Editing: Making the Cut
(j)
(k)
(l)
(m)
side. The camera’s relative positions, which change as the
in the coach, screen direction is reversed. The reversal,
action unfolds on screen, are distinct from the perceptual
though, occurs in a way that is consistent with prin-
constancies (e.g., up, down, left, right) that must prevail,
ciples of continuity.
that must not change, in the represented action. The
The first shot ( a ) showing Blixen traveling by
sheriff pursuing the prisoner always must be understood to
coach is a telephoto long shot in which she appears,
be chasing his quarry regardless of the directions in which
through crowds of pedestrians, riding toward screen
pursuer and pursued are shown moving on screen.
left. The filmmakers then cut to a new camera position
This relationship between the editing codes per-
framing her as she rides directly toward the camera.
taining to screen direction and the constancies of
Consequently, this new framing ( b ), which is on the
the physical world that is represented on screen can
line of action (motion) established in the previous shot,
be demonstrated with an example from Out of Africa
erases the right–left coordinates. In this shot, move-
(1985). Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) arrives in Kenya
ment occurs toward the camera, not to the right or left.
and rides by coach from the train station to meet her
The next shot ( c ) shows Blixen riding toward screen
new husband. During the shots that show her riding
right and represents a reversal of screen direction relative
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Editing: Making the Cut
to the first shot ( a ). The editing, however, softens the
This method preserves screen continuity perfectly.
abruptness of the reversal by using the intervening shot
Directional change occurs gradually, and the viewer
in which she rides directly toward the camera. By estab-
understands that the layout of the physical world on-
lishing a dominant line of action and then cutting to a
screen has remained constant, despite changes in the
camera position on the line, filmmakers can cross it subse-
camera’s angle of view and the direction of motion on-
quently it and define a new line.
screen. ■
(a)
(b)
OUT OF AFRICA (UNIVERSAL, 1985)
In Out of Africa , continuity of movement is main-
tained despite a change in its right–left orientation.
The shot (b) of Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) riding
toward the camera erases the right–left coordinates
established in (a) and provides the transition neces-
sary for maintaining continuity across the change
(a and c) in screen direction. Note also the motion
blur produced by the panning camera in the first
and last shots of the series. Because the camera is
panning with the coach’s movement, stationary
pedestrians and buildings are subject to motion
blur. Frame enlargements.
(c)
Errors of Continuity
Filmmakers never achieve perfect continuity, and viewers with sharp eyes often can spot errors. Errors of continuity are mismatched details in a series of shots. The vanishing water jug in the shots from The Waterboy (1998) is an especially flagrant example.
Continuity errors arise because moviemaking proceeds on a shot-by-shot basis, with everything, from character positions and costumes to lights and props, recreated for each new shot. The possibilities of flubbing these recreations, of mismatching their details, are enormous. The conditions of film production make it difficult for filmmakers to avoid such errors. Take, for example, Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). When Robin (Costner) and Azeem (Morgan Freeman) land on the shores of England, Azeem helps Robin up from the beach. In medium close-up, Robin holds out his right arm for assistance, and in the following shot viewers see Azeem helping Robin up by grasping his left arm.
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Editing: Making the Cut
THE WATERBOY
(TOUCHSTONE,
1998)
The disappearing water
jug—now you see it,
now you don’t. A brief
cutaway to the face
of another character
separates these two
shots of Adam Sandler.
In the second shot, the
water jug is conspicu-
ously missing. This is
a relatively glaring
continuity error. Frame
enlargements.
The error arose because the action had to be created separately for each shot and was done so without the proper matching continuity. In such cases, the editor’s best hope is that the viewer will not notice the discrepancy, and indeed, if the gaff is not glaring, viewers often fail to notice because they are busy following the story.
Continuity errors can develop when portions of a scene are shot at widely
spaced intervals. For example, in Cocktail (1988), Tom Cruise passes a New York theater whose marquee advertises the film Barfly and then, a few minutes later, when he passes that theater again, the marquee advertises Casablanca . As many readers know, some films have abundant continuity problems. In Pretty Woman (1990), continuity errors ranged from scenes in which Richard Gere’s tie appears and disappears from shot to shot to other scenes in which his shoes and socks do the same thing, and still others in which Julia Roberts takes a bite at breakfast from what is alternately a pancake and a croissant.
Facilitating the Viewer’s Response
The editing codes just reviewed—cutting to match the master shot and use of the 180-degree rule, the shot-reverse-shot series, and the eyeline match—are corner-stones of the continuity system. The system emphasizes naturalism and realism to 171
Editing: Making the Cut
the extent that it minimizes the amount of perceptual work that the viewer needs to do. This work is minimized because the positioning of characters, the direction of their movement, and the camera’s angles of view are related across shots in an orderly way. This enables the perspective of each shot to link up with the perspectives in other shots, establishing for the viewer the sense of a unified landscape stretching across all the shots, of which each offers only a partial view.
Think of film viewing as an activity like a picture puzzle in which the overall picture—Rick’s casino or Jeffries’ apartment complex—emerges when all the little pieces have been fit together. Each piece is a shot, and if they fit properly, the viewer sees the overall picture and not the pieces, just as with a puzzle. In this way, continuity editing helps to make the visual perspectives of each shot easy to interpret and movies themselves very easy to understand.
Continuity editing codes are so successful at simplifying the viewer’s perceptual task that they actually can facilitate comprehension of story information.
Ample experimental evidence indicates that viewers understand story informa-
tion more easily when continuity editing is used than when it is not. Rather than interfering with normal perception, continuity editing facilitates it. As a result, it makes films more accessible and attractive for diverse audiences whose educa-tional and cultural backgrounds vary. To the extent that continuity editing poses few interpretational problems for viewers, it has helped establish the enormous popular acceptance and emotional appeal of motion pictures.
Case Study SUBVERTING CONTINUITY ED
ITING: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Because audiences are so familiar with continuity edit-
next shot shows a bell ringing in Bill’s basement ( c )
ing, clever filmmakers can fool viewers by applying its
and Buffalo Bill listening with annoyance ( d ). When
rules in a misleading way. An especially brilliant example
the bell stops ringing, the next shot ( e ) shows the FBI
of this occurs in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). FBI
agent taking his finger off the doorbell outside. The
agents encircle a house in Calumet City, believing it to
shot series implies continuity of action and place, and
be the lair of serial killer Buffalo Bill. This action is intercut
the viewer concludes that the Calumet City house is,
with shots of Bill in his basement tormenting one of his
indeed, Bill’s lair.
victims. Outside, an agent is sent to ring the doorbell.
The agent rings the bell again, followed by shots
Other agents crouch nearby, hidden in the bushes. When
of Bill listening. Bill goes upstairs to answer his door,
Bill opens his door, however, viewers are startled and
and the action cuts to an exterior view of the Calumet
frightened to find not an FBI SWAT team but lone agent
City house as the agents decide they will have to break
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), unaware that she is face-to-
in. In the next moment, Bill opens his door to reveal
face with Buffalo Bill. Meanwhile, the SWAT team breaks
Clarice ( f ), alone and unsuspecting. In shock, viewers
into an empty house. It turns out that the viewer is see-
realize that they have been misled, that the Calumet
ing two different locations. How did the filmmakers trick
City house is not occupied by Bill. The sequence ends
viewers and spring this surprise on them?
with an establishing shot of the real house where Bill
The sequence opens with an establishing shot of
lives.
the Calumet City house ( a ). FBI agents swarm the
The cross-cutting of the FBI’s maneuvers with Bill’s
property and hide. Extensive intercutting joins this
activities in his basement prompts the viewer to make
action with shots of Bill in his basement. Outside,
a correct assumption of temporal continuity (the se-
one agent, disguised as a man delivering flowers,
quence of events is properly chronological, with no
approaches the front door and rings the bell ( b ). The
distortions of time) but a false assumption of spatial
( continued)
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Editing: Making the Cut
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
contiguity (that the locales shown in the cross-cut
cannot know from the editing that these are two sepa-
shots are connected). The deception depends on the
rate bells and different locations.
viewer’s familiarity with parallel editing, convention-
When Bill opens his door to reveal Clarice, viewers
ally used to establish linkages of time and/or place
realize with shock that their schema of time–space rela-
among several lines of action. It depends also on us-
tions, constructed by the editing, is wrong. Clarice’s
ing matching sound and visual elements to make the
situation gives the shock its emotional power. A char-
viewer infer continuity of action. The agent rings the
acter for whom the viewer cares deeply, she is now in
bell; the viewer sees it ring and Bill react. The viewer
mortal danger. ■
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Editing: Making the Cut
ALTERNATIVES TO CONTINUITY EDITING
Although it predominates in popular cinema, continuity editing is not the only method of editing used by filmmakers. Several alternatives exist, some of which disrupt continuities of time and space to varying degrees. Filmmakers often seek to create vivid stylistic effects by breaking from the naturalistic rendering of time and space that continuity editing provides. To do this, they commonly employ jump-cutting and/or montage.
Jump Cuts
This type of editing produces abrupt breaks in the continuity of action by omitting portions of an ongoing action. Imagine that an editor is examining a strip of film that contains one shot showing a woman walking across a room and opening a door. If the editor removes several frames from the middle of that shot, it will produce a break in the action, which will seem to jump over the interval of missing frames. The editor has created a jump cut .
Inspired by the use of jump-cutting in such French films as Breathless (1959), U.S.
filmmakers in the late 1960s and early 1970s experimented with the technique in Easy Rider (1969) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the latter edited by Dede Allen. She has reported that the film’s director, Arthur Penn, kept telling her to make the story go faster, and to do this, she used jump-cutting to omit portions of the action and speed things along. The first scene of the film shows Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) in her bedroom.
She paces restlessly about the room and lies down on the bed. Allen cuts from a shot of Bonnie walking over to her bed with her back to the camera to a shot in which Bonnie faces the camera and is already reclining on the bed. The cut between these two shots produces a jump, or discontinuity, in both her orientation relative to the camera and her position on the bed. This tiny break in the action creates a small acceleration in time, propelling the story forward a bit faster than standard continuity editing could accomplish.
The editors of Easy Rider used jump-cutting extensively to give many scenes a rough and jagged rhythm. In addition to jump-cutting, they employed a very unusual method of scene transition. Instead of using a dissolve, a fade, or a cut, BONNIE AND CLYDE (WARNER BROS., 1967)
This jump cut shows Bonnie standing and looking down at her bed, then reclining on the bed. The intervening action is omitted. The result for the viewer is a brief moment of perceptual disorientation. Frame enlargements.
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Editing: Making the Cut
they employed a unique technique that can best be described as flash cross- cutting.
Cross-cutting is typically used within a scene to reference and compare two or more lines of action. As used in Easy Rider , flash cross-cutting is a method of scene transition in which the last shot of the first scene and the first shot of the next scene are intercut very rapidly. The viewer oscillates rapidly, back and forth, between the end of one scene and the beginning of the next.
Flash cross-cutting is a unique method of scene transition that, like the jump cut, produces a very noticeable break in continuity. These techniques disrupt the smooth flow of action and call attention to themselves as visual devices. While flash cross-cutting is a rarely employed device, jump-cutting is a standardly employed method of producing discontinuity. It tends to be used, however, within scenes that have been constructed according to overall continuity principles. The contrast with these makes the jump cut vivid and effective.
Montage
Montage editing builds a scene out of many brief shots, each of which typically presents a fragmentary view of action and locale. The shots are often edited to a very rapid pace, subjecting the viewer to a barrage of visual information. With each shot offering an incomplete view, the total picture of the event emerges from the montage as a whole. Montage editing is typically used (1) to fragment time and space and (2) to visually embody thematic or intellectual ideas.
THE SOVIET MONTAGE TRADITION Soviet filmmakers in th
e 1920s first practiced this method of editing, and the most famous of these filmmakers is Sergei Eisenstein.
Eisenstein was very familiar with the continuity editing of U.S. pictures, particularly the work of D. W. Griffith ( The Birth of a Nation , 1915; Intolerance , 1916), who used it with great sophistication. Intolerance , for example, in telling four stories simultaneously, represents the pinnacle of parallel editing and cross-cutting. Eisenstein resolved to break with continuity principles, and he developed a montage style based on the creation of visual conflict between and among shots. His motivation was a sociopolitical one. As a Marxist, he believed that conflict was the essence of history, society, and art. In Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1928), and other films, FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Arthur Penn
Along with Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn is one
assassination of a small-time criminal under police
of the great poets of screen violence. Unlike
custody. Here, as elsewhere in Penn’s films, the
Peckinpah, though, who treated violence as an
killing of John F. Kennedy provides the model and
essential and instinctual component of human
resonant reference point for explorations of U.S.
behavior, Penn places violent behavior within a
social violence.
clear social context and uses it to illuminate the
Penn trained as a television director and
political atmosphere of an era. The Chase (1966)
debuted as a feature filmmaker with an unusu-
presciently treats the United States as a gun culture
ally psychological Western, The Left-Handed Gun
and studies its festering climate of violence. In its
(1958). Mickey One (1965) was a European-style,
horrific climax, the town sheriff (Marlon Brando)
existential art film whose unconventional visual
is savagely beaten and cannot prevent the public
style and ambitious story were too far ahead of
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Editing: Making the Cut
U.S. film culture when it was released. Penn ap-
Following The Missouri Breaks (1976), a big-
Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition Page 28
