Editing & Sound
Relating Images & Listening to the Cinema
Film Editing
• Editing: the process linking different images or shots
(continuous images, regardless of camera movement,
flowing between cuts).
• Editing may emulate, transcend, or disrupt ordinary
ways of seeing.
• Film editing juxtaposes images to tell a story or convey
ideas. Films convey perspectives by linking shots in
various relationships, guiding the viewer’s perception.
• Precursors: Magic Lantern, Chronophotography
• Photographs can be deliberately arranged to highlight
relationships between different images. Collages often
served a similar purpose.
• Early cinema often used stop motion photography to
simulate motion.
Early Cinema &
Continuity Editing
• Earliest films consisted of a single, continuous shot.
• Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• D. W. Griffith: Crosscutting/Parallel Editing
(alternating between two or more strands of
simultaneous action).
• Merging of Technique and Ideology (ex. Birth of a
Nation, 1915)
• “Classical Narrative Style” (1910s-1950/60s):
Privileges Narrative Continuity
1919-1929 Soviet
Montage
• Montage: an editing style emphasizing breaks
and contrasts between images joined by a cut.
• Intercutting: the interspersing of shots of
different images and lengths, spliced together.
• Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potempkin
(1925)
• Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera
(1929): Illustrates editing within the shot.
1930-1959:
The Studio Era
• Classical Hollywood Style: Continuity Editing;
goal of achieving an expansive sense of
realism.
• Dominant style of Hollywood & mainstream
storytelling, in which the film’s aesthetics
privilege the narrative.
• Prewar v. Postwar: Influence of Italian
Neorealism (fewer cuts, imagistic, new
storytelling structures).
1960-1989: Modern
Disjunctive Editing
• “New Hollywood”: incorporation of experimental film
& editing styles.
• Styles reflect temporal disjunctions, or
disconnections of the modern world using editing to
visibly disrupt continuity by creating ruptures in the
story, radically condensing or expanding time, or
confusing the relationships among past, present and
future.
• Influenced by Soviet Montage (1920s) & French New
Wave (1950s); Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960)
1990s-Present
• Nonlinear Digital Editing
• Individual takes can be organized and
accessed instantaneously, sound and
picture can be simultaneously
combined, and optical effects can be
visualized earlier in the editing
process.
The Elements of Editing: Cuts &
Transitions
• Cut: the break in the image that marks the physical connection
between two shots from two different pieces of film.
• Shock Cut: juxtaposes two images whose dramatic differences
creates a jarring visual effect.
• Fade-Outs: gradually darken and make one image disappear
(Fade-Ins do the opposite).
• Dissolve: two images are overlapped in the printing process to
briefly superimpose one shot over the next, which takes its
place: one image fades out as another fades in.
• Optical Effects: Iris In/Out (iris matte expands or contracts to
reveal or obscure the image), Wipes (joins two images by moving
a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line across the image to
replace it with a new image. These effects are achieved with an
Optical Printer.
Continuity Style
• Verisimilitude: the quality of having the appearance of truth; the
quality of fictional representations allowing viewers to accept a
story’s plausibility.
• Hollywood Continuity Style: The commercial U.S. film industry’s
dominant editing style, stressing spatial & temporal continuity.
This style constructs a logic & rhythm that mimic human
perception.
• Continuity Editing: a system that uses cuts and other transitions
to establish verisimilitude and to tell stories efficiently, requiring
minimal effort for viewers. Each shot has a continuous
relationship to the next shot.
• 180 degree space in which action will develop.
• Approximate the experience of real time by following human
actions.
• Invisible Editing: minimizing the perception of breaks between
shots.
Continuity Style Continued
• Establishing Shot: an initial long shot that establishes the
setting and orients the viewer in space to a clear view of the
action.
• Two-Shot: standard practice in filming a conversation which
presents a relatively close shot of two characters in a
recognizable spatial orientation and context that initiates a
conversation.
• Reestablishing Shots: restore a seemingly ‘objective’ view,
making the action perfectly clear to viewers.
• Insert: a brief shot, often a close-up, inserted into a scene. These
may support or disrupt continuity. An insert that disrupts
continuity is called a Non-Diegetic Insert.
• Ubiquitous Perspective & Spatial Continuity: perception of cuts
is minimized because the angle from which objects/characters
are filmed remains consistent, and because viewers expect
certain editing conventions to represent particular types of
scenes.
180 Degree & 30 Degree Rules
• 180 Degree Rule: the primary rule of continuity
editing that consistently films a space as if bisected by
an imaginary line called the “axis of action.”
• Taking all shots on the same side of the axis ensures
that the relative positions of people and objects, as
well as their gazes and movements, remain consistent
(do not seem reversed).
• 30 Degree Rule: preserves spatial unity by stipulating
that each shot must be taken from a position greater
than 30 degrees from that of the last shot. Changes in
perspective under 30 degrees are achieved instead
through camera rotation or movement. This
technique lessens the perception of cutting.
Shot/Reverse Shot, Eyeline
Match & POV
• Shot/Reverse Shot Sequence: a pattern often used during
conversations, beginning with a shot of one character taken
from an angle at one end of the axis of action, cutting to a shot of
a second character from the ‘reverse’ angle at the other end of
the axis, and proceeds back and forth.
• Eyeline Match: a rule implying spatial contiguity, or the
impression that consecutively depicted spaces are adjacent
ones. If a character looks offscreen to the left, the next shot will
show the person/object the person is looking at in a screen
position that matches the character’s gaze. This technique gives
the impression of continuous & consistent offscreen space.
• POV: editing techniques juxtapose shots and use
cinematography to suggest a character’s optical point of view, as
if the camera were seeing from one character’s perspective.
• Reaction Shot: depicts a character’s response to something
that viewers have just been shown.
Editing & Temporality: Chronology
• Film Chronology: how editing organizes a film’s narrative time.
• Flashback/Flashforward: follows one or more images of the
present with one or more from the past/future.
• Narrative Frequency & Duration
• Descriptive/Temporally Ambiguous Sequences
• Ellipsis: temporal abridgment; a cutting strategy within and
between scenes.
• Cutaway: when the film interrupts an action by “cutting away” to
another shot.
• Overlapping Editing: Repetition of an action in several cuts,
violating continuity.
• Pace: long/short takes; Sequence Shot: when an entire scene
plays out in one take; often with a long take.
Graphic, Movement, and Rhythmic Editing
• Montage in Hollywood: denotes thematically linked sequences or
sequences that show the passage of time with rapid cuts or other
devices.
• Graphic Editing: linking or defining a series of shots by formal
qualities like shapes, masses, colors, lines, and lighting patterns
within images.
• Graphic Match: when a dominant shape or line in one shot
provides a visual transition to a similar shape or line in the
next shot.
• Movement Editing: editing so that the direction and pace of
actions, gestures, and movements are linked with corresponding
and contrasting movements in one or more other shots.
• Match-on-Action: when the direction of an action is edited to
a shot depicting the continuation of that action.
• Rhythmic Editing: organization of editing according to different
paces and tempos determined by how quickly cuts are made,
sometimes to suggest mood or emotion.
Scene, Sequence,
Segmentation
• Scene: one or more shots that describe a continuous
space, time, and action.
• Sequence: any number of shots that are unified as a
coherent action, or as an identifiable motif, regardless
of changes in space and time.
• Narrative Segmentation: tracing the logic of a film’s
editing organization; the connections among
narrative units demonstrates how editing extends
from the juxtaposition of shots to structure a whole
film.
The Significance of Film Editing
• 1. Generates emotions and ideas through the construction of
patterns of seeing.
• 2. Moves beyond the confines of individual perception and its
temporal and spatial limitations.
• “Kuleshov Effect”: in the absence of an establishing shot, viewers
assume pairs of images to be linked in space and time.
• Analytical Editing: follows the logic of human interaction and
cuts the world the the measure of the body, centering on human
perspective. Used in Classical Hollywood and Continuity
Narratives.
• Disjunctive Editing: editing based on formal constructions and
oppositional relationships, rather than human perception. This
style is often called “visible editing.”
• to call attention to editing for aesthetic, conceptual,
ideological or psychological purposes.
• to disorient, disturb, or viscerally affect viewers.
Distanciation &
Alienation Effects
• Drawing attention to a film’s structure by using effects to
alienate viewers from its artistic and social aspects.
• Jump Cut: a disjunctive cut that interrupts one particular action
and creates discontinuities in the spatial or temporal
development of shots. Jean-Luc-Godard’s Breathless (1960).
• 1. The viewer notices how the action is depicted, rather than
simply taking in the action.
• 2. Effects encourage reflection on the process of viewing a film:
how can we assume that the action we are viewing is happening
now?
Montage
• Dialectical Montage: when two shots
linked dialectically become
synthesized into something greater, a
visual concept.
• Modernism: artistic and experimental
films (not Hollywood) have often used
disjunctive montage styles to imply
fragmentation of space and time
characteristic of artistic Modernism.
Early Film Sound
• Films combine visuals & sounds to create spectacles.
• Melodrama (stage music dramas), later Vaudeville
• Phonograph (Edison 1877)
• Sound Cylinders: provided a way of synchronizing
soundtracks with film images.
• “Silent” Cinema was often noisy, accompanied by
lecturers, organs, orchestras, and audiences.
1927-1930: Transition to
Synchronized Sound
• Influences: relationship to radio, vaudeville, theater, the Great
Depression.
• Expensive process to convert theaters so that “talkies” could be
screened by audiences.
• Warner Bros. - Vitaphone sound-on-disc system (1926)
• Releases The Jazz Singer (1927): the first feature film with
recorded sound or “talkie,” starring vaudevillian Al Jolson.
• Fox - Movietone records sound optically on film (1928)
• Western Electric adopts sound-on-film system more flexible than
Vitaphone.
• 1930s-1940s: Challenges and Innovations in Cinema
Sound
• Many film artists had difficulty adjusting to
“talkies” as they became the primary form of
Hollywood films.
• Film industries acquired national specificity with
language barriers.
• 1950s-Present: From Stereophonic to Digital Sound
• 1950s: Stereophonic; 1970s: Dolby & Surround
Sound; 1990s: Digital Sound
Elements of Film Sound:
Sound and Image
• Synchronous/Asynchronous Sound: synchronous sound has a
visible onscreen source, while asynchronous sound does not.
• Onscreen/Offscreen Sound: sounds that emanate from an object
onscreen or offscreen.
• Parallelism: occurs when the sound and image “say the same
thing.”
• Contrapuntal Sound: occurs when two different meanings are
implied by the image and sound.
• Diegetic/Non-Diegetic Sound: sound that occurs in the world of
the film is diegetic, while sounds that characters cannot hear are
non-diegetic.
• Source Music: Diegetic Music
• Voiceovers: Semi-Diegetic/Internal Diegetic
Sound Production
• Sound Recording: takes place simultaneously with the filming of a
scene, under the direction of a sound designer.
• Clapboard snapped to synchronize recorded sound with recorded
images; Boom: a microphone on a long pole, suspended directly above
the action.
• Direct Sound/Reflected Sound: sound captured directly from its
source is direct sound while reflected sound creates reverberations.
• Production Mixer: creates the final “mix” (master track to match the
final film) by combining different recordings/sources, adjusting their
relative volume & balance. The sound editing interacts with the image
track to create rhythmic relationships, establish connections between
sound and onscreen sources, and smooth or mark transitions.
• Sound Bridge: when a sound carries over a visual transition in a film.
• Spotting: determining when in a film’s sequence music and sound
effects should be added. Foley Artists can simulate and record sounds.
• Postsynchronous Sound: recorded after filming, then synchronized
with film. Looping is the process of re-recording actors’ voices onto the
soundtrack.
Voice, Music & Sound Effects: Voice
• Dialogue:
• Sound Perspective: the apparent distance of a sound source.
• Overlapping Dialogue: mixes characters’ speech
simultaneously.
• Voice-Off: a voice that can be seen to originate from an onscreen
speaker or a speaker who can be inferred to be present in the
scene but who is not currently visible.
• Voiceover: distinguished from “voice-off” because characters in
the film cannot hear a voiceover (non-diegetic). Voiceover is the
cornerstone of the documentary tradition.
• Talking Head(s): a style of voiceover that is authoritative,
anonymous (usually male) that explains and interprets film
images (derived from “talking heads” on-camera interviews
from documentary films).
• Synchronization: the visible coordination of the voice with the
body from which it is emanating, anchoring otherwise
autonomous sounds.
Music in Film
• The only element of cinema that is primarily non-diegetic.
• The musical score is often a crucial element generating our
affective, emotional responses to films.
• Music is nonrepresentational and can thus be more suggestive,
and thus can convey the irrational and emotive.
• Underscoring: background music.
• Cue: a piece of music composed for a particular place in the film.
• Narrative Cueing: how music tells us what’s happening in the
plot.
• Stingers: sounds that force us to notice the significance of
something onscreen.
• Prerecorded Music: often from pop music artists, often used as
commercial tie-ins with blockbuster films.
Sound Effects
• Offscreen sounds can create a sense of
space and time.
• Our acceptance of simulated
asynchronous sound is the result of
our impulse to perceive effects
realistically.
The Significance of Film Sound:
Authenticity & Experience
• Continuity Approach: describes a range of scoring,
sound recording, mixing and playback processes that
strive for the unification of meaning and experience
by subordinating sounds to the aims of the narrative.
This approach bolsters the film’s sense of
authenticity, visceral experience, and emotional
impact.
• Montage Approach: explores the concrete nature of
sounds and their potential independence of images
and each other, making us conscious of their violation
by calling attention to the actual sound recording
process or how sounds create emotional cues.
Sound Continuity
• Relationship between image and sound, and among separate
sounds is motivated by dramatic action or information.
• The sources of sounds (except for background music) are
identifiable.
• The connotations of musical accompaniment will be consistent
with images.
• The sound mix will emphasize what we should pay attention to.
• The sound mix will be smooth and will emphasize clarity.
Sound Montage
• Often derives practices in direct opposition to sound continuity.
• Calls attention to distinct, autonomous elements that make up a
film.
• Aims for non-naturalistic use of sound and its relationships to
images, and among sounds.
• Prioritizing sound makes us attend to the film’s structure and
aesthetic components.
• Stresses the fact that images and sounds communicate on two
different levels, calling attention to how each element
contributes differently.
Movements & Trends
• Early Cinema: Realism (presentation) & Experimental (text,
story)
• Hollywood: Classical Narrative Style (Prewar & Postwar)
• International Cinemas as Responses to Hollywood Narrative
Style: German Expressionism, Italian Neorealism, French New
Wave, Japanese Cinemas
• New Hollywood, Blockbusters & Indies
• Third Cinema: Cinema of the former “third world”
• During the Cold War, the U.S. and other Western, Capitalist
countries were known as the “First World,” Communist
nations were identified as the second world, and all other
nations were known as the “Third World.”
• “Third Cinema” refers to an international movement in
which art films take up issues of colonialism, postcolonialism, tradition & modernity, and national meaning/
representation. “What does it mean to be ________ ?”
Memories of Underdevelopment
& Cuban History
• Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez-Alea (1968) & Based on a novel by
Edmundo Desnoës called Inconsolable Memories.
• Spanish Rule until 1902 (Spain loses control of Cuba as a result
of the Spanish-American war).
• 1953-9 Cuban Revolution: Fulgencio Batista overthrown in
“26th of July Movement,” led by Fidel Castro.
• Bay of Pigs Invasion (April 1961): U.S. CIA launches a failed
invasion of Cuba by arming existing anti-Castro militant groups.
• Cuban Missile Crisis: (Oct. 1962): An international panic that
ensued when it was discovered that Soviets were supplying
medium-range ballistic missiles to Cuba. An agreement was
reached between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to remove the missiles.
• Memories of Underdevelopment: Sergio reflects on his past and
the history of Cuba, as an upper-class, Europeanized aspiring
writer living coping with the country’s socialist future. As his
family and friends flee to Miami, Sergio indulges in his dwindling
sense of privilege and cultural bias. [Hanna/Laura/Noemi/Elena]