Film editing is part of the creative
post-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
process of
filmmakingFilmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an
artArt is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
of
storytellingStorytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...
. Film editing is the only art that is unique to cinema, separating film-making from other art forms that preceded it (such as
photographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, theater,
danceDance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
,
writingWriting is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
, and directing), although there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms like
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
or
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
writing. Film editing is often referred to as the "invisible art" because when it is well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work.
On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling shots into a coherent whole. A
film editor is a person who practices film editing by assembling the footage. However, the job of an editor isn’t simply to mechanically put pieces of a film together, cut off film
slatesA clapperboard is a device used in filmmaking and video production to assist in the synchronizing of picture and sound, and to designate and mark particular scenes and takes recorded during a production...
, 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.
With the advent of digital editing, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For instance, in past years, picture editors dealt only with just that—picture. Sound, music, and (more recently) visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the picture editor and director. However, digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the picture editor. It is common, especially on lower budget films, for the assistant editors or even the editor to cut in music, mock up visual effects, and add sound effects or other sound replacements. These temporary elements are usually replaced with more refined final elements by the sound, music, and visual effects teams hired to complete the picture.
Film editing is an art that can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages; become a laboratory for experimental cinema; bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance; create a point of view on otherwise obtuse events; guide the telling and pace of a story; create an illusion of danger where there is none; give emphasis to things that would not have otherwise been noted; and even create a vital subconscious emotional connection to the viewer, among many other possibilities.
Early experiments
Edwin S. PorterEdwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company...
is generally thought to be the American filmmaker who first put film editing to use. Porter worked as an electrician before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890s. Early films by
Thomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
(whose company invented a motion camera and projector) and others were short films that were one long, static, locked-down shot. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. There was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera. When Edison's motion picture studio wanted to increase the length of the short films, Edison came to Porter. Porter made the breakthrough film
Life of an American FiremanLife of an American Fireman is a short, silent film Edwin S. Porter made for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903...
in 1903. The film was among the first that had a plot, action, and even a closeup of a hand pulling a fire alarm.
Other films were to follow. Porter's ground-breaking film,
The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American action Western film by Edwin S. Porter. Twelve minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double...
is still shown in film schools today as an example of early editing form. It was produced in 1903 and was one of the first examples of dynamic, action editing - piecing together scenes shot at different times and places and for emotional impact unavailable in a static long shot. Being one of the first film hyphenates (film director, editor and engineer) Porter also invented and utilized some of the very first (albeit primitive) special effects such as double exposures, miniatures and split-screens.
Porter discovered important aspects of motion picture language: that the screen image does not need to show a complete person from head to toe and that splicing together two shots creates in the viewer's mind a contextual relationship. These were the key discoveries that made all non-live or non live-on-videotape narrative motion pictures and television possible—that shots (in this case whole scenes since each shot is a complete scene) can be photographed at widely different locations over a period of time (hours, days or even months) and combined into a narrative whole. That is,
The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American action Western film by Edwin S. Porter. Twelve minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double...
contains scenes shot on sets of a telegraph station, a railroad car interior, and a dance hall, with outdoor scenes at a railroad water tower, on the train itself, at a point along the track, and in the woods. But when the robbers leave the telegraph station interior (set) and emerge at the water tower, the audience believes they went immediately from one to the other. Or that when they climb on the train in one shot and enter the baggage car (a set) in the next, the audience believes they are on the same train.
Sometime around 1918,
RussianThe Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
director
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
did an experiment that proves this point. (See Kuleshov Experiment) He took an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and intercut the shot with a shot of a bowl of soup, then with a child playing with a teddy bear, then with a shot an elderly woman in a casket. When he showed the film to people they praised the actor's acting—the hunger in his face when he saw the soup, the delight in the child, and the grief when looking at the dead woman. Of course, the shot of the actor was years before the other shots and he never "saw" any of the items. The simple act of juxtaposing the shots in a sequence made the relationship.
History of film editing technology
Before the widespread use of
non-linear editing systemIn video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
s, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film
workprintA workprint is a rough version of a motion picture, used by the film editor during the editing process. Such copies generally contain original recorded sound that will later be re-dubbed, stock footage as placeholders for missing shots or special effects, and animation tests for in-production...
(cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as a
MoviolaA Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.-History:...
, or
"flatbed" machineA flatbed editor is a type of machine used to edit film for a motion picture.Picture and sound rolls load onto separate motorized wheels, called "plates." Each set of plates moves forward or backward separately, or locked together to maintain synchronization between picture and sound...
such as a K.-E.-M. or
SteenbeckSteenbeck is a brand name that has become synonymous with a type of flatbed film editing suite which is usable with both 16 mm and 35 mm optical sound and magnetic sound film.The Steenbeck company was founded in 1931 by Wilhelm Steenbeck in Hamburg, Germany...
. Today, most films are edited digitally (on systems such as
AvidAVID stands for:* Advancement Via Individual Determination, a college-readiness system designed to increase the number of students who enroll in four-year colleges in the U.S....
or
Final Cut ProFinal Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and then Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X, runs on Mac personal computers powered by Mac OS X version 10.6.7 or later and using Intel processors...
) and bypass the film positive workprint altogether. In the past, the use of a film positive (not the original negative) allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wished, without the risk of damaging the original.
When the film workprint had been cut to a satisfactory state, it was then used to make an edit decision list (EDL). The negative cutter referred to this list while processing the negative, splitting the shots into rolls, which were then contact printed to produce the final film print or answer print. Today, production companies have the option of bypassing negative cutting altogether. With the advent of digital intermediate ("DI"), the physical negative does not necessarily need to be physically cut and hot spliced together; rather the negative is optically scanned into computer(s) and a cut list is conformed by a DI editor.
Editor's cut
There are several editing stages and the editor's cut is the first. An editor's cut (sometimes referred to as the "
Assembly edit" or "
Rough cut") is normally the first pass of what the final film will be when it reaches
picture lockPicture lock is a stage in editing a film or editing a television production. It is the stage prior to on-line editing when all changes to the film or television program cut have been done and approved. It is then sent to subsequent stages in the process, such as online editing and audio mixing...
. The film editor usually starts working while principal photography starts. Likely, prior to cutting, the editor and director will have seen and/or discussed "
dailiesDailies, in filmmaking, are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. They are so called because usually at the end of each day, that day's footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch for viewing the next day by the director and some members...
" (raw footage shot each day) as shooting progresses. Screening dailies gives the editor a ballpark idea of the director's intentions. Because it is the first pass, the editor's cut might be longer than the final film. The editor continues to refine the cut while shooting continues, and often the entire editing process goes on for many months and sometimes more than a year, depending on the film.
Director's cut
When shooting is finished, the
directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
can then turn his full attention to collaborating with the editor and further refining the cut of the film. This is the time that is set aside where the film editor's first cut is molded to fit the director's vision. In the United States, under
DGADirectors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
rules, directors receive a minimum of ten weeks after completion of principal photography to prepare their first cut.
While collaborating on what is referred to as the "director's cut", the director and the editor go over the entire movie with a fine-tooth comb; scenes and shots are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked. Often it is discovered that there are
plot holeA plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot...
s, missing shots or even missing segments which might require that new scenes be filmed. Because of this time working closely and collaborating – a period that is normally far longer, and far more intimately involved, than the entire production and filming – most directors and editors form a unique artistic bond.
Final cut
Often after the director has had his chance to oversee a cut, the subsequent cuts are supervised by one or more producers, who represent the production company and/or
movie studioA movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
. There have been several conflicts in the past between the director and the studio, sometimes leading to the use of the "
Alan SmitheeAlan Smithee was an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project, coined in 1968. Until its use was formally discontinued in 2000, it was the sole pseudonym used by members of the Directors Guild of America when a director dissatisfied with the final product proved to...
" credit signifying when a director no longer wants to be associated with the final release.
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. Live coverage of a sporting event would be an example of footage that is very continuous. Since the live operators are cutting from one live feed to another, the physical action of the shots matches very closely. Many people regard inconsistencies in continuity as mistakes, and often the editor is blamed. In film, however, continuity is very nearly last on a film editor's list of important things to maintain.
Technically, continuity is the responsibility of the
script supervisorA script supervisor is a member of a film crew responsible for maintaining the motion picture's internal continuity and for recording the production unit's daily progress in shooting the film's screenplay...
and
film directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, 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 beer glass is in the appropriate state. The editor utilizes the script supervisor's notes during
post-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot.
Methods of montage
In
motion picture terminologyThe film industry is built upon a large number of technologies and techniques, drawing upon photography, stagecraft, music, and many other disciplines...
, a
montage (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.
There are at least three senses of the term:
- In French film
French Film is a 2008 British comedy film directed by Jackie Oudney and starring Anne-Marie Duff, Hugh Bonneville, Victoria Hamilton, Douglas Henshall and Eric Cantona. The film was shot in Spring 2007 at various locations around London including Waterloo station and the BFI Southbank.-Plot:Two...
practice, "montage" has its literal French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.
- In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.
- In classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
, a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.
Soviet montage
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
was among the very first to theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema — that which could be duplicated in no other medium — is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.
Although, strictly speaking, U.S. film director D.W. Griffith was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing — mastering
cross-cuttingCross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the...
to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a
dialecticDialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.
Montage sequence
A
montage sequence consists of a series of short shots that are edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed. One famous example of montage was seen in the 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, depicting the start of man's first development from apes to humans.
Continuity editing
What became known as the popular '
classical HollywoodClassical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as
The Birth of a NationThe Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay , and co-produced the film . It was released on February 8, 1915...
and
Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the
180 degree ruleIn filmmaking, the 180° rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line...
,
Establishing shotAn establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects...
, and
Shot reverse shotShot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character , and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character...
.
Alternatives to continuity editing (non-traditional or experimental)
Early Russian filmmakers such as
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature.
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.
Alternatives to traditional editing were also the folly of early surrealist and
dadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
filmmakers such as
Luis BuñuelLuis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
(director of the 1929
Un Chien Andalou) and
René ClairRené Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
(director of 1924's
Entr'acte which starred famous dada artists
Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and
Man RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
). Both filmmakers, Clair and Buñuel, experimented with editing techniques long before what is referred to as "
MTVMTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
style" editing.
The
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard and
François TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
and their American counterparts such as
Andy WarholAndrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and
John CassavetesJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
also pushed the limits of editing technique during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. French New Wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960s used a carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of Hollywood films. Like its dada and surrealist predecessors,
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
editing often drew attention to itself by its lack of continuity, its demystifying self-reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they were watching a film), and by the overt use of
jump cutA jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative.
Editing techniques
Vsevolod PudovkinVsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of film making originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. Kubrick was quoted as saying: "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."
- Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.-Early life:Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada,...
stipulates seven "rules of cutting" that a good editor should follow:
- "Rule 1: Never make a cut without a positive reason."
- "Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short."
[Dmytryk, p.23]
- "Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'."
Film editing is part of the creative
post-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
process of
filmmakingFilmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an
artArt is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
of
storytellingStorytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...
. Film editing is the only art that is unique to cinema, separating film-making from other art forms that preceded it (such as
photographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, theater,
danceDance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
,
writingWriting is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
, and directing), although there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms like
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
or
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
writing. Film editing is often referred to as the "invisible art"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/movies/awardsseason/06harr.html New York Times, Jan 6, 2008 ] because when it is well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work.
On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling shots into a coherent whole. A
film editor is a person who practices film editing by assembling the footage. However, the job of an editor isn’t simply to mechanically put pieces of a film together, cut off film
slatesA clapperboard is a device used in filmmaking and video production to assist in the synchronizing of picture and sound, and to designate and mark particular scenes and takes recorded during a production...
, 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.
With the advent of digital editing, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For instance, in past years, picture editors dealt only with just that—picture. Sound, music, and (more recently) visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the picture editor and director. However, digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the picture editor. It is common, especially on lower budget films, for the assistant editors or even the editor to cut in music, mock up visual effects, and add sound effects or other sound replacements. These temporary elements are usually replaced with more refined final elements by the sound, music, and visual effects teams hired to complete the picture.
Film editing is an art that can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages; become a laboratory for experimental cinema; bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance; create a point of view on otherwise obtuse events; guide the telling and pace of a story; create an illusion of danger where there is none; give emphasis to things that would not have otherwise been noted; and even create a vital subconscious emotional connection to the viewer, among many other possibilities.
Early experiments
Edwin S. PorterEdwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company...
is generally thought to be the American filmmaker who first put film editing to use. Porter worked as an electrician before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890s. Early films by
Thomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
(whose company invented a motion camera and projector) and others were short films that were one long, static, locked-down shot. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. There was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera. When Edison's motion picture studio wanted to increase the length of the short films, Edison came to Porter. Porter made the breakthrough film
Life of an American FiremanLife of an American Fireman is a short, silent film Edwin S. Porter made for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903...
in 1903. The film was among the first that had a plot, action, and even a closeup of a hand pulling a fire alarm.
Other films were to follow. Porter's ground-breaking film,
The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American action Western film by Edwin S. Porter. Twelve minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double...
is still shown in film schools today as an example of early editing form. It was produced in 1903 and was one of the first examples of dynamic, action editing - piecing together scenes shot at different times and places and for emotional impact unavailable in a static long shot. Being one of the first film hyphenates (film director, editor and engineer) Porter also invented and utilized some of the very first (albeit primitive) special effects such as double exposures, miniatures and split-screens.
Porter discovered important aspects of motion picture language: that the screen image does not need to show a complete person from head to toe and that splicing together two shots creates in the viewer's mind a contextual relationship. These were the key discoveries that made all non-live or non live-on-videotape narrative motion pictures and television possible—that shots (in this case whole scenes since each shot is a complete scene) can be photographed at widely different locations over a period of time (hours, days or even months) and combined into a narrative whole.
[Arthur Knight]Arthur Knight was a movie critic, film historian, professor and TV host.His book The Liveliest Art, first published in 1957, is a history of the cinema used as a text book at colleges and universities throughout the world.-Early life:...
(1957). p. 25. That is,
The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American action Western film by Edwin S. Porter. Twelve minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double...
contains scenes shot on sets of a telegraph station, a railroad car interior, and a dance hall, with outdoor scenes at a railroad water tower, on the train itself, at a point along the track, and in the woods. But when the robbers leave the telegraph station interior (set) and emerge at the water tower, the audience believes they went immediately from one to the other. Or that when they climb on the train in one shot and enter the baggage car (a set) in the next, the audience believes they are on the same train.
Sometime around 1918,
RussianThe Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
director
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
did an experiment that proves this point. (See Kuleshov Experiment) He took an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and intercut the shot with a shot of a bowl of soup, then with a child playing with a teddy bear, then with a shot an elderly woman in a casket. When he showed the film to people they praised the actor's acting—the hunger in his face when he saw the soup, the delight in the child, and the grief when looking at the dead woman.
[Arthur Knight]Arthur Knight was a movie critic, film historian, professor and TV host.His book The Liveliest Art, first published in 1957, is a history of the cinema used as a text book at colleges and universities throughout the world.-Early life:...
(1957). pp. 72-73. Of course, the shot of the actor was years before the other shots and he never "saw" any of the items. The simple act of juxtaposing the shots in a sequence made the relationship.
History of film editing technology
Before the widespread use of
non-linear editing systemIn video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
s, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film
workprintA workprint is a rough version of a motion picture, used by the film editor during the editing process. Such copies generally contain original recorded sound that will later be re-dubbed, stock footage as placeholders for missing shots or special effects, and animation tests for in-production...
(cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as a
MoviolaA Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.-History:...
, or
"flatbed" machineA flatbed editor is a type of machine used to edit film for a motion picture.Picture and sound rolls load onto separate motorized wheels, called "plates." Each set of plates moves forward or backward separately, or locked together to maintain synchronization between picture and sound...
such as a K.-E.-M. or
SteenbeckSteenbeck is a brand name that has become synonymous with a type of flatbed film editing suite which is usable with both 16 mm and 35 mm optical sound and magnetic sound film.The Steenbeck company was founded in 1931 by Wilhelm Steenbeck in Hamburg, Germany...
. Today, most films are edited digitally (on systems such as
AvidAVID stands for:* Advancement Via Individual Determination, a college-readiness system designed to increase the number of students who enroll in four-year colleges in the U.S....
or
Final Cut ProFinal Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and then Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X, runs on Mac personal computers powered by Mac OS X version 10.6.7 or later and using Intel processors...
) and bypass the film positive workprint altogether. In the past, the use of a film positive (not the original negative) allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wished, without the risk of damaging the original.
When the film workprint had been cut to a satisfactory state, it was then used to make an edit decision list (EDL). The negative cutter referred to this list while processing the negative, splitting the shots into rolls, which were then contact printed to produce the final film print or answer print. Today, production companies have the option of bypassing negative cutting altogether. With the advent of digital intermediate ("DI"), the physical negative does not necessarily need to be physically cut and hot spliced together; rather the negative is optically scanned into computer(s) and a cut list is conformed by a DI editor.
Editor's cut
There are several editing stages and the editor's cut is the first. An editor's cut (sometimes referred to as the "
Assembly edit" or "
Rough cut") is normally the first pass of what the final film will be when it reaches
picture lockPicture lock is a stage in editing a film or editing a television production. It is the stage prior to on-line editing when all changes to the film or television program cut have been done and approved. It is then sent to subsequent stages in the process, such as online editing and audio mixing...
. The film editor usually starts working while principal photography starts. Likely, prior to cutting, the editor and director will have seen and/or discussed "
dailiesDailies, in filmmaking, are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. They are so called because usually at the end of each day, that day's footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch for viewing the next day by the director and some members...
" (raw footage shot each day) as shooting progresses. Screening dailies gives the editor a ballpark idea of the director's intentions. Because it is the first pass, the editor's cut might be longer than the final film. The editor continues to refine the cut while shooting continues, and often the entire editing process goes on for many months and sometimes more than a year, depending on the film.
Director's cut
When shooting is finished, the
directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
can then turn his full attention to collaborating with the editor and further refining the cut of the film. This is the time that is set aside where the film editor's first cut is molded to fit the director's vision. In the United States, under
DGADirectors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
rules, directors receive a minimum of ten weeks after completion of principal photography to prepare their first cut.
While collaborating on what is referred to as the "director's cut", the director and the editor go over the entire movie with a fine-tooth comb; scenes and shots are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked. Often it is discovered that there are
plot holeA plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot...
s, missing shots or even missing segments which might require that new scenes be filmed. Because of this time working closely and collaborating – a period that is normally far longer, and far more intimately involved, than the entire production and filming – most directors and editors form a unique artistic bond.
Final cut
Often after the director has had his chance to oversee a cut, the subsequent cuts are supervised by one or more producers, who represent the production company and/or
movie studioA movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
. There have been several conflicts in the past between the director and the studio, sometimes leading to the use of the "
Alan SmitheeAlan Smithee was an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project, coined in 1968. Until its use was formally discontinued in 2000, it was the sole pseudonym used by members of the Directors Guild of America when a director dissatisfied with the final product proved to...
" credit signifying when a director no longer wants to be associated with the final release.
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. Live coverage of a sporting event would be an example of footage that is very continuous. Since the live operators are cutting from one live feed to another, the physical action of the shots matches very closely. Many people regard inconsistencies in continuity as mistakes, and often the editor is blamed. In film, however, continuity is very nearly last on a film editor's list of important things to maintain.
Technically, continuity is the responsibility of the
script supervisorA script supervisor is a member of a film crew responsible for maintaining the motion picture's internal continuity and for recording the production unit's daily progress in shooting the film's screenplay...
and
film directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, 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 beer glass is in the appropriate state. The editor utilizes the script supervisor's notes during
post-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot.
Methods of montage
In
motion picture terminologyThe film industry is built upon a large number of technologies and techniques, drawing upon photography, stagecraft, music, and many other disciplines...
, a
montage (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.
There are at least three senses of the term:
- In French film
French Film is a 2008 British comedy film directed by Jackie Oudney and starring Anne-Marie Duff, Hugh Bonneville, Victoria Hamilton, Douglas Henshall and Eric Cantona. The film was shot in Spring 2007 at various locations around London including Waterloo station and the BFI Southbank.-Plot:Two...
practice, "montage" has its literal French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.
- In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.
- In classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
, a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.
Soviet montage
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
was among the very first to theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema — that which could be duplicated in no other medium — is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.
Although, strictly speaking, U.S. film director D.W. Griffith was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing — mastering
cross-cuttingCross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the...
to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a
dialecticDialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.
Montage sequence
A
montage sequence consists of a series of short shots that are edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed. One famous example of montage was seen in the 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, depicting the start of man's first development from apes to humans.
Continuity editing
What became known as the popular '
classical HollywoodClassical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as
The Birth of a NationThe Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay , and co-produced the film . It was released on February 8, 1915...
and
Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the
180 degree ruleIn filmmaking, the 180° rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line...
,
Establishing shotAn establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects...
, and
Shot reverse shotShot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character , and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character...
.
Alternatives to continuity editing (non-traditional or experimental)
Early Russian filmmakers such as
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature.
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.
Alternatives to traditional editing were also the folly of early surrealist and
dadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
filmmakers such as
Luis BuñuelLuis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
(director of the 1929
Un Chien Andalou) and
René ClairRené Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
(director of 1924's
Entr'acte which starred famous dada artists
Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and
Man RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
). Both filmmakers, Clair and Buñuel, experimented with editing techniques long before what is referred to as "
MTVMTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
style" editing.
The
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard and
François TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
and their American counterparts such as
Andy WarholAndrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and
John CassavetesJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
also pushed the limits of editing technique during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. French New Wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960s used a carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of Hollywood films. Like its dada and surrealist predecessors,
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
editing often drew attention to itself by its lack of continuity, its demystifying self-reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they were watching a film), and by the overt use of
jump cutA jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative.
Editing techniques
Vsevolod PudovkinVsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of film making originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. Kubrick was quoted as saying: "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."
[Walker, Alexander, Stanley Kubrick Directs, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.]
- Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.-Early life:Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada,...
stipulates seven "rules of cutting" that a good editor should follow:[Dmytryk, Edward, On Film Editing, New York]
- "Rule 1: Never make a cut without a positive reason."
- "Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short."
[Dmytryk, p.23]
- "Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'."
Film editing is part of the creative
post-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
process of
filmmakingFilmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an
artArt is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
of
storytellingStorytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...
. Film editing is the only art that is unique to cinema, separating film-making from other art forms that preceded it (such as
photographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, theater,
danceDance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
,
writingWriting is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
, and directing), although there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms like
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
or
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
writing. Film editing is often referred to as the "invisible art"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/movies/awardsseason/06harr.html New York Times, Jan 6, 2008 ] because when it is well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work.
On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling shots into a coherent whole. A
film editor is a person who practices film editing by assembling the footage. However, the job of an editor isn’t simply to mechanically put pieces of a film together, cut off film
slatesA clapperboard is a device used in filmmaking and video production to assist in the synchronizing of picture and sound, and to designate and mark particular scenes and takes recorded during a production...
, 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.
With the advent of digital editing, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For instance, in past years, picture editors dealt only with just that—picture. Sound, music, and (more recently) visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the picture editor and director. However, digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the picture editor. It is common, especially on lower budget films, for the assistant editors or even the editor to cut in music, mock up visual effects, and add sound effects or other sound replacements. These temporary elements are usually replaced with more refined final elements by the sound, music, and visual effects teams hired to complete the picture.
Film editing is an art that can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages; become a laboratory for experimental cinema; bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance; create a point of view on otherwise obtuse events; guide the telling and pace of a story; create an illusion of danger where there is none; give emphasis to things that would not have otherwise been noted; and even create a vital subconscious emotional connection to the viewer, among many other possibilities.
Early experiments
Edwin S. PorterEdwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company...
is generally thought to be the American filmmaker who first put film editing to use. Porter worked as an electrician before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890s. Early films by
Thomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
(whose company invented a motion camera and projector) and others were short films that were one long, static, locked-down shot. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. There was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera. When Edison's motion picture studio wanted to increase the length of the short films, Edison came to Porter. Porter made the breakthrough film
Life of an American FiremanLife of an American Fireman is a short, silent film Edwin S. Porter made for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903...
in 1903. The film was among the first that had a plot, action, and even a closeup of a hand pulling a fire alarm.
Other films were to follow. Porter's ground-breaking film,
The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American action Western film by Edwin S. Porter. Twelve minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double...
is still shown in film schools today as an example of early editing form. It was produced in 1903 and was one of the first examples of dynamic, action editing - piecing together scenes shot at different times and places and for emotional impact unavailable in a static long shot. Being one of the first film hyphenates (film director, editor and engineer) Porter also invented and utilized some of the very first (albeit primitive) special effects such as double exposures, miniatures and split-screens.
Porter discovered important aspects of motion picture language: that the screen image does not need to show a complete person from head to toe and that splicing together two shots creates in the viewer's mind a contextual relationship. These were the key discoveries that made all non-live or non live-on-videotape narrative motion pictures and television possible—that shots (in this case whole scenes since each shot is a complete scene) can be photographed at widely different locations over a period of time (hours, days or even months) and combined into a narrative whole.
[Arthur Knight]Arthur Knight was a movie critic, film historian, professor and TV host.His book The Liveliest Art, first published in 1957, is a history of the cinema used as a text book at colleges and universities throughout the world.-Early life:...
(1957). p. 25. That is,
The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American action Western film by Edwin S. Porter. Twelve minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double...
contains scenes shot on sets of a telegraph station, a railroad car interior, and a dance hall, with outdoor scenes at a railroad water tower, on the train itself, at a point along the track, and in the woods. But when the robbers leave the telegraph station interior (set) and emerge at the water tower, the audience believes they went immediately from one to the other. Or that when they climb on the train in one shot and enter the baggage car (a set) in the next, the audience believes they are on the same train.
Sometime around 1918,
RussianThe Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
director
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
did an experiment that proves this point. (See Kuleshov Experiment) He took an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and intercut the shot with a shot of a bowl of soup, then with a child playing with a teddy bear, then with a shot an elderly woman in a casket. When he showed the film to people they praised the actor's acting—the hunger in his face when he saw the soup, the delight in the child, and the grief when looking at the dead woman.
[Arthur Knight]Arthur Knight was a movie critic, film historian, professor and TV host.His book The Liveliest Art, first published in 1957, is a history of the cinema used as a text book at colleges and universities throughout the world.-Early life:...
(1957). pp. 72-73. Of course, the shot of the actor was years before the other shots and he never "saw" any of the items. The simple act of juxtaposing the shots in a sequence made the relationship.
History of film editing technology
Before the widespread use of
non-linear editing systemIn video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
s, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film
workprintA workprint is a rough version of a motion picture, used by the film editor during the editing process. Such copies generally contain original recorded sound that will later be re-dubbed, stock footage as placeholders for missing shots or special effects, and animation tests for in-production...
(cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as a
MoviolaA Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.-History:...
, or
"flatbed" machineA flatbed editor is a type of machine used to edit film for a motion picture.Picture and sound rolls load onto separate motorized wheels, called "plates." Each set of plates moves forward or backward separately, or locked together to maintain synchronization between picture and sound...
such as a K.-E.-M. or
SteenbeckSteenbeck is a brand name that has become synonymous with a type of flatbed film editing suite which is usable with both 16 mm and 35 mm optical sound and magnetic sound film.The Steenbeck company was founded in 1931 by Wilhelm Steenbeck in Hamburg, Germany...
. Today, most films are edited digitally (on systems such as
AvidAVID stands for:* Advancement Via Individual Determination, a college-readiness system designed to increase the number of students who enroll in four-year colleges in the U.S....
or
Final Cut ProFinal Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and then Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X, runs on Mac personal computers powered by Mac OS X version 10.6.7 or later and using Intel processors...
) and bypass the film positive workprint altogether. In the past, the use of a film positive (not the original negative) allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as he or she wished, without the risk of damaging the original.
When the film workprint had been cut to a satisfactory state, it was then used to make an edit decision list (EDL). The negative cutter referred to this list while processing the negative, splitting the shots into rolls, which were then contact printed to produce the final film print or answer print. Today, production companies have the option of bypassing negative cutting altogether. With the advent of digital intermediate ("DI"), the physical negative does not necessarily need to be physically cut and hot spliced together; rather the negative is optically scanned into computer(s) and a cut list is conformed by a DI editor.
Editor's cut
There are several editing stages and the editor's cut is the first. An editor's cut (sometimes referred to as the "
Assembly edit" or "
Rough cut") is normally the first pass of what the final film will be when it reaches
picture lockPicture lock is a stage in editing a film or editing a television production. It is the stage prior to on-line editing when all changes to the film or television program cut have been done and approved. It is then sent to subsequent stages in the process, such as online editing and audio mixing...
. The film editor usually starts working while principal photography starts. Likely, prior to cutting, the editor and director will have seen and/or discussed "
dailiesDailies, in filmmaking, are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. They are so called because usually at the end of each day, that day's footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch for viewing the next day by the director and some members...
" (raw footage shot each day) as shooting progresses. Screening dailies gives the editor a ballpark idea of the director's intentions. Because it is the first pass, the editor's cut might be longer than the final film. The editor continues to refine the cut while shooting continues, and often the entire editing process goes on for many months and sometimes more than a year, depending on the film.
Director's cut
When shooting is finished, the
directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
can then turn his full attention to collaborating with the editor and further refining the cut of the film. This is the time that is set aside where the film editor's first cut is molded to fit the director's vision. In the United States, under
DGADirectors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
rules, directors receive a minimum of ten weeks after completion of principal photography to prepare their first cut.
While collaborating on what is referred to as the "director's cut", the director and the editor go over the entire movie with a fine-tooth comb; scenes and shots are re-ordered, removed, shortened and otherwise tweaked. Often it is discovered that there are
plot holeA plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot...
s, missing shots or even missing segments which might require that new scenes be filmed. Because of this time working closely and collaborating – a period that is normally far longer, and far more intimately involved, than the entire production and filming – most directors and editors form a unique artistic bond.
Final cut
Often after the director has had his chance to oversee a cut, the subsequent cuts are supervised by one or more producers, who represent the production company and/or
movie studioA movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
. There have been several conflicts in the past between the director and the studio, sometimes leading to the use of the "
Alan SmitheeAlan Smithee was an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project, coined in 1968. Until its use was formally discontinued in 2000, it was the sole pseudonym used by members of the Directors Guild of America when a director dissatisfied with the final product proved to...
" credit signifying when a director no longer wants to be associated with the final release.
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. Live coverage of a sporting event would be an example of footage that is very continuous. Since the live operators are cutting from one live feed to another, the physical action of the shots matches very closely. Many people regard inconsistencies in continuity as mistakes, and often the editor is blamed. In film, however, continuity is very nearly last on a film editor's list of important things to maintain.
Technically, continuity is the responsibility of the
script supervisorA script supervisor is a member of a film crew responsible for maintaining the motion picture's internal continuity and for recording the production unit's daily progress in shooting the film's screenplay...
and
film directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, 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 beer glass is in the appropriate state. The editor utilizes the script supervisor's notes during
post-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot.
Methods of montage
In
motion picture terminologyThe film industry is built upon a large number of technologies and techniques, drawing upon photography, stagecraft, music, and many other disciplines...
, a
montage (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.
There are at least three senses of the term:
- In French film
French Film is a 2008 British comedy film directed by Jackie Oudney and starring Anne-Marie Duff, Hugh Bonneville, Victoria Hamilton, Douglas Henshall and Eric Cantona. The film was shot in Spring 2007 at various locations around London including Waterloo station and the BFI Southbank.-Plot:Two...
practice, "montage" has its literal French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.
- In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.
- In classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
, a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.
Soviet montage
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
was among the very first to theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema — that which could be duplicated in no other medium — is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.
Although, strictly speaking, U.S. film director D.W. Griffith was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing — mastering
cross-cuttingCross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the...
to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a
dialecticDialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.
Montage sequence
A
montage sequence consists of a series of short shots that are edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed. One famous example of montage was seen in the 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, depicting the start of man's first development from apes to humans.
Continuity editing
What became known as the popular '
classical HollywoodClassical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as
The Birth of a NationThe Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay , and co-produced the film . It was released on February 8, 1915...
and
Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the
180 degree ruleIn filmmaking, the 180° rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line...
,
Establishing shotAn establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects...
, and
Shot reverse shotShot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character , and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character...
.
Alternatives to continuity editing (non-traditional or experimental)
Early Russian filmmakers such as
Lev KuleshovLev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature.
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.
Alternatives to traditional editing were also the folly of early surrealist and
dadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
filmmakers such as
Luis BuñuelLuis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
(director of the 1929
Un Chien Andalou) and
René ClairRené Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
(director of 1924's
Entr'acte which starred famous dada artists
Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and
Man RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
). Both filmmakers, Clair and Buñuel, experimented with editing techniques long before what is referred to as "
MTVMTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
style" editing.
The
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard and
François TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
and their American counterparts such as
Andy WarholAndrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and
John CassavetesJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
also pushed the limits of editing technique during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. French New Wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960s used a carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of Hollywood films. Like its dada and surrealist predecessors,
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
editing often drew attention to itself by its lack of continuity, its demystifying self-reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they were watching a film), and by the overt use of
jump cutA jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative.
Editing techniques
Vsevolod PudovkinVsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of film making originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. Kubrick was quoted as saying: "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."
[Walker, Alexander, Stanley Kubrick Directs, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.]
- Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.-Early life:Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada,...
stipulates seven "rules of cutting" that a good editor should follow:[Dmytryk, Edward, On Film Editing, New York]
- "Rule 1: Never make a cut without a positive reason."
- "Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short."
[Dmytryk, p.23]
- "Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'."
[Dmytryk, p.27]
- "Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'."
[Dmytryk, p.37]
- "Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continuing action."
[Dmytryk, p.38]
- "Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'."
[Dmytryk, p.44]
- "Rule 7: Substance first—then form."
[Dmytryk, p.145]
- According to Walter Murch
Walter Scott Murch is an American film editor and sound designer.-Early life:Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch , a painter. He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961...
, when it comes to film editing, there are six main criteria for evaluating a cut or deciding where to cut. They are (in order of importance, most important first, with notional percentage values.):
- Emotion (51%) — Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment?
- Story (23%) — Does the cut advance the story?
- Rhythm (10%) — Does the cut occur "at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and 'right'" (Murch, 18)?
- Eye-trace (7%) — Does the cut pay respect to "the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame" (Murch, 18)?
- Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) — Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule
In filmmaking, the 180° rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line...
?
- Three-dimensional space of action (4%) — Is the cut true to the physical/spatial relationships within the diegesis
Diegesis is a style of representation in fiction and is:# the world in which the situations and events narrated occur; and# telling, recounting, as opposed to showing, enacting.In diegesis the narrator tells the story...
?
Murch assigned the notional percentage values to each of the criteria. "Emotion, at the top of the list, is the thing that you should try to preserve at all costs. If you find you have to sacrifice certain of those six things to make a cut, sacrifice your way up, item by item, from the bottom."-Murch
See also
- 180 degree rule
In filmmaking, the 180° rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line...
- 30 degree rule
The 30° rule is a basic film editing guideline that states the camera should move at least 30° between shots of the same subject occurring in succession. This change of perspective makes the shots different enough to avoid a jump cut...
- A Roll (Footage)
- B Roll
- Cinematic techniques
- Basic Definitions of Terms :Aerial Shot:A shot taken from a crane, plane, or helicopter. Not necessarily a moving shot.Backlighting:The main source of light is behind the subject, silhouetting it, and directed toward the camera....
- Clapperboard
A clapperboard is a device used in filmmaking and video production to assist in the synchronizing of picture and sound, and to designate and mark particular scenes and takes recorded during a production...
- Compositing
Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today,...
(Keying)
- Cut
In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a cut is an abrupt, but usually trivial film transition from one sequence to another. It is synonymous with the term edit, though "edit" can imply any number of transitions or effects. The cut, dissolve and wipe serve as the three...
- Axial cut
An axial cut is a type of jump cut, where the camera suddenly moves closer to or further away from its subject, along an invisible line drawn straight between the camera and the subject. While a plain jump cut typically involves a temporal discontinuity , an axial cut is a way of maintaining the...
- Cross-cutting
Cross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the...
- Fast cutting
Fast cutting is a film editing technique which refers to several consecutive shots of a brief duration . It can be used to convey a lot of information very quickly, or to imply either energy or chaos...
- Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
- Long take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
- Match cut
A match cut, also called a graphic match, is a cut in film editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions in which an object in the two shots graphically match, often helping to establish a strong continuity of action and linking the two shots...
- Slow cutting
Slow cutting is a film editing technique which uses shots of long duration. Though it depends on context, it is estimated that any shot longer than about fifteen seconds will seem rather slow to viewers from Western cultures....
- Cutaway
- Edit decision list
An edit decision list or EDL used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing. The list contains an ordered list of reel and timecode data representing where each video clip can be obtained in order to conform the final cut....
(EDL)
- Film transition
- Dissolve
In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another. The terms fade-out and fade-in and are used to describe a transition to and from a blank image. This is in contrast to a cut where there is no such transition. A dissolve...
- L cut
An L cut, also known as a split edit, is an edit transition from one shot to another in film or video, where the picture and sound are synchronized but the transitions in each are not coincident. This is often done to enhance the aesthetics or flow of the film as L cuts allow the audience to see...
(split edit)
- Wipe
- Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
- Kuleshov Effect
The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing effect demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s.-Specifics of the Kuleshov effect:...
- List of film-related topics
- Motion Picture Editors Guild
The Motion Picture Editors Guild is the guild that represents freelance and staff motion picture film and television editors and other post-production professionals and story analysts throughout the United States...
(MPEG)
- Motion picture terminology
The film industry is built upon a large number of technologies and techniques, drawing upon photography, stagecraft, music, and many other disciplines...
- Moviola
A Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.-History:...
- Re-edited film
A re-edited film is a film that has been edited from the original theatrical release.-Types of re-editing:Films edited for format, length, and content....
- Scene
In TV and movies, a scene is generally thought of as the action in a single location and continuous time. Due to the ability to edit recorded visual works, it is typically much shorter than a stage play scene....
- Sequence
- Shot
- Establishing shot
An establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects...
- Insert
- Master shot
A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. It is often a long shot and can sometimes perform a double function as an establishing shot...
- Point of view shot
A point of view shot is a short film scene that shows what a character is looking at . It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction...
- Shot reverse shot
Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character , and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character...
- Video editing
The term video editing can refer to:* Linear video editing, using video tape* Non-linear editing system , using computers with video editing software* Offline editing* Online editing...
Wikibooks
- Mewa Film User's Guide
- Movie Making Manual
External links