Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  Throughout this sequence, the editing implies associations between the shots.

  This is an important principle of narrative filmmaking. Each shot means what it (a)

  (b)

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  (c)

  (d)

  (e)

  (f)

  (g)

  REAR WINDOW (PARAMOUNT PICTURES, 1954)

  In cross cutting shots of Jeffries (James Stewart) looking off frame with shots presenting views of the apartment courtyard, the editing gives the shot series a point-of-view structure. Viewers infer that the courtyard views are what Jeffries sees. The shots A-B-C show a comic series—Jeffries sees a couple struggling to get out of the rain and is amused. Shots D-E-F-G show Jeffries watching the killer Thorwald leaving his apartment in the middle of the night.

  Note that the more extreme angle of Jeffries’ glance in shot F points to a new location, the street beyond the apartment complex. The angles at which Jeffries looks off-frame tell us where things are located. In reality, actor James Stewart is not seeing anything pictured here. Hitchcock simply told him “look off-camera right” and “look up and off-camera left” and then created the associations and story meanings in the editing. Frame enlargements.

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  does by virtue of its surrounding context. Hitchcock and Tomasini cut back and forth between Jeffries’s face and shots of what he is meant to be seeing across the courtyard. These latter are his point-of-view shots; they simulate what he can see out his window. Hitchcock and Tomasini want viewers to interpret Jeffries’s facial expressions and reactions as responses to what has occurred in the point-of-view shots. Notice, however, that Jeffries and what he sees and reacts to are never shown within the same shot. It is the editing that creates the association.

  PARALLEL ACTION To tell sophisticated stories, filmmakers need a way of suggesting (simultaneous) parallel action, that is, that two or more things are happening at the same time. This enables them to weave together several lines of action in the telling of their story. Parallel action is achieved through editing. The editing in Rear Window manipulates multiple lines of action: Thorwald’s trips to and from his apartment, the arrival home of the composer, the return home of Miss Torso, the comical response of the couple sleeping on their balcony in the rain, and Jeffries’s surveillance of all this and his reactions to it. The editing references each of these lines of action to the others by establishing relationships of time and location.

  Without the use of parallel editing, that is, editing that interrelates multiple lines of action, filmmakers could not create complex narratives involving the actions of numerous characters, story lines, and subplots.

  One especially important form of parallel action is cross-cutting . In cross- cutting, the editor goes back and forth, typically with increasing speed, between two or more lines of action. The Fugitive (1993) opens with a spectacular train wreck during which the fugitive (Harrison Ford) escapes from his jailers. The cross-cutting goes back and forth with increasing speed between shots of the oncoming train and the frenzied, panicked reactions of prisoners trapped inside a bus that has fallen across the tracks.

  By cross-cutting shots of increasingly shorter duration, the editor creates an accelerat-ing tempo and speed and an increasing amount of tension.

  Among the inferences viewers routinely draw across cuts are inferences of

  simultaneous action. The cross-cut shots of the train and the frantic prisoners prompt the viewer to make an unambiguous interpretation: The train is about to smash the bus.

  Filmmakers guide viewers in drawing these inferences by composing and editing shots to create a strong flow of action across the cuts. How is this accomplished?

  THE PRINCIPLES OF CONTINUITY EDITING

  As its name implies, continuity editing is a style of cutting that emphasizes smooth and continuously flowing action from shot to shot. Instead of noticing the abruptness of a cut in a popular movie, the viewer pays attention to story information and character relationships. Shots are joined so that the action flows smoothly over the cut.

  The remarkable achievements of the continuity editing system are sometimes disparaged in discussions that describe the style as “transparent” or “invisible.” In reality, continuity editing is a highly constructed and accomplished style that creates an impression of realism and naturalism from carefully applied editing rules.

  A Continuous Flow of Action

  The goal of continuity editing is to emphasize the apparent realism and naturalness of the story and to minimize the viewer’s awareness of film technique and the presence 163

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  of the camera. The remarkable achievement of continuity cutting lies in successfully meeting this goal. When viewers see a popular commercial film in the theater, they rarely notice details of camera position and movement. Instead, they are swept up by the story and the characters. There is a major paradox here. As viewers watch a movie, they see a rapid succession of individual shots on screen accompanied by an ever-changing series of camera positions and angles. What they see , therefore, is fragmentary and discontinuous. A film is assembled from hundreds of individual shots. Its structure is inherently fragmentary. What viewers experience , however, is the impression of a smoothly flowing, unbroken stream of imagery in which the story and the characters come convincingly to life. How is this apparent contradiction between the reality of what viewers see and the impression of what they experience explained?

  The answer is that filmmakers have discovered methods of connecting their

  shots that minimize the disruption of shot changes. In other words, continuity editing makes possible the impression of narrative wholeness and completeness.

  Continuity editing also has helped make cinema very popular because it can be so easily understood. Films edited according to these principles do not pose difficult perceptual or interpretive challenges. Films can be edited so that they will be easy to understand and will therefore appeal to wide segments of the market.

  Here lie the true achievements of the continuity system. The system emphasizes visual coherence and ease of comprehension. These are things that must be created in film. Because of the camera’s ever-changing angle of view, the potential in film for in-coherence and discontinuity is always much greater, and filmmakers accordingly have to strive very hard to achieve the opposite.

  Case Study CASABLANCA

  The Hollywood classic Casablanca (1942) provides

  admitting some customers into the room where roulette

  some representative sequences that display continuity

  and gambling occur. Rick is filmed from behind, in the

  editing codes in action. Among the most important

  foreground, and the door to his casino is visible in the

  codes of the continuity system are the following: the

  background of the shot ( a ). This shot functions as the

  use of a master shot to organize the subsequent cut-

  master shot position for this scene. The master shot

  ting within a scene, matching shots to the master, the

  shows the spatial layout of a scene, all the characters’

  shot-reverse-shot series with the eyeline match, and the

  positions in relation to each other and to the set. The

  180-degree rule.

  master shot is typically filmed first, with all the action in

  Casablanca is a wartime adventure film about

  a scene from beginning to end photographed from this

  heroic resistance against the Nazis, and it is also a

  position. Then directors typically go back to film inserts,

  lush romantic melodrama. Rick (Humphrey Bogart),

  close-ups, and medium shots that will be cut with the

  a nightclub owner, has come to Casablanca to get

  master shot to create the fin
al edited scene and whose

  over a disastrous love affair with Ilsa Lund (Ingrid

  compositional elements will match with the master.

  Bergman). Ilsa turns up unexpectedly one night in

  Rick sees the doorman pausing in the entrance

  Rick’s cafe and sets in motion the romantic fireworks

  with several guests, awaiting his approval to enter

  that move the plot along to its exciting conclusion.

  the casino. Shot 2 ( b ) is an example of a matched

  cut . The two compositions—the master shot and the

  Matching to the Master Shot

  medium close-up of the doorman and guests—match.

  In the first scene illustrated here, one of the atten-

  The camera’s angle of view is similar in each shot.

  dants in Rick’s nightclub awaits Rick’s approval before

  The only difference is that the camera is closer to the

  ( continued)

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  characters in shot 2 ( b ). A second matching element is

  characters are indeed looking at each other and that the

  the positioning of the doorman and guests. They are

  spaces they inhabit, though seen in different shots, are

  oriented toward screen left, a similar position in both

  connected. Often in a scene, characters are interacting

  shots. The match here is so strong that a casual viewer

  with each other but are presented in separate shots. The

  does not notice the cut.

  eyeline match helps to create continuity between the

  separate images.

  The Eyeline Match

  In organizing the cut to shot 4, the master shot

  The doorman glances off-frame left ( c ) (implying that he

  remains important. What else, besides the eyeline

  is looking at Rick, who is off-screen), and the film cuts

  match, establishes that these characters are looking

  to Rick in shot 4 ( d ) looking off-frame right. Each looks

  at each other? It is the information viewers remember

  in an opposing direction, one to the right, the other to

  from the master shot about the spatial layout of the

  the left, creating the impression that they are looking at

  room. From the master shot, viewers know there is a

  each other. This match is known as the eyeline match ,

  direct line of sight from Rick’s table to the door and

  and it is an important code used to link the spaces in

  that Rick and the doorman have an unobstructed view

  separate shots. The eyeline match establishes that two

  of each other. The angles of their glances in shots

  (a)

  (b)

  (c)

  (d)

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  (e)

  (f)

  (g)

  (h)

  (i)

  ( continued)

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  Editing: Making the Cut

  3 and 4 ( c, d ) match the information viewers were

  Because filmmakers change camera positions and

  given in the master shot.

  angles from shot to shot, screen direction is some-

  thing that must be established and maintained care-

  The Master Shot and Viewer Perception

  fully. Right and left must remain constant across shot

  As viewers watch a movie, they are responding to

  changes, but the potential for creating inconsistent

  more than the information that is on-screen at any one

  right and left orientations from shot to shot is very

  moment. Viewers interpret shots by relating them to

  great. The 180-degree rule specifies how this may be

  the larger context of an edited scene. In this regard,

  prevented.

  the master shot furnishes viewers with a map or visual

  Within any given scene, a line of interest or ac-

  schema of the set or locale (a room in this scene from

  tion can be drawn between the major characters. The

  Casablanca). Using this schema, viewers integrate frag-

  180-degree rule counsels filmmakers to keep their cam-

  mentary details, like the composition of the shot ( b ),

  eras on one side of this line from shot to shot within a

  with their recollected sense of the layout of the room.

  scene. If a filmmaker were to cross the line by cutting

  Using master shots facilitates a viewer’s understanding

  to a camera position taken on the other side of the line,

  of the action of a scene.

  the right–left coordinates on screen would be reversed.

  Characters who were on screen right in one shot would

  The Shot-Reverse-Shot Series

  appear on screen left in the next.

  In shot 5, a Nazi supporter tries to enter Rick’s casino

  The 180-degree rule operates in the next scene

  ( e ). In shot 6 ( f ), the doorman and the German talk

  in the film ( j–m ). Ugarte (Peter Lorre) comes into

  outside the room, where Rick shortly joins them in

  the casino to tell Rick that he has some “letters of

  shot 7 ( g ). The cutting now goes into a brief shot-

  transit” that guarantee their bearer safe passage from

  reverse-shot series ( g–i ) as Rick and the German

  Casablanca, and he asks Rick to keep them for him.

  exchange words. The camera is positioned over the

  As Ugarte talks to Rick, they are seated at the table.

  shoulder of one character and then, in the reverse

  The line of interest extends between them. Notice

  shot position, over the shoulder of the other charac-

  that the camera stays on the same side of the line in

  ter. This series of alternating compositions is a stan-

  all the subsequent shots ( k–m ). When both charac-

  dard method for filming dialogue scenes. It creates

  ters are in the shot, Ugarte is always on screen right

  something of a ping-pong effect as the composition

  and Rick is always on screen left despite the chang-

  continually shifts into reverse shot positions. The cut-

  ing camera positions. When a close-up isolates Rick,

  ting is typically coordinated with the flow of dialogue

  he is facing screen right, consistent with his position

  so that, as speakers change, so does the camera

  in the two-shot.

  position. Should the camera shift into an extreme

  Notice also that the line of interest is consistent

  close-up isolating each character in a single shot, the

  with the line of interest established in the previous

  eyeline match would be employed. In shot-reverse-

  scene with the doorman and guests. Rick sits at his

  shot cutting, editing follows the flow of dialogue,

  table in both scenes, and the camera positioning has

  and the shifting camera positions mark the changes

  kept Rick on screen left. In this sense, visual continu-

  of speakers in the conversation. This emphasizes the

  ity has been maintained from scene to scene because

  dialogue and facilitates the viewer’s pickup of story

  a consistent line of interest is used as the basis of the

  information.

  180-degree rule.

  Scenes are dynamic, however, and filmmakers

  The 180-Degree Rule

  frequently need to define new lines
of action to fol-

  The 180-degree rule is one of the most important

  low changes of character positioning as the drama

  codes of the continuity system. This rule is the founda-

  unfolds. How does a filmmaker define a new line of

  tion for establishing continuity of screen direction. The

  action by crossing the existing one? There are several

  right–left coordinates of screen action remain consis-

  possible ways. A filmmaker may cut first to a series of

  tent as long as all camera positions stay on the same

  camera positions on or near the line before crossing

  side of the line of action. Crossing the line entails a

  it. A filmmaker may use a moving camera to cross the

  change of screen direction.

  line within a shot. Whatever strategy is employed, the

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  Camera #4

  Camera #2

  Camera #3

  The Line

  Camera #1

  FIGURE 1

  The 180-degree rule.

  problems associated with maintaining or crossing the

  ing and disorienting the viewer, particularly when it is

  line raise issues about the relationship between visual

  important to establish a coherent sense of a fixed visual

  change and perceptual constancy in the represented

  landscape. The viewer must understand that although

  action on screen.

  the camera’s angle of view may change, the layout of the

  physical world on-screen remains constant. In other words,

  Camera Position and Perceptual Constancies

  if a character is shown standing at the bottom of a hill,

  Filmmakers typically provide viewers with continuously

  the character must seem to remain there, unless shown

  changing visual perspectives on the action. They build

  moving elsewhere, regardless of whether a high-angle or

  a scene by cutting among different camera setups. The

  a low-angle shot is employed, regardless of whether the

  problem is how to create this variety without confus-

  camera photographs that character from the left or right

  ( continued)

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