In a film each scene may last a matter of seconds, or it could continue for minutes but the length of each sequence establishes the pace of the film moving the action along. The speed of editing will help to determine the mood of what is taking place on screen.
If the audience was to feel anxiety and suspense the editing will be quick and the scenes/shots changing frequently. For example in an action sequence like 'The Bourne Ultimatum'
2. No editing - one shot - Russian Ark
In the Russian Ark there is no edit and everything is captured in one shot. It was filmed entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum using a single 96 minute Steadicam sequence shot (one shot). The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. The storyline starts on winters day, a small party of men and women arrive by horse-drawn carriage to a minor side entrance of the winter palace. The narrator (the man giving his point of view that is always in the first person) meets another spectral but visible outsider "The European" and follows him through numerous rooms of the palace. Each room represents different periods of Russian history, however the periods are not in chronological order.
3. Trailers - The Man in Iron Mask
A trailer is the same as a preview, this is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be shown in the future at a cinema. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long because patrons tended to leave the theatre after the films ended, but the name has stuck. Trailers are now shown before the film begins.
An example of a trailer that was released in 1998 is The Man in The Iron Mask which is shown below. The Man in the iron mask is an adventurous film which was filmed and released at least three time, first in 1939 later it was filmed in 1977 and then it was directed, produced and written again in 1998 by Randall Wallace. This film was more successful the third time filmed because Leonardo DiCaprio was in it and at that time he was famous for being in the film “Titanic”. The film attempts to explain the mystery of the Man in The Iron Mask, using a plot more closely related to 1929 Fairbanks’ version (The Iron Mask) and the 1939 by James Whale. This film was about King Louis XIV of France who bankrupted the country with his unpopular wars and it was about his identical twin.
The story line is three musketeers sneak into an island prison and arrange the escape of a mysterious prisoner; a man in an iron mask. They replace him with a corpse in a matching iron mask and pretending it’s a plague ridden, burn it so the guards will not know the face behind the iron mask. They take the young man to a safe house in the countryside and unmask him Philippe, the identical twin of King Louis. While he is identical to his brother Philippe is compassionate and gentle. Aramis reveals that Philippe was sent away by his father, King Louis XIII to save France from dynastic warfare. Later, when Louis discovered of Philippe’s existence he was too superstitious to have his own brother murdered so instead he devised a way to keep him hidden. Aramis, at time still serving as a musketeer and clad in black uniform, the only thing Philippe remembers, was the one who took him away to prison, an act which has haunted him ever since.
4. Opening of films - Spiderman
Spiderman is an American superhero film that was released in 2002, the film was directed by Sam Raimi and written by David Koepp. Spiderman was based on Marvel Comics character of the same name, the film stars Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, a high-school student who turns to crimefighting after developing spider-like powers. The filming of Spiderman took place in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City from 8th January to 30th June 2001 and was later released on May, 3rd 2002. The film became a critical and financial success with $821.7 million worldwide, it was 2002s third highest-grossing film and is the thirty third highest-grossing film of all times. This film was one of the most successful in 2002, the film reached $100 million in its first weekend, the largest opening weekend gross of all time and the most successful film based on a comic book. After the first Spider-Man there were two more sequels Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, a reboot titled The Amazing Spider-Man was released on 3rd July 2012
5. Action sequences - Psycho (shower scene)
An action sequence is an expression that resolves to a sequence of actions. In this video the woman's shocked face indicated that she is scared and someone is trying to do something to her and in this case, she is getting attacked while she is in the shower and is shocked because she didn't see it coming.
6. Slow to fast editing - The good, the bad and the ugly
In the good, the bad and the ugly it starts of at a slow edit where the two characters stare at each other and gradually gets fast. This way of editing allows the audience to know that something is going to happen, when it gradually starts getting faster.
The good, the bad and the ugly is an italian film that was made released in 1996. The storyline of the film revolves around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold amid and the violent chaos of the gunfights, hangings, American Civil War battles and prison camps. The film was a co-production between companies in Italy, Spain and West Germany.
7. Style of editing - straight cut
The most common type of edit, the straight cut results in one image being replaced instantly by another. Straight cuts are often used when two or more characters are talking, cutting back and forth between individuals.
8. Dissolves
A dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another. A dissolve overlaps two shots for the duration of the effect, usually at the end of one scene and the beginning of the next, but may be used in montage sequences also. The use of dissolving is generally held to indicate that a period of time has passed between the two scenes.
9. Fades
A video fade is when a shot gradually fades to (or from) a single colour, usually black or white. A fade is different to a cross fade, which is a transition directly between two shots rather than one shot to a colour.
A fade occurs when the picture gradually turns to a single colour, usually black or when a picture gradually appears on screen. Fade ins generally occur at the beginning of a film or act while fade outs are usually found at the end of a film or act.
The "fade from black" and "fade to black" are ubiquitous in film and television. They usually signal the beginning and end of a scene. The timing of the fades indicates the importance of the change in time and/or location between scenes — a slower fade with more time spent on black indicates a more significant end/beginning. A fairly quick fade to and from black could indicate a time lapse of a few minutes or hours, whereas a long drawn-out fade indicates a much bigger change.
Dissolves
A lap dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another with a moment of both images superimposed over each, sometimes is used to create a more poetic mood, or a passage of time. The traditional transition for flashbacks. Jump dissolve are the same as a jump cut but using dissolve instead of a straight cut.
Fade to Black & White
A fade to black and white is a dissolve in which an image slowly dissolves to black screen. It creates a strong sense of closure to a scene.
Straight cuts
Straight cuts are the most common type of edit, the straight cut results in one image being replaced instantly by another.
11. Wipes - Star Wars
A wipe involves one shot replacing another, traveling from one side of the frame to another. A common type of wipe of this creates the illusion of a camera passing through the ceiling of the bottom floor of a multi-story house to the floor above. in this case shot A would consist of the camera rising to the ceiling, and shot B would have the camera rising from the ground. A wipe transition give the impression the camera is passing between the floors of a house. A very good example of wipes is from the Star Wars film, this shows all the wipes that have been used in the film. It shows one image being wiped which resembles an eye opening or closing.
12. Jump cut - a bout de soufflé (Jean Luc Godard)
A jump cut is where the audience's attention is brought into focus on something very suddenly, this occurs by breaking the continuity editing this is known as discontinuity making it appear as if the section of the sequence has been removed.
A bout de souffle is a 1960 French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, It was his first feature-length work and one of the earliest, most influential of the French New Wave. At the time, the film attracted much attention for its bold visual style and the innovative use of jump cuts. A fully restored version of the film was released in the U.S for the 50th anniversary of the film in May 2010.When originally released in France, the film had 2,082,760 cinema views.
Graphic match is used to continuously transition two successive shots. A graphic match creates a cut between two shots that juxtapose their graphically similar images. The successive shots have compositional elements that match, this could include shapes, colours, movements, linear etc, therefore the cut can establish a link between the shots graphically and metaphorically.
Psycho is an American suspense/horror 1960s film. The shower scene in the film is one of the best-known in all of cinema. This scene was shot from December 17th to December 23rd 1959 and features 77 different camera angles. The scene runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts, most of the shots are extreme close ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly after the murder. The combination of the close shots with their short duration makes the sequence feel more subjective than it would have been if the images were presented alone or in a wider angle.
14. Montage - Lev Kuleshov
A great effect that montage editors use was developed by Kuleshov. The Kuleshov effect refers to matching the eye-line of different characters, in different shots to help viewer connect the shots in terms of space and time. Montage contains many different images, quickly edited together, images do not provide a sense of the narrative moving forward but are still full of meaning. Rapid cuts force the viewer to consider the connections between the images being shown, there may be no obvious connections or they might be deliberately unconnected. Montage editing is often used to reflect chaos, tension or disturbance a characters state of mind perhaps. It might have an overall thematic or visual connection.
15. Kuleshov experiment
Kuleshov's theories are closely related to that of Eisenstein in the sense that they both believed that the essence of the cinema is a juxaposition of editorial decisions to support his theories Kuleshov developed an experiment known as the "Kuleshov Experiment". The experiment consisted of shots of an actor inter-cut with shots of a bowl of soup, a seductively dresses women and a deceased child, the shots were edited to create the illusion that the actor was looking at these objects. The film was screened before an audience who believed the actors facial expression changes throughout the sequence, depending on what the actor was seeing. However the actors expression doesn't change and is in the fact the same shot repeated. Kuleshov designed this experiment to indicate the importance of cinema editing and the effects it can have on an audience.
16. Soviet Montage - Sergei Eisenstein Strike and Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisentein is credited for making developing the use of montage in film sequences. He describes five montage theories including metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal and intellectual which are based on the idea that montage originates in the collision between two different shots in an illustration of the idea of thesis and antithesis. Montage is found where there is conflict in the juxtaposing two images. Eisenstein felt that his collision manipulates the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors.
17. Montage - Team America: World Police
Montage is used for creating message by cutting together short lengths of film rather than telling the whole story. montage sequences are different from continuity editing and are often used to explain time passing or narrative information in a condensed fashion. Usually a song plays in the background that enhances the mood and reinforces the message of time passing. They can also include shots where there are multiple images on the screen.
In the film Team America it uses the sports training sequence where Rocky trained over a long period of time, getting better by the end of the sequence. The filmmakers show the conventions of a montage while utilising one.
18. Continuity editing
Continuity editing is used to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shot. Continuity editing can be divided into two categories; temporal continuity and spatial continuity. Within each category, specific techniques will work against a sense of continuity. In other words, techniques can cause a passage to be continuous, giving the viewer a concrete physical narration to follow or discontinuous causing viewer disorientation, pondering or even subliminal interpretation or reaction as in the montage style. An example of continuity editing is shown below.
19. Eye-line match
An eye-line match is a film editing technique associated with the continuity editing system. It is based on the premise that the audience will want to see the character on-screen is seeing. The eye-line match begins with a character looking at something off-screen, followed by a cut to the object or person at which he is looking. For example a man is looking off-screen on his left, and then the film cuts to a television that he is watching.
20. Match on action
Action match is matching the action (movement or motion) of characters or objects in one shot to the action in the next shot where the action continues. Above are two examples of how the actions match and how the camera flows with the motion as it moves to the next shot
