Chapter 4: Editing; From Shot to Shot

Vsevolod Pudovkin

A Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. For him montage meant added meaning to the individual shots' content.

Sequence

A component of film narrative that maintains a unity of time, place, or dramatic action but introduces a discontinuity for example, a single dramatic action (a man go shopping) continues throughout a sequence but the locations change (a large department store, a jewelry shop, florist, a sporting goods store) and time is speeded up (shots of clocks on the wall reveal the passing of an entire afternoon).

180 degree rule (180 degree system)

A convention of narrative film making in which the director establishes an imaginary line running across the set; the director then keeps the camera on one side of this line for every shot taken so as to avoid making characters and objects appear to flip suddenly from one side of the screen to the other when the sequence is edited together and eventually projected on the screen.

Ivan Mozhukin

A great Russian actor who was part of Lev Kuleshov's experiment.

Dissolve

A transition from one shot to another in which the first shot fades out while the second shot fades in, creating a superimposition at the midway point.

Eye-line matching

A type of continuity editing that relies on the direction of one or more characters' glances to maintain spatial relationships from shot to shot; for instance, a character looking offscreen right in the first shot is followed in the second shot by another character looking offscreen left, the characters appear to be looking at each other even though they are in separate shots.

Graphic matching

A type of continuity editing that relies on the similarity of compositional shapes from one shot to the next to bridge the cut smoothly; for instance, a shot of a doorway is followed by a shot of another doorway: the two shots being matched by similar positions the two doorways occupy onscreen.

Wipe

A type of transition from one shot to another in which the second shot appears to push the first shot off the screen; these may take the form of a horizontal or vertical line moving across the screen, or they may take graphic shapes such as a star _____, a spiral _____, or an iris _____.

Shot/reverse shot pattern

An editing technique that records the interaction between two characters, usually a conversation, who are facing one another with one series of shots often taken over the shoulder of one character and another series of shots taken over the shoulder of the other character; note that the so-called _____ _____ is not actually taken from the truly opposite angle, because such an angle would violate the 180° system.

Matching on action

An editing technique that uses an action begun in the first shot to bridge the cut to the second shot; For example: a baseball thrown across the screen from left to right in the first shot enters the second shot from screen left and travels the image in a rightward direction.

Transitions

Any number of methods by which one shot is linked to the next.

Classical Hollywood style

Film studies defines this as the set of predominant formal techniques used by most Americans narrative film makers through the 20th century and to the present day. Relies on several editing principles to achieve its central goal: to keep audience members so wrapped up in the fictional world created on screen that they ceased to be conscious of watching a movie and, instead, believe that they are witnessing something real.

Montage

In the French definition, any type of editing; in the American definition, a rapidly cut, rather kaleidoscopic series of images that often condenses (but sometimes expands) time and space, such as a travel montage showing a characters progression across the United States in a matter of 20 seconds; in the Soviet definition, a dynamic, expressly political type of film editing that uses the dialectics, or conflicts, of a given situation (a thesis and its antithesis) to produce a revolutionary synthesis in the mind of the spectator.

Magazines

Lightproof containers that hold, feed, and take up film in the camera.

Sergei Eisenstein

Russian film maker who pioneered the use of montage and is considered among the most influential film makers in the history of motion pictures (1898-1948). For him shots were meant to collide; his style of montage was the opposite of smooth, apparently seamless continuity editing. Defined montage as a kind of dynamic editing used both to expose and explore the dialectics, or oppositional conflicts, of a given situation, and to create in the mind of the viewer a revolutionary synthesis. The most famous example of this is the "Odessa Steps" sequence from his film, Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Lev Kuleshov

Soviet Montage director who believed that the edit itself carried the meaning; discovered an effect involving image progression dubbed the "_____ Effect"; directed "Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West". Conducted an experiment involving the effects of montage on an audience's perception of emotion.

Fade-out

The gradual decrease in the strength and clarity of the film image or recorded sound; these usually begin with a clear image or sound, which then disappears to white or black diminishes to silence; often used as transitional devices between scenes.

Fade-in

The gradual increase in the strength and clarity of the film image or recorded sound; these generally begin with a pure white or pure black screen in the case of the image track and silence in the case of the soundtrack. often used as transitional devices between scenes.

Editing (cutting)

The process of splicing one shot to another.

Cut

The simplest form of transition from one shot to another; in filmmaking (as opposed to video), the first shot is literally _____ with a blade and taped to the second shot, which has been similarly trimmed; in video, this process happens electronically.

Iris-in

Transitional devices between shots and/or scenes in which the image appears first as a small circle in the center of the screen and expand outward until it fills the screen.

Iris-out

Transitional devices between shots and/or scenes in which the image appears first normally, and then a circle will expand inward until it fills the screen.

Editing matches

Ways to downplay the jarring effect of cutting.

1. Matching on action 2. Eye-line matching 3. Graphic matching

What are the 3 types of editing matches?

Dziga Vertov

a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist. His most famous film was Man with a Movie Camera (1929).

Continuity editing (invisible editing)

a set of editing practices that establish spatial and/or temporal continuity between shots; The various techniques that filmmakers employ to keep their narratives moving forward logically and smoothly, without jarring disruptions in space or time despite hundreds or even thousands of the discrete bits of celluloid called shots, and without making the audience aware that they are in fact watching a work of art.

Glance-object match

an eye-line match that occurs between a human being and the object they are supposed to be looking at; For example: a woman looks offscreen left in the first shot, and the second shot is of a ringing telephone.