; editors: Cecile Decugis
and Lila Herman)-Jean-Luc Godard employs the
jump cut deliberately and effectively to create the
movie's syncopated rhythm.
Fade The fade-in and fade-out are transitional
devices that allow a scene to open or close slowly.
In a fade-in, a shot appears out of a black screen
and grows gradually brighter; in a fade-ou t, a shot
grows rapidly darker until the screen turns black
for a moment. Traditionally, such fades have suggested
a break in time, place, or action.
Dissolve Also called a lap dissolve, the dissolve
is a transitional device in which shot B, superimposed,
gradually appears over shot A and begins to
replace it midway through the process. Like the
fades described in the preceding section, the dissolve
is essentially a transitional cut, primarily one
that shows the passing of time or implies a connection
or relationship between what we see in shot A
and shot B. But it is different from a fade in that the
process occurs simultaneously on the screen,
whereas a black screen separates the two parts of
the fade. Fast dissolves can imply a rapid change of
time or a dramatic contrast between the two parts
of the dissolve. Slow dissolves can mean a gradual
change of time or a less dramatic contrast.
Wipe Like the dissolve and the fade, the wipe is
a transitional device- often indicating a change of
time, place, or location- in which shot B wipes
across shot A vertically, horizontally, or diagonally
to replace it. A line between the two shots suggests
something like a windshield wiper. A soft-edge wipe
is indicated by a blurry line; a hard-edge wipe, by a
sharp line. A jagged line suggests a more violent
transition.
Although the device reminds us of early eras in
filmmaking, directors continue to use it. In fact,
some directors use it to call to mind these earlier
eras. In Star Wars (1977; editors: Richard Chew,
Paul Hirsch, and Marcia Lucas), for example,
George Lucas refers to old-time science-fiction
serials that inspired him by using a right-to-Ieft
horizontal wipe as a transition between the scene
in which Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) meets Ben
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) and a scene on
Darth Vader's (David Prowse) battle station.
Parallel Editing Parallel editing is the cutting
together of two or more lines of action that occur
simultaneously at different locations or that occur
at different times. Although the terms parallel editing,
crosscutting, and intercutting are often used
interchangeably, you should understand the differences
among them. Parallel editing is generally
understood to mean two or more actions happening
at the same time in different places, as in the
"Baptism and Murder" scene in Francis Ford Coppola's
The Godfather
Crosscutting refers to editing that cuts between
two or more actions occurring at the same time,
and usually in the same place.
Iris Shot In the iris shot, everything is blacked
out except for what is seen through a keyhole,
telescope, crack in the wall, or binoculars, depending
on the actual shape of the iris or the point of view
with which the viewer is expected to identify.
Sometimes, of course, the point of view is that of
the director, who wants to call our attention to this
heightened way of seeing.
In The Night of the Hunter (1955; editor: Robert Golden),
Charles Laughton uses the iris-out both for its own sake
and perhaps as homage to Griffith and Lillian Gish, who
plays a main character in the movie and was a frequent
star of Griffith's films.
Freeze-Frame The freeze-frame (also called
stop-frame or hold-frame) is a still image within a
movie, created by repetitive printing in the laboratory
of the same frame so that it can be seen
without movement for whatever length of time the
filmmaker desires. It stops time and functions
somewhat like an exclamation point in a sentence,
halting our perception of movement to call attention
to an image.
Split Screen The split screen, which has been
in mainstream use since Phillips Smalley and Lois
Weber's Suspense (1913), produces an effect that is
similar to parallel editing in its ability to tell two or
more stories at the same cinematic time, whether
or not they are actually happening at the same time
or even in the same place. Among its most familiar
uses is to portray both participants in a telephone
conversation simultaneously on the screen. Unlike
parallel editing, however, which cuts back and forth
between shots for contrast, the split screen can tell
multiple stories within the same frame.
Guiding questions:
What is editing?
What are 3 key functions of editing?
How many shots do today’s movies contain compared to those made in the 1930’s and 1940’s. What
about films made by the Lumiere Brothers?
In Apocalypse Now, how many hours of footage did the editor, Walter Murch have to deal with?
Do you agree with the statement – “the creative power of the editor comes close to that of the director.
How many cameras did Martin Scorcese use for the Rolling Stones film – Shine a Light?
Which 3 key aspects of final film is the editor responsible for managing?
What is a flashback?
What is a flash forward? Give two film examples.
Define ellipsis
What is montage?
How does an editor control the rhythm of a sequence?
What is the purpose of continuity editing?
What is a mater shot/cover shot?
What is the 180 degree rule ?
What is meant by shot/reverse shot ?
What are match cuts and what are the different types of match cut?
Explain parallel editing and cross cutting
What is a jump cut?
Make sure you understand the following types of edit and how each might be used in a film: Also make
sure you know how to use them in FCP:

Cut

Fade in and fade out

Dissolve

Wipe

Iris shot

Freeze Frame

Split screen