Film Study - Different Types of Editing and Cut Shots Essay

The efficacious nature of films owes its prominent properties to the array of editing techniques. In the aforementioned films , editing techniques stabilizes the movie and

(49) cross-cutting: In Inception (2010), cross-cutting is used to parallel the two scenes. Joseph Gordon levitt is getting into an elevator and an intense car chase. The director uses this to show that the two scenes are occurring at the same time, while also leaving the audience captivated by the suspense.

Editing “determines the duration of a shot” and Run Lola Run illustrated several types of editing including freeze frames, jump cuts, and dissolve cuts that allowed

Almost every piece of cinema seeks to give the viewer an understanding by intricately assembling shots in a coherent, and a sometimes muddled, manner; the techniques used in editing places various shots in purposeful sequences, to emphasize certain relationships between shots. The shots can be arranged smoothly and logically, or shift abruptly from shot to shot; different methods of the aforementioned arrangement of shots are utilized in either discontinuous or continuous editing. Sherlock Jr. and The War on Drug’s music video “Holding On”, are two motion pictures that offer spatial relations, by applying techniques of both continuous and discontinuous editing.

The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing is a documentary about the art of film editing and the immensity of the job an editor is given. The reasoning of the film is to show the impact editing truly has on movies and our emotional attachment towards them. This documentary shows clips from different films to prove to it’s viewers the substantial effect editing has. Directors and editors speak out about the significance of editing, something not many viewers know nor think about.

Using the app, the motion was broken into segments, paused and a still shot was taken. A still

This is accomplished with different camera angles as well as the movement of the camera. For example, in many scenes as the camera follows the action it is shaky rather than sturdy, as if you as a viewer are walking around and seeing the action through your own eyes. One may also notice that an escalated level of action or conversation on the screen is mirrored by the pace of the film from frame to frame. In essence, a heated argument would involve a quick paced transition of shots, going from a close-up of one character to another at a rapid pace in tune with the argument.

Editing is a true art form. The editor strives to impart visual variety to the picture by skillful shot selection, arrangement and timing. He recreates rather than reproduces the photographic event to achieve a cumulative effort often greater than all the actions in individual scenes put together. A motion picture is a custom-made jigsaw puzzle in which filmmakers fashion the individual pieces. Each piece requires special attention so that it will merge harmoniously with pieces surrounding it. Many editors prefer to make their cuts on movements so that the actual switch from one shot to another is masked by the action. The editing in Steel Magnolias uses wipes and fades to transition from one scene to the other. The editor uses

Early movies were shot and viewed as slide shows. With narrations like The Life Of An American Fireman, where instead of cutting we would see full clips linked together. When the filmmakers brought us from one action to the next they, repeated actions instead of cutting and letting

Six techniques of continuity editing are depicted in the film. These techniques are establishing shots, cross-cut editing, match on action, shot/reverse shots, re-establishing shots and eye-line match shots that give the movie structure.

Another interesting use of camera cutting can be found in the in between scene where Cleo is roaming the streets of Paris. She is now becoming the one watching other people rather than being the one watched as she was in the beginning (probably because of her beauty and famous singer status). While she is watching the camera cuts between other people’s conversations and then while she is walking the camera is in essence her point of view. However during this walk, the people passing are watching her as well, thus proving that this is the transition time. The use of cutting between shots of her and shots of all these people passing her not only show this change in who is watching who, but also allows for a sense of time passing. Interspersed with these shots are images of people we have already met, the widow, the boyfriend, the piano player, as well as the images of a monkey resting on a clock and her wig resting on the mirror, these things conveying how the people who know her see her and how she sees herself. This is a genius montage because these two things represent the same thing, how people see her, how she sees people, and how she sees herself, and by interspersing them we see

Anyhow, temporal relationships between shots are away to be creative in a plot to make you go back to certain events that happened in the beginning of the film. For instance, having a flashback is used when taken back in time. “Flashback (the interruption of chronological plot time with a shot of series of shots showing an event that happened

Directors utilize a variety of editing tools to highlight elements of a film’s narrative. Cross-cutting is an editing technique that shows multiple streams of action occurring at the same time. Steven Soderbergh uses this device in the opening sequences of his film, Contagion, (2011). The film begins with a black screen and the sound of a cough from an unknown person and cuts to a close-up of Gwyneth Paltrow eating nuts out of a bowl at an airport bar. Soderbergh shows the viewer that this is the second day of an unknown disease outbreak by superimposing the information in red across the screen. In the next shot, he cross-cuts to an establishing shot of Hong Kong and superimposes the city’s name and population informing the viewer that

The main functions of Montage are “to control rhythm, to create metaphors and to make rhetorical points” (Bordwell 1972: 9). Rhythm is the series of movement perceived from the consistent juxtaposition of shots. Continuity editing usually forms the rhythm of a narrative. Continuity editing as the name implies is “a system of cutting to maintain continuous and clear narrative action” (Bordwell and Thompson 2012: 500). Sergei Eisenstein (1949: 47) claims that, “the quality of interval determines the pressure of the tension and the phases of its tension is the rhythm”.

The shot transitions are cuts which maintain the flow of the narrative and the character’s actions.