Editing

 Editing

Editing Techniques

The Kuleshov Effect

The Kuleshov Effect is the basis of Soviet Montage cinema. The idea is that by editing different things together, it is possible to create meanings that didn’t exist in either of the images put together - constructing ‘sentences’ and ‘texts’ out of film.

This can be used to give inanimate objects personality.

Rhythm and Pace

Why do older films often seem to be slower paced when it comes to editing? Is this merely stylistic?

Older films seem to be slower paces because there are very few jump cuts and ‘editing’ compared to films we see today. This could be due to the fact that before modern day editing softwares we created, jump cuts were made by cutting the film strips that the scene was recorded on and physically gluing them back together with the scene you wanted to jump to. In addition, today we have a large variety of editing techniques and it’s way easier to create jump cuts. For example, we now have CGI where we could create anything we want and input it into a movie. This allowed us to create exiting scenarios and plots in movies which results in them being much more fast paced than older movies.

Graphic Matching

The creation of strong visual similarity between shots, encouraging audiences to make connections between them

Jump Cuts

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly if at all. This type of edit gives the effect of jumping forwards in time.

Elliptical Editing

Whereby parts of the story are deliberately omitted, leaving the audience to ‘fill in the gaps’

Cross cutting

Editing that alternated between two or more spheres of action occurring in different places, often simultaneously

Use of Montage

A technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time and information

Question about UP montage:

Considered one of the most moving pieces of animation ever made. Why? How does the montage contribute to the emotion of the sequence?

I think that the sequence is quite emotional due to the fact were shown them living such a happy life for the beginning half of the sequence which allows spectators to feel a happy connection with the characters as they stayed happy through so much (such as being told they can have children) so the spectators can almost associate them with happiness, only for that to be taken away when the wife dies and were left with the husband looking extremely sad after being happy for so long. There wast really an ease into it, it almost just went straight from happy and positive to sad and negative in an instant.

The cutting room floor

For a hundred years (and sometimes still today) movies were shot and edited on film. You’d shoot the scenes onto a negative then print the best takes onto a positive and sound was printed onto a special magnetic tape. To create cuts in the movie, an editor would run these together through an editing machine and physically cuts the film and tapes the next shot in. This would be done hundreds of times before finally getting it the way you want. Once you ave everything the way you want, a special technician called a negative cutter matches the edit with the original negative and pastes with literal glue the negative into a single film which would then be reprinted into a positive called an answer print which is then used to make prints which were sent off to cinemas.

Digital editing is a lot easier, and this has given rise to a greater number of cuts in any given sequence.

Questions

Compare the editing (number of cuts) in Taken 3 and Three Colours Red. 

In the Film “Three colours red” There seems to be very few to no cuts near the beginning when it was only the woman in the scene. But then as the radio was introduced and then the man, we saw progressively started to see more cuts. This is probably due to the fact that this is a much older film when things like editing took a lot longer to do and so the movie has a slower pace. Meanwhile in the movie “Taken 3” there are a lot more cuts at any given time. This is because it's a newer film, and edited during a time where things like jump cuts only took a few clicks. Due to there being a lot more cuts, the movie is at a much faster pace in comparison to Three Colours Red.

What is the feel of these two films when compared? 

The two movies have very different feels to each of them. Three Colours Red has quite a slow and almost sad feel to it as there’s not really a lot going on (at least in the given clip). This could be because there’s not a lot of jump cuts and as a whole, there’s not much action going on. In contrast, Taken 3 has a lot more of a faster and exiting feel to it as there’s a lot more action going on in a smaller amount of time such as jump cuts and even fight scenes.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?  

For the film Three Colours Red, and advantage of that film is that there’s a lot less work for editors and perhaps even a cheaper production cost as there’s few cuts/editing, and there’s no scenes which include destruction which can be quite expensive to make, especially if you need to shoot the scene multiple times. But a disadvantage is that the movie doesn’t seem exiting which can put certain audiences off the film as now a days were used to a lot more fast paced movies.

Now for the movie Taken 3, an advantage is that as a fast paced film, its more likely to grab the attention of a wider audience because there’s a lot more action which many people enjoy. However a disadvantage of this is that there’s possibly a very high production cost with stunt doubles and having to buy multiple of each prop if scenes include destruction of certain things. Also not everyone enjoys particularly fast paced films because they may get confusing at times and there can be too many jump cuts which can make it hard to watch.

Different types of Cuts/Transitions

• (Straight) cut
• Dissolve
• Fade
• Wipe
• Dip (To black/white)

Transitions can look very gimmicky - Generally dissolves, fades and straight cuts are used.