Using specific examples from your chosen film, construct a discussion post of at least 200 words in which youDescribe each of the three basic categories of sound (dialogue, sound effects, and music).Explain how the different categories of sound are being used in your chosen film.Assess the impact of sound in establishing the theme.How does the use of sound inform the mood of the scene, or the film overall?Can you identify specific sounds in your film that allow you to infer a particular genre?Since each category of sound may produce a range of effects, how might you characterize the effects in your film? For example, realistic and expected sound effects may have a different effect on a viewer than exaggerated or unexpected ones.Assess how the scene or sequence would play differently if you changed or removed a key category of sound.You must use at least two outside sources, in any combination of embedded video clips, still photos, or scholarly sources. All sources should be documented in APA style https://ashford.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Adding+Pictures+and+Video+to+Introductions+and+Discussions/0_bqh36hrsI woul prefer pulp fiction movie, but you chose something else as well.
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Editing
7
Still from 127 Hours (2010). ©Fox Searchlight Pictures. All rights reserved./courtesy Everett Collection
The essence of cinema is editing.
It’s the combination of what can be
extraordinary images of people during
emotional moments, or images in a general
sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.
—Francis Ford Coppola
What Is Editing?
Chapter 7
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
• Describe how editing can affect a film’s pacing, plot structure, and perception of its mise en
scène.
• Explain how editing can juggle plot threads and rearrange the order of story content for
dramatic effect.
• Identify the basic building blocks editing uses to tell a story, including how a variety of
transitions can affect perception of time.
• Define systems of editing, such as continuity editing, discontinuity editing, and the montage theory, and describe how editing guides what a viewer is seeing and hearing in order
to refocus attention and to enhance or even completely change what was in the script.
7.1 What Is Editing?
In narrative movies, the story idea usually comes first, and the screenwriter puts his or her vision
into words, describing what will be seen on the screen. With most movies, the director chooses
and arranges what will actually be in the scene (the mise en scène) and how it plays out. The cinematographer composes various images in the camera that force the audience to view only part
of what is in the scene, and to view it in a specific way with each shot. The editor then decides
which of those shots to use, in what order they appear, and how long they are on the screen. This
can have a critical effect on how well an audience can pick up on what the director has put into
the scene. Directors typically work closely with both the cinematographer and editor to make
sure their visions coincide. There are cases, however, when a director who wants to maintain
personal control may shoot a scene in such a way that it can be edited in only one way, or is in one
continuous take with no alternate angles to cut to. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is a rather extreme
example, an 80-minute film with only 10 individual shots running 5 to 10 minutes each and five
of the cuts disguised to make it appear like only five individual shots. Sometimes viewers of Rope
have the impression that the entire film was shot in one long take because the few cuts it employs
seem so natural that they’re not perceived as cuts. Effective editing is sometimes called “invisible”
editing. This is because viewers often do
not even realize when a shot changes from,
say, a two-shot to a close-up of one actor,
or even from one location to another, if the
editor appropriately anticipates what viewers want to see and when they want to see
it, and remembers to maintain a plausible
continuity between shots.
Some films take the opposite approach and
use certain scenes to show off their abil▲▲In Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby, a flurry of short shots
ity to edit numerous shots together, as in
edited together adds to the quick-paced, almost frenzied
the battle scenes of 300, action sequences
nature of the party scenes.
in XXX and Star Trek Into Darkness, and
party scenes in Baz Luhrman’s remake of The Great Gatsby. A film such as Run Lola Run (Lola
Rennt) looks from beginning to end almost like an exercise in all the possible techniques of editing. The montage theory of editing, which will be discussed later, is a rebellion against the idea
of invisible editing, and instead considers that not only is editing the most important aspect
©Warner Bros. Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
What Is Editing?
Chapter 7
of filmmaking but that the joining of shots should intentionally juxtapose disparate images to
create new meaning. Most standard character dramas and comedies, however, tend to use functional continuity editing that serves the story and does not call attention to itself. Editing can
shorten scenes that were shot, tighten them to pick up the pace and increase dramatic tension,
and lengthen scenes, stretching out reactions longer than they were originally delivered by the
actors on the set and so slowing the pace for dramatic emphasis. Typically, using fewer and longer takes in a scene slows the pacing, while using more shots of briefer screen time quickens the
pacing. (Compare, for example, the divergent editing styles in the 1974 and 2013 versions of The
Great Gatsby.) Editing can even rearrange or eliminate words, actions, or entire sequences—
segments made up of closely related scenes. For example, the last scene in the script might be
split in half, with the first half placed at the beginning of the film so that the middle of the picture
becomes an extended flashback. The entire plot structure can be changed through the editing.
Quentin Tarantino has stated that the edited movie is really the final draft of the script. And of
course editing can change the film yet again through various stages from “roughcut” to “preview
print,” undergoing revisions for the “premiere” version and often a shortened “theatrical cut”
(sometimes slightly different for different countries), then a revised “director’s cut” for home
video, and sometimes even a later “definitive director’s cut.” Changes in different editions may be
due to ratings or censorship concerns. They may be made to make story clarity more obvious for
certain target audiences. Or scenes may be deleted simply to shorten the running time so theaters
can schedule more showings per day.
To understand what goes into editing, it can be a useful exercise to read original screenplays in
various drafts, and then to compare them with the finished film, if possible, in its various cuts.
A select few DVDs and Blu-ray discs include the film’s screenplay, sometimes as a DVD-ROM
file (as with Nurse Betty, The Stunt Man, and Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong) and
occasionally as a file designed to appear on screen while you watch the film (as with Pirates of
the Caribbean, Taxi Driver, Pleasantville, and American Beauty). Articles and entire books have
examined particular films from script to screen in their many different incarnations along the
way. A few films are available on DVD or Blu-ray in multiple versions that can allow you to trace
the modifications in two or more different cuts for yourself, including Steven Spielberg’s Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional,
and Oliver Stone’s Alexander, among others. Many foreign-language films are drastically recut
for American release, primarily to shorten them and speed up pacing, but also to eliminate character development and subplots deemed unnecessary for the basic storyline or too confusing for
American audiences. It can be instructive to compare the very different versions of films such as
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Senso, or Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla
(a.k.a. Gojira), to name just a few. Do the changes improve the films for an audience with a different cultural background, do they destroy the director’s original intent, or do they merely present
the same basic story differently?
Another useful exercise is to watch your favorite films over again, picking out an especially impressive scene to view repeatedly, sometimes in slow motion, so you can observe all the different shots
that make up the scene. Try to understand how the editor’s choices affect how you perceive the
scene’s pacing, and how you notice specific props or actions more clearly at key moments than if
different shots were used or a different number of shots were cut together over the same screen
time. Additionally, if a DVD or Blu-ray edition of a film offers the opportunity in its supplementary features, it can be very instructive to watch unedited takes of a scene and then see the
complete edited scene (and possibly alternate edited versions) immediately following. Certain
DVDs include bonus features that break down selected scenes shot by shot, explaining how a
sequence is constructed, sometimes comparing it with the shooting script and “storyboards” or
Rearranging the Story Into a Plot
Chapter 7
“animatics” that directors use to pre-visualize the scenes. Others give you the option
of viewing alternate camera angles during a
scene. Sometimes (as with the Men in Black
Deluxe Edition) they even let you rearrange
shots or remix the audio to see the effect
that has.
In this chapter, we will examine some of
the basic tools of editing, which is one of
the elements of filmmaking that occurs in
post-production, or after principal photography is completed. However, some
aspects of editing may begin before filmCourtesy Everett Collection
▲▲Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was originally
ing ends, as the director will look at daireleased with an X rating. Because of concerns about sex and
lies, or the footage shot during a given day.
violence, some VHS editions were later edited and released
Every editor, like every director, has his or
with an R rating.
her own style. And, as with the director’s
relationship with the cinematographer, his
or her relationship and level of cooperation and supervision with the editor vary from film to
film. But most editors operate with these tools at their disposal, so a working knowledge of them
should help us to understand how the film is put together.
7.2 Rearranging the Story Into a Plot
Before we get into the technical details of what goes into editing, you must understand the purpose of editing; briefly, it is to arrange the screenwriter’s story and cinematographer’s shots into
the film’s final plot. The writer puts story elements into a plot in a certain order, the director
oversees their filming, but the editor is the one who assembles
everything into the final movie. Directors rely upon their editors
to make sense of all the little pieces, not only to bring out the best
performances of the actors but also to enhance the themes of the
story and ensure the audience can follow what is going on. Because
most films are not shot in chronological order, but in the order in
which scheduling, weather, and other factors make the most sense,
it is crucial for the editor to put the story back together for the
audience.
For instance, in a huge, epic film like The Right Stuff, in which parallel stories of the men first assigned to the Mercury space program
and test pilot Chuck Yeager are told, it is essential that the various
storylines hold together. Otherwise, the audience is left confused,
making the film unnecessarily complicated. The editing team of
Glenn Farr, Lisa Fruchtman, Stephen A. Rotter, Douglas Steward,
©Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
◀ The complexities of the parallel stories in The Right Stuff (1983)
have roots going back to D. W. Griffith’s 1915 and 1916 masterworks.
Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance were films that pioneered multiple-storyline filmmaking.
Rearranging the Story Into a Plot
Chapter 7
and Tom Rolf had to keep the stories flowing in a sensible order, even as focus shifted from Yeager
to the astronauts and back, while also incorporating historical footage of space shots. The editing
team clearly excelled at this, as they won the Academy Award for their efforts, and the film, all
193 minutes of it, was nominated for Best Picture.
Importance of the Editor
Film editing is a somewhat different discipline than what we think of as editing in other art forms.
One thinks of the editor of a book, for instance, checking for grammar and spelling errors, but
also ensuring that the writer has constructed a story that makes sense, that one chapter reasonably follows another (unless there is an artistic reason for it not to), and that the assorted chapters
hold together as a whole work. The film editor’s role parallels this to some degree, but he or she
does more: The film editor helps create the film, literally constructing it, piecing together different takes of individual scenes and then placing the selected scenes in the order that tells the story
the director wants to tell. The editor’s role is crucial to the making of a successful film. Editing
determines not only the order in which elements from the story occur in the film’s plot, but also
the frequency (how many times we see them) and the duration (how long they last on the screen).
And yet the best editing doesn’t call attention to itself (unless the story calls for it). Instead, even
if it involves incongruous editing, or putting sequences together out of order, it is still done
in service to the story. Poor editing does the audience the ultimate disservice when it comes to
film—it makes its members aware that they are seeing a film, taking them out of the transformative experience going to the movies should be.
How important is the editor’s job? Actress Natalie Portman was asked in an interview whether
she could tell if a film was good or bad while she was in the process of shooting it. “I can’t at all,”
Portman said. “It really, I feel like, always happens in the editing room. That’s why, whether it
comes out good or bad, you sort of can’t take credit for it” (Goodykoontz, 2009d).
Chronological Order
Often a film is cut with the scenes arranged in
chronological order. This makes sense; most
stories are told in this way, and they are easy to
follow. We simply watch one scene unfold after
another, from beginning to end. Don’t mistake
this for simplistic storytelling, however. Some
are complex stories, such as Miller’s Crossing,
the Coen brothers’ 1990 film about a gangster (Gabriel Byrne) who plays two rival bosses
(Albert Finney and Jon Polito) against each
other. There are numerous twists and turns as
loyalties shift to suit the whims of the characters. Yet the film has a clear beginning, middle,
and end. This is also useful when a scene refers to
another that has gone before it. For instance, at
one point Byrne’s character is dispatched to kill
a crooked bookie (John Turturro). The bookie
pleads for his life, begging Byrne’s character to
“look into your heart.” Seemingly moved, Byrne
Mary Evans/C20TH FOX/Ronald Grant/courtesy Everett Collection
▲▲In the film Miller’s Crossing, the Coen brothers push
the familiar gangster genre in new and unexpected directions. The brothers are best known for breathing new life
into familiar formulas.
Rearranging the Story Into a Plot
Chapter 7
lets him go. Later in the film, however, Byrne’s character is again about to shoot the bookie.
Again, he pleads, “Look into your heart.” Byrne’s character says dismissively, “What heart?” and
shoots the bookie between the eyes. The scene is much more effective and powerful because of
our knowledge of what has come before, informing us that in the previous scene, Byrne’s character let the bookie live temporarily to serve his own purposes.
Incongruous Editing
Other films make intentional use of incongruous editing, or jumping around in time. Quentin
Tarantino rearranges story events in Pulp Fiction so that we see some things long after they’ve
already happened in the plot thread we’ve been following, and we see certain things a second
time from a different point of view. In 1941, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane became famous for the
way it told the life story of its title character through multiple flashbacks, some of them overlapping, from different points of view, using a framing plot thread that shows a reporter interviewing people who knew him. Not nearly so influential but several years before that film, The Sin
of Nora Moran related most of its story through flashbacks within flashbacks and even dreams
within those flashbacks, sometimes making it a challenge to keep track of what was going on
until the end.
In Don’t Look Now, discussed earlier for its use of color, there is an intense sex scene between
Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. It drew attention in part because of the frank and relatively explicit way in which it is shot, especially for the time. But the scene is also notable for the
unusual way in which it is cut. Director Nicholas Roeg cuts between shots of the couple making
love to scenes of them dressing for dinner afterward, then back again. The unorthodox editing
helps to further establish a central theme of the film, which plays with the idea of time throughout. Sutherland’s character seems to have the gift of premonition, though he is skeptical. Still,
he sees things that others do not, and it is unclear to him and the audience when these events
are taking place. The jumping around in time during the sex scene helps to accentuate the fluid
nature of time in the film.
Sidney Lumet’s complexly plotted heist thriller Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) constantly jumps back and forth in time, repeating scenes or partial scenes but following different
characters, slightly overlapping some of the action before continuing with the story and jumping
back again to where a previous scene had left off. To avoid audience confusion, often a superimposed title lets the audience know when a new scene is taking place and which character will
be the focus. We know most of the basic story within the first 10 minutes, but we learn more
and more details about things that were happening simultaneously, until we finally see how it
all ends in the very last scene of the movie. Vantage Point, a 2008 action thriller about a plot to
assassinate the president, has a similar structure of repeating scenes from different viewpoints,
adding new layers to the story information until finally allowing the end to unfold chronologically. In Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), the basic story is shown chronologically, but we sometimes see
a shot of Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) followed by flashbacks of the happy life together that he and
Catherine (Rooney Mara) had before they decided to divorce, even though the soundtrack often
keeps us in the present time. This lets us know that he is remembering, rather than merely letting
us know what happened in the past.
Perhaps the most ambitious use of editing to tell a story is found in Memento, Christopher
Nolan’s 2000 film in which Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a former insurance investigator, has a
form of amnesia that prevents him from making new memories. He is trying to investigate what
he believes to be the rape and murder of his wife; unable to remember any of what he discovers,
The Basics
he relies on notes, tattoos, Polaroid photographs, and other devices to try to piece
together what his memories cannot. To
further complicate matters, Nolan tells
the story in two ways. The scenes shown
in black and white unfold chronologically,
while the color scenes play in reverse order.
The effect leaves the audience as confused
and in the dark as Leonard, but the truth
about Leonard’s wife is revealed by the end
of the film. Although some audiences were
confused by the technique, it is generally
considered an ingenious, compelling way
to tell the story.
Chapter 7
Courtesy Everett Collection
▲▲In Memento, character Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) uses his
tattoos, among other techniques, to fill the holes in his memory as he searches for answers to his wife’s murder. The editing
techniques used to show Shelby collecting jumbled memories
puts the audience in the shoes of the protagonist, leaving
them feeling equally lost and confused.
Many of these films were heavily influenced
by Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), an
ingenious blend of two short stories into a
new and different work and a film whose
unexpected worldwide acclaim suddenly
introduced international audiences to
Japanese cinema. Revising one of the stories into a framing story, Kurosawa has the rest of the
film …
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