Editing

Not all of the filmmaking is to do with in front or behind the camera; in fact the editing process is crucial for a film to be finished well, as it helps enhance mood, emotion and character. Editing involves combining the right shots into sequences, and combining the sequences into the finished film.

Editor’s tasks to finish a film include:

• Selecting and rejecting (if it’s not good enough) footage by the director
• Organising various shots into the finished film
• Co-ordinating one shot and a following to produce a moving narrative

The editor starts by looking at the various individual shots available to create a particular scene and they then use the script for the scene as a guide, and decide which shots would be best to create it. Sometimes a whole scene may be made up of just one shot if it is of correct length. Scenes are put together to create a sequence, a group of scenes set around a section of the narrative, and sequences are then put together to give a finished film.

Continuity editing

Most films and other moving images that we watch conform to this method of editing. Editing is hardly noticed by the audience, as we accept what is happening on screen if it follows the rules that we have learnt from watching other films.

These are some common features of continuity editing:

• ·         The establishing shot is typically used at the beginning of a film or sequence to ensure that the audience knows where and when the action takes place. This could involve the outside of a building, a landscape or a city skyline. This shot often then changes to the inside of a building that we can assume for example is the inside of the building that we saw in the establishing shot.
• ·         Shot reverse shot is commonly used during conversation, so that the audience can see how both people in the conversation respond and deliver pieces of information.
• ·         180 degree rule is the basic rule that ensures that the audience can understand the scene in terms of where things are within the location that the scene is being filmed. This rule can be deliberately broken by the editor to create confusion and disorientation amongst the film.

Cut

Film editors can connect one scene to another in several ways, including a straight cut, fade out, dissolve, wipe cut or jump cut.

These all affect the pace and mood of a scene. The three things that an editor will take into consideration when working on a scene are the quality of the shot, cinematic space and cinematic time. 

The quality of the shot includes what the shot actually contains, what’s happening in the shot, how has the shot been filmed and how does this relate to what is going on in the shot? 

The cinematic space refers to where the action takes place, for example in establishing shots we are shown the location of the scene in the first shot. What are the people doing within the space and what are we, as an audience, supposed to focus on? 

The cinematic time refers to the time a sequence takes to play on screen – compressed or extended.

To shrink time we can create a series of fast paced cuts to illustrate what is happening a lot quicker. For example, we see a character get in a car in one location and get out at another, so we can assume that a journey has taken place rather than showing the whole thing. 

To expand time we add additional details, e.g. a scene of someone sitting and waiting can be made longer by editing together cuts of the characters eyes, hands, and other body parts to portray their impatience, to create tension.

Editing sets the rhythm or pace of a scene. This could be due to either the music in the background or the mood created by the pace that a scene is edited. To build tension in a scene you could cut from one shot to the next very quickly. However in a relaxed scene shots will be cut at a much slower pace.