Why do we cut in editing? {Lesson Notes}

Why do we cut in editing? Editing is about how you arrange the footage to create a story. Emotion:

• How will this cut affect the audience emotionally at this particular moment in the film?
• We control the emotion, the audience, we don’t have to reveal everything creating suspense, obscure the audience
• Walter Murch thinks that emotion is the most important thing to consider in film

Rule of Three:

• Any shot is informed by the shot that is before it and the shot that is after it.

Rule of Six:

• Six element to building the story within the edit
• Walter Murch {In a Blink of an Eye}
• Priorities used in a formative plan

Questions:

• Can these shots tell the story we want to tell?
• What is the story?
• How can you edit to make someone feel a certain way?

Audience:

• How do they feel?
• Do the audience have to see everything?
• Can the audience know something that the characters don’t know? 
• {this all depends on what story you are trying to tell}

Story: 

• Does the edit move the story forward in a meaningful way?

Rhythm:

• Is the cut at a point that makes rhythmic sense?

More advanced:
Eye Trace:

• How does the cut affect the location and movement of the audiences focus in that particular film?
• Matching the eye to the object, tracing the eye with the camera
• Matching the frame or symbol, one side of the screen to the other, for a transition

Two Dimensional Place of Screen:

• Is the axis followed properly?
• Make sure your cuts follow the axis {180 degree line}
• Keeps action along its correct path of motion and maintain continuity
• Allows the audience to keep track, makes it easier for them

Three Dimensional Space:

• Is the cut true to established physical and spacial relationships?
• Draw an imaginary between your characters and keep the camera on just one side of that line.

George Méliès accidentally invented Jump Cuts; Jump Cuts was the first accidental edit, before that everything was shot as a separate scene. 


D.W Griffiths - God of Modern Film; he used the first “cut in”; where you cut and the camera moves in, he created ‘continuity editing’.

Continuity Editing is cutting between shots with a purpose if maintaining smooth sense of continuous space and time.