Editing

Editing

In today's lesson we learnt about the history of editing and how editing can affect the viewer of a film.

Georges Melies was the first man to truly 'edit' a film in 1897 when he was filming a Bus, but during the film his camera jammed, when he fixed the camera the bus was gone and a Hurse was in its position. So when shown on film, the bus turned into a Hurse on screen. This would become the very first example of the 'Jump Cut'. Melies then used this feature to create disappearing and repairing effects in his movies.

Types of 'cuts' in Film

• The Hard Cut: Means simply cutting from point A to point B.
• The Jump Cut: A jump cut cuts from a frame in a clip to a later frame in the same clip or to a clip that looks very similar. In a stylistic format, a jump cut can mean different things; the passing of time or repetition over time. Commonly used in Action Films.
•  The J-Cut: J-cut means you hear the audio before you see the video that matches with that audio. It doesn’t mean you’re staring at a black screen. It just means you’re looking at clip A while hearing the audio from clip B.
• The L-Cut: L-cut means you’re still hearing the audio from a shot but you’re seeing a new shot. The viewer is looking at clip B while still hearing audio from clip A.
• The Popcorn Cut: Popcorn cutting, which is generally reserved for comedy, is very simple: If a character is talking, they are onscreen. There are no reaction shots while someone else is talking. An extreme version of popcorn cutting is that to show a character’s reaction at a key point in the middle of the dialogue, you show the reaction, break the dialogue, and then cut back to the character speaking. Popcorn cutting is also sometimes used in fast-paced dialogue.

The 180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule, camera position and eyeline. When you film a scene using separate shots, it's important that people understand where everything in the scene is. You could just show your scene in long shot, but that would mean we couldn’t see facial expressions, or details of what characters are doing. Using the same shot for a long scene of dialogue can also be very boring to the viewer, it's much more interesting to the viewer if you use multiple shots and show characters reactions.

Examples Of Good Editing

The Church fight scene in Kingsman: The Secret Service is one of my personal favourite movie scenes because of how well it is choreographed and the quality of the editing. I love this scene because I am able to see exactly what is going on and who he is fighting, unlike many modern fight scenes that use constant jump cuts and shaky camera to hide poor choreography and overall ruining the scene.  

The final fight scene int The Raid 2 is also an extremely well done scene for the exact same reasons.

Examples Of Bad Editing

This scene in The Expendables is an example of bad editing during in a fight scene due to the over use of jump cuts and a shaky camera which hides the action from the viewer and is even slightly disorientating.