Task 7 - Speed of Editing

Task 7 - Speed of Editing

In a film each scene may last a matter of seconds or it could continue for minutes but the lengths of each sequence establishes the part 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 is to feel anxiety and suspense the editing will be quick, the scenes, shots will be changing frequently for example in an action sequence.
If a related mood is desired the scenes last longer and change less less frequently for example in a romantic comedy.

Never less a film need not have any editing. The film Russian Ark was filmed in one take, using a steadicam and digital camera. This required time and patients.

A trailer for a film needs to park in detail from throughout the film, therefore the editing will be very fast.
Scenes at the beginning of a film is very important as it starts to tell the story and it introduces us to the characters.
Cross cutting can be used very effectively to develop a sense of drama.

The death of Casey in the opening scene of Scream is made more dramatic by the cross cutting to her parents approaching and almost making it home in time to save her.



Cutaways

A cutaway is used to reveal details to the audience without detracting from the narrative or the action.





During our video we had to create pace, so we decided to keep it simple and make it in our school. We started the film by recording both of us at each end of the film walking through the gate and entering the school. We then filmed each characters movements to the end one at a time, from the gate to the final meeting. To build pace we had to do our own edit, which means there will be 4 different versions of the film. But to create pace i started with a long scene at the start and slowly making the scenes shorter and then added tans music over the scenes to make it really dramatic. In our video we also used cross cutting, this involved it flipping between the two ators and building the tension, this is because each scene gets quicker and quicker and makes the viewer want to know who will reach the target first.

An example of a trailer which uses many different editing techniques, one of these are cross cutting.

Throughout this trailer there are a total of 37 cuts in only 35 seconds, which makes the audience feel really involved with this trailer and they will want to see more. Unlike the Russian ark film which has no cuts throughout the entire film, this trailer is filled with action and many different scenes.

Task 6 - Non Continuity

Task 6 Non Continuity:

Jump Cut -

French new wave filmmakers such as Jean luc Godard and Francois Truffaut pushed the limits of editing techniques during the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's.
French new wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960's used carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of hollywood films.

French new wave editing often are attention to its self by lack of continuity, its self reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they are watching a film) and by the over use of jump cuts or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative. An example of a non-narrative film is "A bout de Souffle"





During the scenes in the film A bout de soufflé there are many mistakes when they are in the dear, the first mistake is where they transport from one place in the city to another, i can see this because the change in surrounding objects. The second big mistake is where the women randomly appears with a mirror which she didn't have before.





During the film The shining, many mistakes are made, mainly the rule  weak of the 180 degree rule. This may be done to try and show the audience that the main character is confused or it may just be a mistake.

During the trailer of The Hunger Games one main mistake is used which also breaks the 180 degree rule, this is made in the bedroom scene where she is exploring her new surroundings. 

This is done to make it look like the character is confused of her surroundings. SO this rule break could have been put into the film purposely to create a sense of confusion by the character.

Task 5 - Continuity Editing

During our film we created for continuity editing, we made some errors these included breaking the 180 degree rule, but as we realised we then put it onto final cut and managed to rotate the recording so this made it look like the rule wasn't broken. When recording we also didn't realise that the window was letting in light and made the character look very dark, so if we did this scene again we would shut the blind. But i believe that the overall outcome was very good as the edit was very smooth and there were no acting errors.


Continuity editing is a  continuous style of editing which allows the film to flow smoothly.
In continuity editing it has 4 main rules, these include: eye-line match, the 180 degree rule, match on action and the reverse shot. Using these rules makes the edit seem as the film is constantly moving and it can run smoothly. Continuity editing was developed by many American and European editors, one of these is D.W. Griffiths. He made The birth of a Nation and Intolerance.

Eye-line match - This links two shots together

This can be seen if a character look at something if screen, and it will then show the audience what they are looking at, this allows the audience to experience what the character is feeling.
We used in our film as the 2nd actor asked where a book is, we then cut the clip and showed an image of the book he was looking for.This worked well for us as there were no mistakes made and it looked very professional.



180 degree rule - This is the basic guideline that allows people to see where the character is in the scene, if this rule is broke then it will make it look as the character has moved from their original position. In our scene we made the mistake of breaking this rule and to overcome this we had to cut the clip and then rotate the scene so it seemed like the rule wasn't broke. After rotating the clip i believe it didn't look very well, but this is due to that i know what the building looks like and when he enters the door changes position, but if someone who did not know what the school was like from inside they wouldn't notice.

Below is another example of a 180 degree rule break.

Match on Action - This helps link two shots together,
Start action in shot one, then it will be cut and then onto the final action.
Below is an example of how match on action can be used in a scene. In our film we used this technique when the first actor walked through the door, and then walked towards the second actor who is the teacher. This made the film look very good and well prepared.


Shot reverse shot - This is basically one character then reverse shot of another character, this allows the audience to connect with the characters and to see both characters interacting at different times. This also helps create pace. We used this technique in our scene when the first and second actor were communicating, we done this by putting the camera behind both actors when they both spoke about the missing book. I think this worked very well as it looked very clean and professional like it would in an actual film. 

Task 4 - Montage

Task 4 - Montage

The term montage has a slight different meaning when referred to in the following three context

French film:

Practice montage has its literal french meaning assembly, installation and simply identifies editing

Soviet:

Montage was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in earlier shot alone.

Lev Kuleshov: Kuleshov was among the very first to theorise about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920's. He argued that the editing editing a film is like constructing a building brick-by-brick the building is elected. He did an experiment that proves this point. He took an old film clip of a head shot of noted russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images. When he showed these shots, audiences thought he was great, this technique is now known as montage.


Sergei Eisenstein:

Sergei was briefly a student of kuleshov's, but he went his own way because he had his own idea of a montage. By contrasting shots Eisenstein tried to provoke associates in the viewer, which were introduced by shocks. An example of a film Eisenstein made is Strike, in this film the workers are treated like cattle.

Hollywood:

In hollywood cinema a montage sequence is a short segment in a film which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion. An example of a hollywood film is Rocky.

Hollywood


The montage we created involved us putting the camera in different positions whilst we played football, i think the montage went well with the syncing and cutting and i am very happy with the outcome. But i think we could have moved the camera around a little more to make the montage more interesting. I also believe the song we used to put over the footage was very good as it was synced very well, but i still fell if we had more time we could have added more syncs into the edit and made it much better. Throughout the montage we built up the pace, we did this to show that the longer the montage went on for the better the characters got, so at the start of the montage we put all the bad atempts we had and then built it up to the best attempts.



Soviet


For the soviet montage we filmed various different actions and movements. It didn't really take us very long to create but i believe if we had more time that the outcome would have been much better, but i think that the overall video was successful. I also like this montage as it is very simple with hardly no editing which gives it an old fashion affect. The point we were trying to make in this montage was the characters feelings. So we put flashbacks of what the character wanted to do which was break stuff and do stupid things, this was because were trying to make the viewers feel that the actor was angry.