Film Editing

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Film Editing
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• Welles For my vision of the cinema, editing is
  not one aspect. It is the only aspect.

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3 key three aspects of editing

• technique (cutting and splicing)
• craft (considering the shot in itself and in
  relation to other shots)
• art (how to arrange everything to create an
  impression)

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What is editing?

• To EDIT is to select, arrange, add, and delete
  things from a document.

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• Film editing is a 2-phase process
• Selecting and arranging the available film into
  the final visual form
• Mixing of the soundtracks into the master
  soundtrack and then matching the soundtrack with
  the visual images.

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What the editor does

• Works for the director shaping many hours of
  raw film into a few hours of finished movie.

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• The editor must create
• Spatial relationships between shots
• Temporal relationships between shots flashback,
  flash-forward, ellipsis
• Montage (Fr. editing) is a condensed series of
  images that shows us a series of events
• Duration and rhythm - the length of time you look
  at a shot the tempo of the film (leisurely or
  fast?). The tempo of edits can be
  increased/decreased to speed up or slow down a
  viewers perception of time.

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Major Approaches to Editing Continuity and
Discontinuity
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An editors arrangement of a series of shots can
create or disrupt continuity
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Continuity

• in editing makes the shot appear naturalistic,
  its elements connected (continuous), the graphic,
  spatial, and temporal relationships maintained
  from shot to shot.
• It IS verisimilar.

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Discontinuity

• in editing, in contrast, seems jumpy and
  disconnected (discontinuity, which calls
  attention to itself).
• It is NOT verisimilar.

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Continuity-creating shots

• Master shot - orients the viewer, sets the scene
  may be shot from different angles establishes
  the scene
• Screen direction/180 rule/axis of action- the
  direction in which a figure moves on the screen.
  The 180-degree rule or axis of action - a
  hypothetical line that keeps the action on a
  single side of the camera.
• Shot/reverse shot - Reverse-angle shots are
  permitted as long as everything is kept
  continuous.

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Continuity shots match cuts

• Match cuts - shots intended to make us equate or
  continue ideas. Shots with matching action,
  subject, graphic content, or eye contact between
  characters
• Match-on-action cut - the continuation of a
  characters movement through space without
  actually showing us everything that happens
• Graphic match cut - the shape, form, or texture
  of an object is repeated in two different cuts
• Eyeline Match Cut - joining shot A, a POV shot of
  a person looking off-camera, to shot B, a reverse
  shot of the person who is the object of the gaze.

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Discontinuous Shots I

• Point-of-view editing - camera moves from
  characters POV to the object of the POV.Jump
  Cut - creates an instantaneous advance in the
  action, creating ellipsis

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Discontinuous Shots II

• Fade-in, fade-out - from blank/black screen to or
  from image
• Dissolve - long-acting double-exposure in which
  one image slowly dissolves into another.
• Wipe Iris Shot Freeze-Frame Split Screen

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Discontinuous Shots III

• Parallel cutting - intercalating two lines of
  action that occur at different times in different
  places.Cross-cutting - intercalating two lines
  of action that occur simultaneously in different
  places.Intercutting - intercalating multiple
  actions so that they look like a single scene.