Editing

In order for our thriller movie to be filmed, we need to understand how editing effects a film, and the different styles of editing.

Editing is the term given to describe the process of looking at all the footage which has been shot and then placing it all into the correct order.
Two areas of editing are:

1. Speed of editing
2. Style of editing

Speed of editing
When we watch a film, we see many different scenes joined together, some of these scenes may be a few seconds, or they may be a few minutes. The length of the scene changes with what's happening in the film, and will help determine the mood of what is happening, for example, if a relaxed mood is desired, the scenes last longer and change less frequency.

Style of editing

This is how the scenes of a film are connected together:

• Straight cut
• Fade-out, where the screen fades to black, can be used to show time passing.
• Dissolve, where one image is slowly brought in beneath another one.
• Wipe cut, where one part of the screen moves to wipe across the other.
• Jump cut, where the audience's attention is brought into focus on something suddenly.

The most used of these is the straight cut. Certain ty

pes of editing may appear in one genre more than another, for example, wipe cuts often appear in comedies.

Soviet montage

Audiences automatically join different scenes together in a logical order, for example, if we are shown a shot of a house, and then an armchair, we automatically assume the armchair is within the house we have seen.

Soviet montage is where this idea is played around with. Lev Kuleshov, a Russian filmmaker, in the 1920s experimented wit the idea of audiences putting scenes in logical order, by showing an audience a picture of a man. He then showed them a pi

cture of some food, and the audience though the man was hungry. They were shown again the man, followed by a dead woman. The audience then decided the man looked sad. Finally, the man was shown again, then a baby was shown, and the audience thought he now looked affectionate. The man's expression never changed, but due to the audience's natural desire to make the picture link logically meant the man looke

d different to them each time.

Sergei Eisentein, another Russian filmmaker, thought a film was more effective if shots were not obviously linked together, and so the audience will be more involved in the film, trying to work it out.

Graphic match
One way of joining two shots together is by using a graphic match. This is when two consecutive shots look similar.

Examples of graphic matches

Vertigo

Psycho