AN EDITING THEORY PRIMER

74 107 googleplus4 reddit1 blogger1

There’s a science behind our art, based on theories postulated throughout cinematic history.
We’ll learn that history, the terms of the craft and how to put them into practice.

In the earliest days of cinema, when film was new, no one clearly perceived the options and
limitations of the genre. The camera was placed in an optimal position to capture activity and
then turned on. However cinematographers quickly realized the camera could provide more than
just one perspective without confusing the audience. The camera could be moved, irrelevant
moments could be dropped. Both time and space could be compressed. But what worked and
what didn’t? What felt right and why? Let’s look at the evolution of editing theories and what
they mean to us today.

Evolution of Editing Theory

George Méliès was an early film cinematographer and theorist. Many recognize him for
discovering the “stop trick,” in which you stop the camera, change something and start up again,
thus making it seem like objects appear and disappear. He also experimented with other
techniques like hand-painting frames, multiple exposures and time lapse. He was also a firm
believer that films could use a series of tableaus, or complete scenes captured in single shots, to
form longer stories. “Linked tableaus” as they were referred to, were scenes placed in
progression to connect events. His 1898 short, “A Trip to the Moon,” incorporates these ideas.
Building on this concept were artists like Edwin S. Porter, who learned to tell multiple stories at
the same time and cross-cut between them, forming a larger, overarching plot. The 1903 short
“The Great Train Robbery” uses simultaneous action to show what’s going on in two places at
the same time.
By 1910-20, the film bug had spread across Europe and Asia, giving rise in particular to a
massive movement in Russia. Lev Kuleshov and others like him broke down the scene into
montages of smaller shots, all different and yet related. This allowed the viewer to approach the
action from many angles at once and thus gain the greatest amount of insight. Kuleshov found
that the audience could be emotionally manipulated through the planned juxtaposition of shots,
but how the information was presented changed the perception of the individual shots as well.
Viewers would interpret the look on a man’s face differently depending on what shots were
placed next to it. We refer to this as the Kuleshov Effect.

...it’s obvious that there’s more meaning to editing

than just placing shots next to each other.

Vsevolod Pudovkin would later postulate that there are essentially five types of montage
possible, each rearing different meaning to the viewer. These are: Cuts for contrast or the joining
of a shot against a dramatically different shot so the viewer compares them, Cuts for parallelism
that connect one shot or scene with another that has similar elements so the viewer draws a
connection between both instances, Cuts for symbolism where an item or feeling in one shot is
used to explain, emphasize or clarify an item or feeling in another scene, Simultaneity, in which
two events that are taking place at the same time are intertwined and Leitmotif or cutting
between related concepts so that a theme emerges among them. His film, “Mother” (1926) is an
important classic which is often used to illustrate these theories.

At this point it’s obvious that there’s more meaning to editing than just placing shots next to each
other. Sergei Eisenstein argues that shots and scenes each contain their own ideas, concepts and
feelings, but when strategically placed against one another, the viewer is able to deduce a third
and entirely new meaning. This concept, which he termed the intellectual montage is well
represented by “Battleship Potemkin,” which he made in 1925.

In contrast to these artistic Russian postulates, another philosophical movement took place
mainly in France and Italy arguing that the best way to approach the true context is to show as
much as possible without interference so the viewer can draw their conclusions from a more
realistic perspective.Theorist and critic André Bazin was part of this movement and a firm
believer of the long take, an editing approach which fundamentally contrasts with montage. His
approach meant that the camera should essentially act as the eyes of a neutral viewer, and yet
still portray the filmmaker’s meaning. François Truffaut’s, “The 400 Blows” (1959) is a prime
representation of this philosophy. While not as popular today, it is certainly a valid approach,
and has been used quite effectively in many instances. Think of the the slow cinema movement
pioneered by directors like Gus Van Sant. Indeed, it is also seen often in music videos of all
things, where the single shot concept has been used almost as a rebellion against the fast and
furious cutting of old.
These notions encapsulate the primary and perhaps pinnacle of most modern editing theory.
While you’re trying to decide which shot to place next to the other to produce the desired
emotional and motivational content, you are both looking to find the exact frame that will either
continue or contrast the action from the previous shot and at the same time thinking about what
will be derived from the big picture as a whole. Will a jump cut excite your audience, unsettle
them or just confuse them? Is the overall story and the theme of the work best served by placing
an action scene right after a slow moment, or intercutting between them? What message is sent
by using either of these methods? These are the questions that should be continuously addressed
during post-production.

Editing theory in Practice

Modern practice says there’s an appropriate time to use each style. Let’s start with wide shot of
a room as two people walk and talk. Half way through the conversation someone picks a gun up
off a table in the background and shoots the other person, then we see the villain make
themselves a drink and sit around until the cops show up and arrest him. You later find out
through verbal exposition that someone was watching the whole thing and he gave up because
he knew he was seen. It’s a valid approach, but your audience might feel a little cheated. It’s not
very exciting and it just doesn’t work cinematically.

Learn the 8 Secrets to Making a Stellar First Video

These simple hints can make even your first video look like a professional production. Read
more..
Instead, let’s try a bit of editing montage. We again see our characters talking. Now we’ll use an
insert shot to call out something that already exists in the scene of our shooter’s eyes as he
glances down. We’ll use a motivated cut — one that has a visual or audio incentive to be used —
to show the item and its location: It’s the gun on the table. A close up shot, used to see greater
detail, shows the table, the gun and the villain’s leg behind it. This table is the very table the he is
standing next to. Thus we’ve built both understanding and tension. Let’s go back to the wide for
a while and slowly build anticipation of the oncoming conflict. The perp. looks back down at the
gun. We’ll use this look and go to a thematically matching shot of our outside observer looking
into their binoculars. “Sight” and “looking” have morphed into a theme.

This cutaway shows us what’s happening outside the scene. Next, a point of view shot shows the
audience what the watcher is looking at. It’s the window outside the room, and the victim has
just crossed to it. We then go back to the wide shot in the room where we match cut, aligning the
movement from one shot to the next, and see the victim just coming to rest at the window; they
are looking out.

Let’s pick up the pacing now and build the tension to a breaking point. Note the irony — we’re
going to speed up the scene by extending time. Here realtime and screentime are rather different.
We’ll use a thematic montage to bring the scene together. The perp. looks back at the gun. The
victim looks up and out the window. The binoculars point of view show she’s looking right at
the voyeur. The voyeur looks back through the eyepiece. Now some parallel editing to show all
that is taking place with our three characters in a single instant of time. The victim is taken back
and goes to reach for her companion to join her at the window. The perp. gets fed up and reaches
for the gun. The voyeur is panicked and their hand reaches for the phone. The gun goes off. A
ringing sound is heard, the victim falls slowly to the floor. The rest of the scene must release the
tension and resolve the story.

We use another motivated cutaway of the phone at the police station ringing and an officer
picking it up. We’ll cut back to the outside window where the shooter stands over his victim,
then looks out the window and notices the watcher. The watcher has the phone in their hand. The
shooter knows he’s been caught, and resolves himself to his fate. We then cut to a drink being
poured and match it with one last tear falling from our victim. It’s an intellectual montage where
shots represent the bigger meaning letting us know that it’s all over for everyone. Finally, we’ll
end the scene with a cross dissolve, or fade between shots, to help show that some time has
passed. The police are putting the handcuffs on the shooter and leading him out.

This scene was much better served by using the montage style of cutting. So what about the long
take? When would that be appropriate? Let’s use one more scene in a single shot. We’ll start at
some hands in handcuffs. As they back away from the camera, we see it is our shooter. We
follow his face as he walks and walks, in and out of pools of light. As he walks his expression
turns from stern neutrality to sadness and loneliness, seclusion. Finally he turns and we see him
led into a cell where the door is closed. The guards walk away, and so does the camera, returning
on the path it just followed as the prisoner remains locked in his cell and fades into the distance.
We’ve told all we needed to and conveyed all the emotion necessary in one single shot, and its
length underscores the theme of the scene. The isolation, the loneliness, the “long time” to come.
We could have used multiple shots here, but it would have been overkill.

While the montage and the long take are fundamentally opposed, they should not be considered
mutually exclusive. An editor should recognize that effectively combining them is possible and
in some cases helpful. This is the heart of editing theory. When we understand “why” editing
 works, the how becomes almost instinctive, our cuts become precise, our meaning apparent and
our audience becomes even further drawn into our presentation.

Sidebar: The modern master

Edward Dmytryk (1908 - 1999) is considered an editing and directing legend in the film industry,
and his book “On Film Editing” is considered essential reading in most film schools today. In it
he postulates that there’s only one perfect place to edit a shot, and puts forth his seven rules of
film editing. It’s true that he was focusing on editing film and not video, and thus some of his
statements are less important today than others. Nevertheless his theories are still considered
essential knowledge in editing, and indeed integrate seamlessly into the ideas we’ve discussed in
the article.

Peter Zunitch is an award-winning editor working in New York.

Issue:

 September 2015
Maries Georges Jean
Méliès was born in
Paris in 1861 and from
a very early age he
showed a particular
interest in the arts
which led, as a boy, to
a place at the Ecole
des Beaux Arts in Paris
where Méliès showed
particular interest in
stage design and
puppetry.

In 1884, Méliès
continued his studies
abroad, in London at
the request of his
parents - they insisted
he learn English after
which they intended
him to work at his
father’s footwear
business. While in
London, he developed
a keen interest in
stage conjury after
witnessing the work of
Maskelyne and Cooke.

On his return to Paris

he worked at his
father’s factory and
took over as manager
when his father
retired. His position
meant that he was
able to raise enough
money to buy the
famous Theatre
Robert Houdin when it
was put up for sale in
1888.

From that point on

Méliès worked full
time as a theatrical
showman whose
performances
revolved around
magic and illusionist
techniques which he
studied while in
London as well as
working on his own
tricks.

When the Lumière

brothers unveiled
their Cinématographe
to the public on
December 28 1895
Méliès was a member
of the audience. What
he witnessed clearly
had a profound effect
upon him. After the
show he approached
the Lumière Brothers
with a view to buying
their machine - they
turned him down.

Determined to
investigate moving
pictures, Méliès
sought out Robert Paul
in London and viewed
his camera - projector
building his own, soon
afterwards. He was
able to present his
first film screening on
April 4th 1896.

Méliès began by
screening other
peoples films - mainly
those made for the
Kinetoscope but within
months he was
making and showing
his own work, his first
films being one reel,
one shot views lasting
about a minute.

top

Méliès’ principle
contribution to cinema
was the combination
of traditional
theatrical elements to
motion pictures - he
sought to present
spectacles of a kind
not possible in live
theatre.

In the Autumn of
1896, an event
occurred which has
since passed into film
folklore and changed
the way Méliès looked
at filmmaking. Whilst
filming a simple street
scene, Méliès camera
jammed and it took
him a few seconds to
rectify the problem.
Thinking no more
about the incident,
Méliès processed the
film and was struck by
the effect such a
incident had on the
scene - objects
suddenly appeared,
disappeared or were
transformed into other
objects.

Méliès discovered
from this incident that
cinema had the
capacity for
manipulating and
distorting time and
space. He expanded
upon his initial ideas
and devised some
complex special
effects.

He pioneered the first

double exposure (La
caverne Maudite,
1898), the first split
screen with
performers acting
opposite themselves
(Un Homme de tete,
1898), and the first
dissolve (Cendrillon,
1899).

Méliès tackled a wide

range of subjects as
well as the fantasy
films usually
associated with him,
including advertising
films and serious
dramas. He was also
one of the first
filmmakers to present
nudity on screen with
“Apres le Bal”.

Faced with a shrinking

market once the
novelty of his films
began to wear off,
Méliès abandoned film
production in 1912. In
1915 he was forced to
turn his innovative
studio into a Variety
Theatre and resumed
his pre-film career as
a Showman.

In 1923 he was
declared bankrupt and
his beloved Theatre
Robert Houdin was
demolished. Méliès
almost disappeared
into obscurity until the
late 1920’s when his
substantial
contribution to cinema
was recognised by the
French and he was
presented with the
Legion of Honour and
given a rent free
apartment where he
spent the remaining
years of his life.

Georges Méliès died in

1938 after making
over five hundred
films in total -
financing, directing,
photographing and
starring in nearly
every one.

top

f you’ve ever attended film school, or if you’re here to learn for yourself, you will always hear the rule of
never using a jump cut in your film. Though it has its merit, know that the rule is not mandatory.

According to Wikipedia:

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subjects are
taken from camera positions that vary only slightly.

Legendary filmmaker Georges Méliès accidentally created the jump cut in 1896. He had taken his
homemade film camera to the streets of Paris. As he was filming a bus driving through a tunnel, his camera
jammed. When the film began to roll again, the bus had already driven by, and another vehicle was in its place.
When watching the footage, Méliès was blown away as it appeared that a bus had instantly transformed into a
buggy. Using his experience as a magician, Méliès used this newfound technique in his film, The Haunted
Castle.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDITING

Although the earliest films in cinema were done in one shot without any editing, cutting
is so fundamental to the medium that it began to emerge relatively quickly. There was a
basic disparity between the amount of film that a camera's magazine could hold and the
evolving desire of filmmakers and audiences for longer and more elaborate story films.
Only by editing shots together could longer narrative forms be achieved.A Trip to the
Moon(1914), directed by Georges Méliès (1861–1938), for example, creates a narrative
by assembling a series of scenes, with each scene filmed in a single shot. The edit points
occur between the scenes, in order to link them together.
Life of an American Fireman(1903), directed by Edwin S. Porter (1870–1941),
presents the same narrative events—a fireman rescuing a woman from a burning
building—as seen first from inside the building and then from camera setups outside
the building, repeating the same narrative action. From the standpoint of continuity as it
would develop in cinema, this duplication of event was a deviant use of editing,
although other early films feature this kind of overlapping action. It demonstrated,
however, the manner in which cutting could impose its own laws of time and space on
narrative.
Porter'sThe Great Train Robbery(1903) follows a band of Western outlaws robbing a
train and interrupts the chronology of the action with a cutaway showing the rescue of a
telegraph operator whom the outlaws earlier had tied up. Following the cutaway, Porter
introduces a second line of action, showing the roundup of a posse and the pursuit of the
outlaws. Film historians commonly cite this as an early example of parallel editing,
showing two lines of narrative action happening at the same time, although Porter's use
of this device here is ambiguous. It is not clear that he means for the parallel editing to
establish that the two lines of action are in fact happening simultaneously. In other
respects, editing inThe Great Train Robberyremains very primitive, with cuts used only
to join scenes and with no intercutting inside a scene.
In contrast with Porter, D. W. Griffith (1875–1948) freed the camera from the
conventions of stage perspective by breaking the action of scenes into many different
shots and editing these according to the emotional and narrative rhythms of the action.
Griffith explored the capabilities of editing in the films he made at Biograph studio
from 1908 to 1913, primarily the use of continuity matches to link shots smoothly and
according to their dramatic and kinesthetic properties. Cutting from full-figure shots to
a close-up accentuated the drama, and matching the action on a cut as a character walks
from an exterior into a doorway and, in the next shot, enters an interior set enabled
Griffith to join filming locations that were physically separated but adjacent in terms of
the time and place of the story.
Griffith became famous for his use of crosscutting in the many "rides to the rescue" that
climax his films. InThe Girl and Her Trust(1912), for example, Griffith cuts back and
forth from a pair of robbers, who have abducted the heroine and are escaping on a
railroad pump car, to the hero, who is attempting to overtake them by train. By
intercutting these lines of action, Griffith creates suspense, and by shortening the
lengths of the shots, he accelerates the pace. Crosscutting furnished a foundation for
narrative in cinema, and there is little structural difference between what Griffith did
here and what a later filmmaker such as Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) does inJaws(1975).
Griffith extended his fluid use of continuity editing and crosscutting in his epicsThe
Birth of a Nation(1915) andIntolerance(1916). The latter film is a supreme example of
crosscutting, which is here used to tell four stories set in different time periods in
simultaneous fashion.
The Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948) wrote that Griffith's crosscutting
embodied the essential class disparity of acapitalist society. He meant that the lines of
action in Griffith's editing remained separated, like the classes under capitalism.
Inspired by the October Revolution, Eisenstein and other Soviet filmmakers developed
in the 1910s and 1920s a more radical approach to editing than Griffith had
countenanced. Griffith had championed facial expression and used close-ups to
showcase it, but Lev Kuleshov (1899–1970), teaching at the Moscow Film School,
proclaimed that editing itself could essentially create facial expression and the
impression of an acting performance. The "Kuleshov effect" has become part of the
basic folkloreof cinema. Kuleshov allegedly took a strip of film showing an actor's
emotionless face and intercut it with shots of other objects—a bowl of soup, a woman
grieving at a gravestone, a child playing with a toy—and the edited sequence
(according to Kuleshov) led audiences to remark on the skill of the actor, who looked
hungry when he saw the soup, sad at the sight of the woman, and happy when he saw
the child. Because the face remained unchanged, Kuleshov announced that his

SERGEI EISENSTEIN
b. Riga, Russian Empire (now Latvia), 23 January 1898, d. 11
February 1948
Sergei Eisenstein is a wholly unique figure in cinema history. He was a filmmakeranda
theoretician of cinema who made films and wrote voluminously about their structure
and the nature of cinema. Both his filmmaking and his writing (which fills several
volumes) have been tremendously influential.
Frustrated by the creative limitations of his work in the theater, Eisenstein turned to
cinema and in 1925 completed his first feature,Stachka(Strike), which depicted the
plight of oppressed workers. Eisenstein's next two films are the ones by which he
remains best known,Bronenosets Potyomkin(Battleship Potemkin, 1925)
andOktyabr(Ten Days That Shook the WorldandOctober, 1927), each depicting
political rebellion against czarist rule.
Eisenstein believed that editing was the foundation of film art. For Eisenstein, meaning
in cinema lay not in the individual shot but only in the relationships among shots
established by editing. Translating a Marxist political perspective into the language of
cinema, Eisenstein referred to his editing as "dialectical montage" because it aimed to
expose the essential contradictions of existence and the political order. Because conflict
was essential to the political praxis of Marxism, the idea of conflict furnished the logic
of Eisenstein's shot changes, which gives his silent films a rough, jagged quality. His
shots do not combine smoothly, as in the continuity editing of D. W. Griffith and
Hollywood cinema, but clash and bang together. Thus, his montages were eminently
suited to depictions of violence, as inStrike,Potemkin, andTen Days. In his essays
Eisenstein enumerated the numerous types of conflict that he found essential to cinema.
These included conflicts among graphic elements in a composition and between shots,
and conflict of time and space created in the editing process and by filming with
different camera speeds.
As a political filmmaker, Eisenstein was interested in guiding the viewer's emotions
and thought processes. Thus, his metric and rhythmic montages were supplemented
with what he called "tonal" and "intellectual" montage, in which he aimed for subtle
emotional effects and to convey more abstract ideas.Ten Daysrepresents Eisenstein's
most extensive explorations of intellectual montage, as he creates a series of visual
metaphors to characterize the political figures involved in the October Revolution, such
as shots that compare Alexander Kerensky with a peacock.
Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1930s accompanied cultural and artistic
repression, which forced Eisenstein, now criticized as a formalist, to recant the radical
montage style of his silent films. Thus his last films,Aleksandr Nevskiy(Alexander
Nevsky, 1938) andIvan Groznyy IandII(Ivan the Terrible Part One[1944]
andTwo[1958]) lack the aggressive, visionary editing of his work in the silent period.
Although he completed only seven features, these contain some of the most famous
sequences ever committed to film, such as the massacre on the Odessa steps inPotemkin.
Together, Eisenstein's films and essays represent the supreme expression of the
capabilities and power of montage in the cinema.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Stachka(Strike, 1925),Bronenosets Potyomkin(Battleship Potemkin,
1925),Oktyabr(Ten Days That Shook the WorldandOctober, 1927),Ivan Groznyy I(Ivan
the Terrible Part One, 1944),Ivan Groznyy II(Ivan the Terrible Part Two, 1958)

FURTHER READING
Bordwell, David.The Cinema of Eisenstein. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1993.
Eisenstein, Sergei.Film Form. Translated by Jay Leyda. New York: Harvest, 1969.
——.The Film Sense. Translated by Jay Leyda. New York: Harvest, 1969.
Leyda, Jay, ed.Film Essays and a Lecture. New York and Washington: Praeger, 1970.
Taylor, Richard.October. London: British Film Institute, 2002.
Stephen Prince

Sergei Eisenstein.

experiment proved that editing had created the meanings viewers attributed to the
sequence.
While it is extremely doubtful that Kuleshov's experiment worked exactly as he
claimed (for one thing, it is likely that the actor's face actually contained an ambiguous
expression since Kuleshov had taken the footage from an existing film), the Soviet
filmmakers of the 1920s followed Kuleshov's lead in fashioning a much more
aggressive method of editing than what they had found in the films of Griffith.
Eisenstein believed that editing or montage was the essence of cinema, and beginning
with his first film,Stachka(Strike, 1925), and continuing most famously
withBronenosets Potyomkin(Battleship Potemkin, 1925), he created an editing style
that he called "dialectical montage" that was abrupt and jagged and did not aim for the
smooth continuity of Griffith-style cutting. The massacre of townspeople on the Odessa
Steps inPotemkinexemplifies the principles of dialectical montage and is possibly the
most famous montage in the history of cinema. The jaggedness of Eisenstein's editing
in this sequence captures the emotional and physical violence of the massacre, but he
also aimed to use editing to suggest ideas, a style he termed "intellectual montage." The
massacre sequence concludes with three shots of statues of stone lions edited to look
like a single lion rising up and roaring, embodying the idea of the wrath of the people
and the voice of the revolution.
Although Eisenstein's sound films,Aleksandr Nevskiy(Alexander Nevsky, 1938)
andIvan Groznyy IandII(Ivan the Terrible Part One[1944] andTwo[1958]), do not
exhibit the radical editing of his silent films, Eisenstein's approach to montage—the
extreme way he would fracture the action into tiny, brief shots—proved to be
tremendously influential. The gun battles in Peckinpah'sThe Wild Bunch, edited by Lou
Lombardo (1932–2002), was quite consciously based on Eisenstein, and the
hyperactive editing of much contemporary film, with edit points only a few frames
apart, is part of Eisenstein's legacy.
The dominant style of editing practiced during the classical Hollywood period, from the
1930s to the 1950s, was quite different from Soviet-style montage. It is sometimes
called "invisible editing" because the edit points are so recessive and so determined by
the imperative of seamless continuity. Hollywood-style editing carefully matches
inserts and close-ups to the physical relations of characters and objects as seen in a
scene's master shot, and follows the 180-degree rule (keeping camera setups on one
side of the line of action) so that the right–left coordinates of screen geography remain
consistent across shot changes. Cut points typically follow the flow of dialogue, and
shot–reverse shot editing uses the eyeline match to connect characters who are
otherwise shown separately in close-ups. This style of editing assured the utmost clarity
about the geography of the screen world and the communication of essential story
information. For these reasons, it is sometimes called "point-of-view" editing or
"continuity editing." That it became the standard editing style of the Hollywood system
is evident in the fact that it can be found in films across genres, directors, and studios.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, films of the French New Wave introduced a more
aggressive editing style than was typical of the Hollywood studios.À bout de
souffle(Breathless, 1960), directed by Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930), used jump cuts that
left out parts of the action to produce discontinuities between shots, and American
directors a decade later assimilated this approach in pictures such asBonnie and
Clyde(1967) andEasy Rider(1969). As a result, by the 1970s the highly regulated
point-of-view editing used in classical Hollywood began to break down as an industry
standard, and the cutting style of American films became more eclectic, exhibiting a
mixture of classical continuity and more abrupt, collage-like editing styles.

Read
more: http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Criticism-Ideology/Editing-THE-
DEVELOPMENT-OF-EDITING.html#ixzz4YphgGI2f