Video and Film
Editing Techniques
Anthony Hawkes, Student ID: 50192798
Throughout the production of the
film, there are 3 main people that influence the film’s outcome. These are; the
Screenwriter, Director and the Editor.
Within this blog, I will cover what
the principals and purposes of editing are and how the editing process has
changed.
The film Warrior (2011) is a great example to use,
when analyzing from a technical stand point. There are two main sequences that
involve two different editing styles, but both sequences are editing in the
montage style.
A Montage is a collaboration of short cuts used to
condense a period of time.
The first montage shows the two
fighters training, and how they improve against those around them for their
upcoming tournament. Because the film covers the story of two protagonists, the
editor and director decided to use an editing technique called Split Screens.
This is where there are two (or more) images on screen displaying 2 (or more)
different events at the same time. This could be parallel editing as well, but
dates aren’t specified in the edited.
The cuts are seamless, but this is
due to the music being played over the drama. This helps motivate the viewers
because the music its self is quite an upbeat song. The way the Editor and the
Director helped emphasis this was by making the cuts synchronous with the music
that was playing. This means that the cuts match the tempo of the song, and the
events on screen match when the song hits things like key changes (similar to a
music video).
The second montage is very
different. It’s a lot more depressing and conventional. Though it doesn’t have
any split screen, music is still a primary part. The sequence is the final
fight between the two brothers. The Editing style is yet again seamless and
jump-cut free, the pacing is in sync with the song, so it continues to be
slowly cut no matter what’s happening in the story – this is to add dramatic
effect – and the 180 degree rule is respected throughout. The first montage
doesn’t need to abide to the 180 degree rule as each shot was taken in a
different location and different times.
Throughout the entire second
montages, sound is very limited. It only consists of the music, the fighters’
voices and the occasional emphasised hit. This is to make the viewer’s
concentrate on not the fight, but instead the relationship between the brothers
and how they are overcoming it. After the match ends, the music continues
playing whereas all other source of sound is cut off. This is a nice transition
to help end the film into the credits.
The reason why the 180 degree rule
is so important is because of continuity. Continuity is like an essential in
film. Without continuity the audience will get very disorientated, confused and
eventually bored because the story (the reason why they are watching the film)
doesn’t make sense. It’s also a visual distraction and seen as very amateur
because it shows a lack of detail observed.
The development of rules such as
the 180-degree rule, pacing, continuity etc. has developed over time from the
mistakes made through film history. But Editing as a process has changed even
greater.
Film started off as a technique
where people would mount a camera at a static position and film something that
wasn’t spectacular at all – such as a train arriving as a station. But because
it was new technology, people were fascinated that you could capture a set of
frames and then watch them after. Usually the films were shot at first, they’d
only last as long as the as the tape provided. Once the films started to change
into small stories, the idea of editing was discovered – editing was a process
to establish continuity in a film so that the audience wouldn’t get too
disorientated throughout.
In order to edit, there would had
to have been more than one shot taken. In 1898, Robert W. Paul shot a short
film named Come along,
Do it! (1898) this was the
first film to consist of more than one shot. The next milestone was The Great Train Robbery (1903), which was the first film to
include the technique Parallel Editing.
Parallel Editing is when a scene
includes 2 perspectives of the events occurring at the same time frame.
Before time of Technicolor, film
was mostly black and white, but it’s commonly known that film wasn’t produce in
colour until the 1950s – which is wrong. Even though film wasn’t shot in colour
until the 1950s. But there are still filmed that in colour even from the 1900s.
What Filmmakers used to do was get people (usually women) to colour the frames
on the tape certain colours so that when the film went back through the reel,
it came out with colour. Another technique was filters. They used to have red
and green (blue yellow) filters that would rotate in front of the lens so that
when the frames were combined they’d come out in near colour.
Another technique was dye.
Filmmakers would editing their tape and then dye it using a certain colour. The
only problem with this was that the entire frame of that film was the same colour
(just different shades) so it didn’t look realistic, but it was cheaper than
employing people to colour the frames.
Back when 16mm was a thing, they
had the flat bed editor. This machine aided the editor with cutting the tape
with precision and then allowing them to sync the sound with the visuals
(because they were recorded separately). Once the 32mm tape was developed, they
managed to get sound recorded on tape as well. This killed out 16mm tape pretty
quickly. The 32mm tape as long allowed more aspect ratios such as the famous
anamorphic ratio of 2.35:1.
Even though both the tape size and
ratios began to change, editors continued to use the Flatbed Editor – in 2005,
Spielberg’s common editor, Kahn, was nominated Munich for Best Achievement in
Film Editing and he used a Moviola. Flatbed Editors finally began to date once
new Editing systems were developed. These include Final Cut, Vegas, Premiere
and Avid.
The main reason why the new systems
took control was because they were far more convenient for the editor. This is
because cutting an entire film together is a time consuming process, and once
its cut, the tape could get lost. Whereas, the new techniques allow the
Director and Editor to store the new raw footage on data drives and store them.
This is a must for the Director’s cut. If the Director and Editor wish to
refine the film, they go back to editing to fill in thing such as plot holes
and missing shots. New systems allow Editors and Directors to refine the films
a lot faster as they don’t have to store tape and then find it when its needed
(this is why Director’s cuts are a lot more common nowadays).
Editing is as important as
pre-production and principal photography, and Editors don’t tend to get the
recognition they deserve and even though the process of editing is nothing like
it was back in the 1890s, Editing is still primarily used to help continuity
but now it’s used to inflict emotion as well.
Resubmission improvements:
Furthermore, there are many
different types of editing techniques. All used for their own purposes (both
conventionally and artistically). The techniques this blog will be covering
are:
·
Jump cutting
·
180 degree rule
·
Continuity
·
Parallel Editing
·
Motivated Editing
·
Transitions
First, we’ll start with one of the fundament conventions of filmmaking
– 180-degree rule. The 180 degree rule is used to help keep the audience
orientated during a scene. It’s most commonly used when shooting dialogue,
because it keeps the camera work easy on the eye so audiences can focus on
their ear. It also allows the use of “shot-reverse-shot” which is used for
dialogue to create immersion for the audience (the effect of them being there).
Here’s a video demonstrating the 180 degree rule in a film:
Next, we have parallel editing (also known as crosscutting).
Parallel editing is when Filmmakers use two different shots on the same screen.
Usually, the shots will be happening at the same time in terms of time frame.
Here’s what Parallel editing looks like on screen.
This allows viewers to see double the amounts of information
at the same time. The technique is mainly used to create tension between two
main characters. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1x6uADFtM
Here’s a clip from Silences
of the Lambs (1991), which shows two characters slowly edging their way to
each other in the film. Because of the pure amounts of information given to the
audience, the tension within the scene begins to build.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when making
a film is continuity. Continuity is so important for a film because without it,
there’s no immersion for the audience to bond with. So what is continuity?
Continuity is the action of the film – not the pacing (which is the flow). For
example, if my protagonist Peter goes
and buys a nice vibrant blue bubble-gum ice-cream in one shot, then in the next
shot Peter turns around with a bright
red ice-cream then the continuity has been broken as the colour of the ice
cream mysteriously changes.
Here’s an example of bad continuity from The Dark Knight (2009):
The next technique is motivated editing (or motivated cut).
Motivated editing is when you cut to a shot that wasn’t in the previous frame
in a manner that doesn’t appear jarring. For example, the transition between a
shot to a flashback is a motivated cut because its to a different frame and its
meant to be fluid.
Example of a motivated editing from Band of Brothers (2001):
Example of a motivated editing from Band of Brothers (2001):
Possibly the worse technique is Jump cuts. Jump cuts are
notorious in the film industry because of how unpleasant they are for the human
eye. This is because for the people who don’t know what a jump cut is; they
will just think it’s an editing mistake – which is a bad thing. But of course,
they can be used for artistic effect. Jump cuts are quite jarring, and some
Directors go out their way to use jump cuts in their films. An example is Guy
Ritchie in Snatch (2000). The first
scene has a ton of jump cuts.
Snatch (2000) Jump cuts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1yUwWG5ikE
Snatch (2000) Jump cuts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1yUwWG5ikE
The last and no means least, Transitions. In films, there
are very few transitions used other then, things such as “Fade to black”, “Cut”
and the occasional “Cross Dissolve” (which are usually blended). The entire
points of transitions are to blend shots together to keep the film feeling
seamless. Without transitions the film would just have cut after cut, and it
would begin to feel really bland. Other transitions are used for certain
purposes.
Example of transitions:
