film

ELEMENTS

6. EDITING
Editing is the process of trimming and piecing together lengths of film in order to make an artistically concise and complete motion picture. This is certainly the most obvious technique of film language. The terms editing, cutting, and montage are often applied interchangeably to the process. In montage, the emphasis is on the juxtaposition of ideas resulting from this process. Cutting stresses the physical work with the actual strips of film. Editing encompasses both.

This is the original editing machinean upright Moviola, or a flatbed machine. Film editing has since evolved from the process of a film editor physically cutting and taping together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on this machine with a viewer.

Steenbeck film editing machine rollers

Before the widespread use of non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film workprint. Today, most films are edited digitally and bypass the film positive workprint altogether. In the past, the use of a film positive (not the original negative) allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wished, without the risk of damaging the original.

How Editing Works

A single shotwhich is the length of film exposed at one time, without interruption, by one cameramakes a visual and aural record of some segment of the physical world

by effective editing, this record can be taken apart, restructured, and shaped into an imaginative world or a discourse about the world...

QuickTi and a ress r YUV420 c dec dec are needed t see t is picture.

The first editing stage is the Editors Cut. Sometimes referred to as the assembly edit or rough cut, it is normally the first pass of what the final film will be when it reaches picture lock. The film editor usually starts working while principal photography (shooting) starts. In the first stage of editing the film editor will usually work alone (save for his or her own team of assistant editors, associate or coeditors and/or visual effects and music editors). Likely, prior to cutting, the editor and director will have seen and/or discussed dailies (or the raw footage shot each day) as shooting progresses. Screening dailies gives the editor a ballpark idea of the directors intentions. Because it is the first pass, the editors cut might be somewhat longer than the final film. The editor continues to refine the cut while shooting continues, and often the entire editing process goes on for many months and sometimes more than a year, depending on the film.

When shooting is finished, the director can then turn his or her full attention to collaborating with the editor and further refining the cut of the film. This is called the Directors Cut. This is the time that is set aside where the film editors first cut is molded to fit the directors vision, and before the studio and/or producers are generally allowed to have input. (In the U.S., under Directors Guild of America [DGA] rules, directors receive a minimum of ten weeks after completion of principal photography to prepare their first cut.) While collaborating on what is referred to as the directors cut, the director and the editor go over the entire movie with a fine tooth comb: scenes and shots are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked. Often it is discovered that there are plot holes, missing shots or even missing segments which might require that new scenes be filmed. Because of this time working closely and collaboratinga period that is normally far longer, and far more intimately involved, than the entire production and filmingmost directors and editors form a unique artistic bond.

Often after the director has had his or her chance to oversee a cut, the subsequent cuts are supervised by one or more producers, who represent the production company and/or the movie studio. At times, the final cut of films produced by the major studios is the one that most closely represents what the studio wants from the film and not necessarily what the director wants. Because of this, there have been several conflicts in the past between the director and the studio, sometimes leading to the use of the Alan Smithee credit signifying disownership or the aforementioned directors cut re-issues in subsequent years after the original theatrical releases. Some directors are also the producers of their films, and, with the approval of the funding studio, have a much tighter grip on what makes the final cut than other directors. The most wellknown examples of director who lorded over all aspects of their films, with little studio intervention, and worked completely outside of the Hollywood system are Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen. On the other hand, Orson Welles is an example of a director constantly dogged by studio supervision and many times had films taken away from him. Independent directors who work outside of the studio system are usually more free to have a final cut; thus independent films often take more risks and have more creative rewards than studio films.

Styles of Film Editing

Continuity Editing This is the uninterrupted connection of the action from one shot to another to create a coherent visual story. Match cut is the technique used when the action is logically joined with other shots.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Styles of Film Editing

Discontinuity Editing This is the distortion of the smooth flow of the action from one shot to another. Jump cut is the technique used when the cut breaks the continuity of time by jumping forward from one part of an action to another.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Things One Should Know About Editing

1.
Fiction films contain on the average approximately 6 every 10 seconds. cuts, one

.
Editors strive to hide their work by cutting on action, so that the movement of a character's arm in one location flows into another such movement elsewhere, masking the change of shot.

3.
More important is the principle by which an editor anticipates the spectators line of inquiry. By releasing information just as the spectator needs it, the editor constructs a natural drama whose seams are invisible.

4.
Beyond rendering scenes in unobtrusive or striking ways, editing connects scenes into sequences and larger units. It serves as a system of punctuation.

5.
Editing permits highly dramatic effects that could never be staged in a single shot.

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the title characters are seen cornered by lawmen on a high cliff overlooking a river, into which they make an almost suicidal leap to their escape. Actually, the scenes involving the two leading actors on the cliff and those of the dives were shot weeks apart, and they involved different crews and even different rivers, yet the audience readily accepts the illusion created by the editing.

6.
Often a film editor is blamed for improper continuity. For example, cutting from a shot where the beer glass is empty to one where it is full. Continuity is, in fact, very nearly last on a film editors list of important things to maintain. Continuity is typically the business of the script supervisor and film director, who are together responsible for preserving continuity and preventing errors from take to take and shot to shot. Generally speaking, the editor utilizes the script supervisors notes during post-production to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot. However, to most editors what is more important than continuity is the editing of emotional and storytelling aspects of any given film something that is much more abstract and harder to judge

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: The Accordion Sequence

(a) a drawing room conversation between two people is introduced in an establishing (long) shot of the setting and the actors.

(b) The editor will cut to a full shot of the actors once they begin their dialogue, because their speech gives them prominence over the setting. To help viewers understand the nuances of the dialogue, the editor will move in for a medium shot, showing both characters from the waist up.

(c) alternating close-ups of each character (generally from over-theshoulder shots) to convey innuendos and reactions.

(d) back out of the sequence in the reverse order, going from close-up to medium shot, to full shot, and finally to long shot

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: The Shocking Juxtaposition

Shocking juxtapositions occur when an initially smooth progression is disrupted by a quick cut to a close-up, as in the Halloween cycle of horror films, the effect can be startling and frightening. In such cases the editor insists upon a strange or important connection in a scene.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: Basic Cut

Cut is the instant change of one shot to another achieved by joining the last frame of a filmstrip to the first frame of another filmstrip. It may or may not signify the change of time and place. A variation of cut is cut-away shot. It is a shot inserted into a scene to show a secondary event. This is also known as the insert shot.

Editing Technique: Fade in and Out

The screen is left dark for a moment. This is the gradual change from a black screen or a dark screen until a shot appears (for fade in), and the reverse (for fade out).

Editing Technique: Dissolve or Mix

The picture dissolves, or mixes, to a new scene, with one image showing on top of the other for a moment.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: Wipe

A line moves across the screen that wipes out the preceding image while introducing the next.

Editing Technique: Iris

There is a gradual reduction of the old image from the edges to a pinpoint size and then the expansion of the new one in the reverse way.

Editing Technique: Turnover

The entire screen seems to turn over, with the new image seeming to appear on what was the reverse side.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: Freeze Frame

The change from a moving action to a steady shot achieved by photographing the last frame of the moving action several times on a filmstrip.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: Superimposition

This is the simultaneous overlapping of two different visual images on the same filmstrip. It heightens related visual images.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Editing Technique: Multiple Images

This is the showing of several visual images on different parts of a frame at the same time. This is also called the split screen.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Other Creative Editing Techniques

Max Ophls connected the separate episodes of La Ronde (1950) by means of the musical leitmotiv of a hurdy-gurdy tune.

In Vivre sa vie (196 ), Jean-Luc Godard, one of the outstanding French New Wave directors of the late 1950s, introduced chapter headings marking the heroines step-by-step involvement in prostitution and, ultimately, her murder, as if it were a didactic 19th-century novel.

Alfred Hitchcock, probably the greatest director of suspense films, in his British film The Thirty-nine Steps (1935) cut from a woman's scream to the similar sound of a train whistle, an effect so dramatic that it was frequently imitated thereafter.

Montage
In film terminology, a montage (from the French for putting together or assembly) is a film editing technique. There are at least three senses of the term: In French film practice, montage has its literal French meaning and simply identifies a movies editor. In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, montage was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. In classical Hollywood cinema, a montage sequence is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion. This is the most common meaning among laymen.

QuickTi e and a YUV420 c dec dec press r are needed t see t is picture.

Like camera-work, editing is a function that is ordinarily hidden from the audience, but it is vital to the finished picture

It is the editors job to judge the length of each shot and to choose the exact moment to cut. The length of a shot may depend upon the amount of detail it contains, its scale, its dramatic impact, or its context in relation to the shots that precede and follow it. Though the audience is unconscious of these judgments, the impact of the finished film depends on how well they are made.

In his book, On Film Editing, Edward Dmytryk stipulates seven rules of cutting that a good editor should follow: Rule 1 Rule 2 Rule 3 Rule 4 Rule 5 Rule 6 Rule 7 Never make a cut without a positive reason. When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short Whenever possible cut in movement The fresh is preferable to the stale All scenes should begin and end with continuing action Cut for proper values rather than proper matches Substance firstthen form

Now, lets watch

OLIVER STONES

JFK (1991)
WITH EDITING BY JOE HUTSHING AND PIETRO SCALIA