Session 8: EDITING

STUDYING EDITING ALLOWS US TO: Reflect on how the art of film and its

technologies reflect cultural and historical context

Understand how editing strategies engage certain filmic traditions of continuity and disjuncture

How editing creates or reflects certain patterns through which viewers see and think about the world.

EDITING AND COMMUNICATION

A film communicates through several ways.

Image-Photography often exploited juxtaposition

to highlight different relationships between

Images.

Sound- Editing Editing is the process of selection, time

expansion and compression, and arrangement to create a narrative.

PUDOVKIN

“Editing is the creative force of filmic reality” (Pudovkin)

He sees the role of the editor as that of a sculptor.- Moulds the material which has a life inside it, into shape and meaning.

Editing as code.

Codes are systems of logical arrangements and relationships to create meaning.

Classical Editing Conventions

EDITING AS REPRESENTATIONHollywood and classical narrative aims at sequential editing. Linear and representational objectivity.

Classical Editing Conventions

EDITING AS CONSTRUCTION• Constructivist editing. • Editor endeavours to create a Filmic

Representation of events. • We are more interested in the EFFECT/IMPACT

of a scene rather than its narrative influence

Eisenstein’s Montage Theory

“COMBINING SHOTS THAT ARE DEPICTIVE, SINGLE IN MEANING, NEUTRAL IN CONTENT- INTO INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS AND SERIES”

EDITING AS LANGUAGE:Montage systems

Metric Montage: - refers to length of a shot relative to another- regardless of content, shortening a shot abbreviates time.

Rhythmic Montage:- Continuity arising from visual pattern within shots- potential for portraying conflict (Also as Analytic or Deductive) -Potemkin

EDITING AS LANGUAGE:Montage systems Tonal Montage: - editing decisions that

establish emotional character of scene (Also as Synthetic or Inductive) (Saving Private Ryan)

Over-tonal Montage:- Interplay of metric, rhythmic, tonal montages (many movies)

Intellectual Montage:- Abstraction of image for meta-narrative (Leni Reifenstahl: Olympia)

PRINCIPLES OF EDITING

1. Matching consecutive shots

Constructing a smooth continuity. Show action and movements as fluid. This technique does not consider what could be most narratively appropriate.

PRINCIPLES OF EDITING2.Change in image size and angle to reflect spatial

relationship:– LS/MS/CU/POV shots/

3. Maintaining emotional relationship to image Juxtaposition of images

EDITING TECHNIQUES

Relational continuity- Shot Reverse Shot (soap) Elliptical (2001 A Space Odyssey- Kubrick) Juxtaposition- Schindlers List Dissolve- (Citizen Kane- Relationship shots) Discontinuity as Continuity- Goddard (Breathless) Sound as cut- sound of character off

shot/transition Cross cutting- Soap opera

EDITING STUDY

The Cut The Chase Continuity- 180 degree Rule Shot sizes

HOW EDITING MAKES MEANING Editing generates emotions and ideas through

the construction of patterns of seeing (Saving Private Ryan)

Editing moves beyond the confines of individual perception and its temporal and spatial limitations to the psychological (The Western)

DIGITAL EDITING

Storage Access Effects Duration of shot ( Rope, 1948) (Russian Ark-

2002)