Editing

Editing
Film editing is the invisible art of motion picture, when it is well-practised, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work. The film editor works with the raw footage, selecting shots and combining them into sequences to create a finished motion picture. The job of an editor isn't simply to mechanically put pieces of a film together, cut off film slates, or edit dialogue scenes. A film editor must creatively work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors' performances to effectively "re-imagine" and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole. Editors usually play a dynamic role in the making of a film.

Continuity

Continuity is a film term that suggests that a series of shots should be physically continuous, as if the camera simply changed angles in the course of a single event. For instance, if in one shot a beer glass is empty, it should not be full in the next shot. Technically, continuity is the responsibility 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. The script supervisor, who sits next to the director during shooting, keeps the physical continuity of the edit in mind as shots are set up. He is the editor's watchman. If shots are taken out of sequence, as is often the case, he will be alert to make sure that that beer glass is in the appropriate state. The editor utilizes the script supervisor's notes during post-production to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot.

Montage

Montage was the essence of the cinema. Today montage has a completely different connotation than it used to.  There are at least three senses of the term: French film, Soviet filmmaking and classic Hollywood cinema. 

French Film 

        In French film practice, "montage" has its literal French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.  

        The New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of the literary period pieces being made in France and written by novelists, their spirit of youthful iconoclasm, the desire to shoot more current social issues on location, and their intention of experimenting with the film form.  

        Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end.French New Wave cinema became very aware of editing and makes this known among the audience as well. One way that awareness is created is by jump cuts which is the type of edit that causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way.

Sequence from Breathless that shows Jump Cuts       A sequence I put together to show Jump Cuts

Soviet Filmmaking

Soviet Filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. Soviet editing techniques show that it is not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination.  An example of this is the Kuleshov effect, which I will discuss later on. 

Classic Hollywood Cinema
In Hollywood cinema, a montage sequence is a short segment in a film which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.

The Kuleshov Effect
Lev Kuleshov is a Russian filmmaker who edited together a short film in which a shot of an expressionless face was alternated with various other shots; a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin and a woman on a divan. Audiences believed that each time the faces expression had changed and they praised the subtle acting. The reality, of course, is that the same clip of the actor's face was re-used, and the effect is created entirely by its superimposition with other images. 
            Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form.

  


Eisenstein Theory
Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage. His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through related images. Eisenstein felt the collision of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film.

A Baby in a Carriage Falling Down the "Odessa Steps"

D.W. Griffith
D.W. Griffith was an American director who, more than anyone of the silent era, saw film's potential as an expressive medium, and exploited that potential. Griffith played a number of roles as an actor before agreeing to move behind the camera as a director. As a director Griffith took the raw elements of movie making as they had evolved up to that time and wrought a medium of extraordinary power and degree - elements such as lighting, continuity, editing and acting. 
       D.W. Griffith developed classical cutting -where a sequence of shots are determined by the scene's dramatic and emotional emphasis rather than physical action, Griffith for example would edit love scenes in long lyrical takes- as well as developing a variety of editing principles he believed made cutting invisible, such techniques as eye-line match. also Griffith was the first to use close-ups for psychological reasons instead of physical reasons. his cross cutting style was hallmarked in Early short films such as A CORNER IN WHEAT (1909), FIGHTING BLOOD (1911), and UNDER BURNING SKIES (1912), using these cross-cut edits to build tension, acute observation of details to heighten reality, and the use of the camera as a vehicle for expounding his views on society. 

             Cross Cutting in Fighting Blood                                  Example of Eye-Line Match