Which of the following transitions involves a fade-in superimposed over a fade-out?

Editing 7

The essence of cinema is editing. It’s the combination of what can be

extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general

sense, put together in a kind of alchemy. —Francis Ford Coppola

Still from 127 Hours (2010). ©Fox Searchlight Pictures. All rights reserved./courtesy Everett Collection

What Is Editing? Chapter 7

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following: • Describe how editing can affect a film’s pacing, plot structure, and perception of its mise en

scène. • Explain how editing can juggle plot threads and rearrange the order of story content for

dramatic effect. • Identify the basic building blocks editing uses to tell a story, including how a variety of

transitions can affect perception of time. • Define systems of editing, such as continuity editing, discontinuity editing, and the mon-

tage theory, and describe how editing guides what a viewer is seeing and hearing in order to refocus attention and to enhance or even completely change what was in the script.

7.1 What Is Editing? In narrative movies, the story idea usually comes first, and the screenwriter puts his or her vision into words, describing what will be seen on the screen. With most movies, the director chooses and arranges what will actually be in the scene (the mise en scène) and how it plays out. The cin- ematographer composes various images in the camera that force the audience to view only part of what is in the scene, and to view it in a specific way with each shot. The editor then decides which of those shots to use, in what order they appear, and how long they are on the screen. This can have a critical effect on how well an audience can pick up on what the director has put into the scene. Directors typically work closely with both the cinematographer and editor to make sure their visions coincide. There are cases, however, when a director who wants to maintain personal control may shoot a scene in such a way that it can be edited in only one way, or is in one continuous take with no alternate angles to cut to. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is a rather extreme example, an 80-minute film with only 10 individual shots running 5 to 10 minutes each and five of the cuts disguised to make it appear like only five individual shots. Sometimes viewers of Rope have the impression that the entire film was shot in one long take because the few cuts it employs seem so natural that they’re not perceived as cuts. Effective editing is sometimes called “invisible”

editing. This is because viewers often do not even realize when a shot changes from, say, a two-shot to a close-up of one actor, or even from one location to another, if the editor appropriately anticipates what view- ers want to see and when they want to see it, and remembers to maintain a plausible continuity between shots.

Some films take the opposite approach and use certain scenes to show off their abil- ity to edit numerous shots together, as in the battle scenes of 300, action sequences in XXX and Star Trek Into Darkness, and

party scenes in Baz Luhrman’s remake of The Great Gatsby. A film such as Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) looks from beginning to end almost like an exercise in all the possible techniques of edit- ing. The montage theory of editing, which will be discussed later, is a rebellion against the idea of invisible editing, and instead considers that not only is editing the most important aspect

©Warner Bros. Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ In Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby, a flurry of short shots edited together adds to the quick-paced, almost frenzied nature of the party scenes.

What Is Editing? Chapter 7

of filmmaking but that the joining of shots should intentionally juxtapose disparate images to create new meaning. Most standard character dramas and comedies, however, tend to use func- tional continuity editing that serves the story and does not call attention to itself. Editing can shorten scenes that were shot, tighten them to pick up the pace and increase dramatic tension, and lengthen scenes, stretching out reactions longer than they were originally delivered by the actors on the set and so slowing the pace for dramatic emphasis. Typically, using fewer and lon- ger takes in a scene slows the pacing, while using more shots of briefer screen time quickens the pacing. (Compare, for example, the divergent editing styles in the 1974 and 2013 versions of The Great Gatsby.) Editing can even rearrange or eliminate words, actions, or entire sequences— segments made up of closely related scenes. For example, the last scene in the script might be split in half, with the first half placed at the beginning of the film so that the middle of the picture becomes an extended flashback. The entire plot structure can be changed through the editing. Quentin Tarantino has stated that the edited movie is really the final draft of the script. And of course editing can change the film yet again through various stages from “roughcut” to “preview print,” undergoing revisions for the “premiere” version and often a shortened “theatrical cut” (sometimes slightly different for different countries), then a revised “director’s cut” for home video, and sometimes even a later “definitive director’s cut.” Changes in different editions may be due to ratings or censorship concerns. They may be made to make story clarity more obvious for certain target audiences. Or scenes may be deleted simply to shorten the running time so theaters can schedule more showings per day.

To understand what goes into editing, it can be a useful exercise to read original screenplays in various drafts, and then to compare them with the finished film, if possible, in its various cuts. A select few DVDs and Blu-ray discs include the film’s screenplay, sometimes as a DVD-ROM file (as with Nurse Betty, The Stunt Man, and Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong) and occasionally as a file designed to appear on screen while you watch the film (as with Pirates of the Caribbean, Taxi Driver, Pleasantville, and American Beauty). Articles and entire books have examined particular films from script to screen in their many different incarnations along the way. A few films are available on DVD or Blu-ray in multiple versions that can allow you to trace the modifications in two or more different cuts for yourself, including Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional, and Oliver Stone’s Alexander, among others. Many foreign-language films are drastically recut for American release, primarily to shorten them and speed up pacing, but also to eliminate char- acter development and subplots deemed unnecessary for the basic storyline or too confusing for American audiences. It can be instructive to compare the very different versions of films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Senso, or Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla (a.k.a. Gojira), to name just a few. Do the changes improve the films for an audience with a differ- ent cultural background, do they destroy the director’s original intent, or do they merely present the same basic story differently?

Another useful exercise is to watch your favorite films over again, picking out an especially impres- sive scene to view repeatedly, sometimes in slow motion, so you can observe all the different shots that make up the scene. Try to understand how the editor’s choices affect how you perceive the scene’s pacing, and how you notice specific props or actions more clearly at key moments than if different shots were used or a different number of shots were cut together over the same screen time. Additionally, if a DVD or Blu-ray edition of a film offers the opportunity in its supple- mentary features, it can be very instructive to watch unedited takes of a scene and then see the complete edited scene (and possibly alternate edited versions) immediately following. Certain DVDs include bonus features that break down selected scenes shot by shot, explaining how a sequence is constructed, sometimes comparing it with the shooting script and “storyboards” or

Rearranging the Story Into a Plot Chapter 7

“animatics” that directors use to pre-visu- alize the scenes. Others give you the option of viewing alternate camera angles during a scene. Sometimes (as with the Men in Black Deluxe Edition) they even let you rearrange shots or remix the audio to see the effect that has.

In this chapter, we will examine some of the basic tools of editing, which is one of the elements of filmmaking that occurs in post-production, or after principal pho- tography is completed. However, some aspects of editing may begin before film- ing ends, as the director will look at dai- lies, or the footage shot during a given day. Every editor, like every director, has his or her own style. And, as with the director’s relationship with the cinematographer, his

or her relationship and level of cooperation and supervision with the editor vary from film to film. But most editors operate with these tools at their disposal, so a working knowledge of them should help us to understand how the film is put together.

7.2 Rearranging the Story Into a Plot Before we get into the technical details of what goes into editing, you must understand the pur- pose of editing; briefly, it is to arrange the screenwriter’s story and cinematographer’s shots into the film’s final plot. The writer puts story elements into a plot in a certain order, the director

oversees their filming, but the editor is the one who assembles everything into the final movie. Directors rely upon their editors to make sense of all the little pieces, not only to bring out the best performances of the actors but also to enhance the themes of the story and ensure the audience can follow what is going on. Because most films are not shot in chronological order, but in the order in which scheduling, weather, and other factors make the most sense, it is crucial for the editor to put the story back together for the audience.

For instance, in a huge, epic film like The Right Stuff, in which par- allel stories of the men first assigned to the Mercury space program and test pilot Chuck Yeager are told, it is essential that the various storylines hold together. Otherwise, the audience is left confused, making the film unnecessarily complicated. The editing team of Glenn Farr, Lisa Fruchtman, Stephen A. Rotter, Douglas Steward,

Courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was originally released with an X rating. Because of concerns about sex and violence, some VHS editions were later edited and released with an R rating.

◀▲The complexities of the parallel stories in The Right Stuff (1983) have roots going back to D. W. Griffith’s 1915 and 1916 masterworks. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance were films that pio- neered multiple-storyline filmmaking.

©Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection

Rearranging the Story Into a Plot Chapter 7

and Tom Rolf had to keep the stories flowing in a sensible order, even as focus shifted from Yeager to the astronauts and back, while also incorporating historical footage of space shots. The editing team clearly excelled at this, as they won the Academy Award for their efforts, and the film, all 193 minutes of it, was nominated for Best Picture.

Importance of the Editor

Film editing is a somewhat different discipline than what we think of as editing in other art forms. One thinks of the editor of a book, for instance, checking for grammar and spelling errors, but also ensuring that the writer has constructed a story that makes sense, that one chapter reason- ably follows another (unless there is an artistic reason for it not to), and that the assorted chapters hold together as a whole work. The film editor’s role parallels this to some degree, but he or she does more: The film editor helps create the film, literally constructing it, piecing together differ- ent takes of individual scenes and then placing the selected scenes in the order that tells the story the director wants to tell. The editor’s role is crucial to the making of a successful film. Editing determines not only the order in which elements from the story occur in the film’s plot, but also the frequency (how many times we see them) and the duration (how long they last on the screen).

And yet the best editing doesn’t call attention to itself (unless the story calls for it). Instead, even if it involves incongruous editing, or putting sequences together out of order, it is still done in service to the story. Poor editing does the audience the ultimate disservice when it comes to film—it makes its members aware that they are seeing a film, taking them out of the transforma- tive experience going to the movies should be.

How important is the editor’s job? Actress Natalie Portman was asked in an interview whether she could tell if a film was good or bad while she was in the process of shooting it. “I can’t at all,” Portman said. “It really, I feel like, always happens in the editing room. That’s why, whether it comes out good or bad, you sort of can’t take credit for it” (Goodykoontz, 2009d).

Chronological Order

Often a film is cut with the scenes arranged in chronological order. This makes sense; most stories are told in this way, and they are easy to follow. We simply watch one scene unfold after another, from beginning to end. Don’t mistake this for simplistic storytelling, however. Some are complex stories, such as Miller’s Crossing, the Coen brothers’ 1990 film about a gang- ster (Gabriel Byrne) who plays two rival bosses (Albert Finney and Jon Polito) against each other. There are numerous twists and turns as loyalties shift to suit the whims of the charac- ters. Yet the film has a clear beginning, middle, and end. This is also useful when a scene refers to another that has gone before it. For instance, at one point Byrne’s character is dispatched to kill a crooked bookie (John Turturro). The bookie pleads for his life, begging Byrne’s character to “look into your heart.” Seemingly moved, Byrne

Mary Evans/C20TH FOX/Ronald Grant/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ In the film Miller’s Crossing , the Coen brothers push the familiar gangster genre in new and unexpected direc- tions. The brothers are best known for breathing new life into familiar formulas.

Rearranging the Story Into a Plot Chapter 7

lets him go. Later in the film, however, Byrne’s character is again about to shoot the bookie. Again, he pleads, “Look into your heart.” Byrne’s character says dismissively, “What heart?” and shoots the bookie between the eyes. The scene is much more effective and powerful because of our knowledge of what has come before, informing us that in the previous scene, Byrne’s charac- ter let the bookie live temporarily to serve his own purposes.

Incongruous Editing

Other films make intentional use of incongruous editing, or jumping around in time. Quentin Tarantino rearranges story events in Pulp Fiction so that we see some things long after they’ve already happened in the plot thread we’ve been following, and we see certain things a second time from a different point of view. In 1941, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane became famous for the way it told the life story of its title character through multiple flashbacks, some of them overlap- ping, from different points of view, using a framing plot thread that shows a reporter interview- ing people who knew him. Not nearly so influential but several years before that film, The Sin of Nora Moran related most of its story through flashbacks within flashbacks and even dreams within those flashbacks, sometimes making it a challenge to keep track of what was going on until the end.

In Don’t Look Now, discussed earlier for its use of color, there is an intense sex scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. It drew attention in part because of the frank and rela- tively explicit way in which it is shot, especially for the time. But the scene is also notable for the unusual way in which it is cut. Director Nicholas Roeg cuts between shots of the couple making love to scenes of them dressing for dinner afterward, then back again. The unorthodox editing helps to further establish a central theme of the film, which plays with the idea of time through- out. Sutherland’s character seems to have the gift of premonition, though he is skeptical. Still, he sees things that others do not, and it is unclear to him and the audience when these events are taking place. The jumping around in time during the sex scene helps to accentuate the fluid nature of time in the film.

Sidney Lumet’s complexly plotted heist thriller Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) con- stantly jumps back and forth in time, repeating scenes or partial scenes but following different characters, slightly overlapping some of the action before continuing with the story and jumping back again to where a previous scene had left off. To avoid audience confusion, often a superim- posed title lets the audience know when a new scene is taking place and which character will be the focus. We know most of the basic story within the first 10 minutes, but we learn more and more details about things that were happening simultaneously, until we finally see how it all ends in the very last scene of the movie. Vantage Point, a 2008 action thriller about a plot to assassinate the president, has a similar structure of repeating scenes from different viewpoints, adding new layers to the story information until finally allowing the end to unfold chronologi- cally. In Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), the basic story is shown chronologically, but we sometimes see a shot of Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) followed by flashbacks of the happy life together that he and Catherine (Rooney Mara) had before they decided to divorce, even though the soundtrack often keeps us in the present time. This lets us know that he is remembering, rather than merely letting us know what happened in the past.

Perhaps the most ambitious use of editing to tell a story is found in Memento, Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film in which Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a former insurance investigator, has a form of amnesia that prevents him from making new memories. He is trying to investigate what he believes to be the rape and murder of his wife; unable to remember any of what he discovers,

The Basics Chapter 7

he relies on notes, tattoos, Polaroid photo- graphs, and other devices to try to piece together what his memories cannot. To further complicate matters, Nolan tells the story in two ways. The scenes shown in black and white unfold chronologically, while the color scenes play in reverse order. The effect leaves the audience as confused and in the dark as Leonard, but the truth about Leonard’s wife is revealed by the end of the film. Although some audiences were confused by the technique, it is generally considered an ingenious, compelling way to tell the story.

Many of these films were heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), an ingenious blend of two short stories into a new and different work and a film whose unexpected worldwide acclaim suddenly introduced international audiences to Japanese cinema. Revising one of the stories into a framing story, Kurosawa has the rest of the film recount the other story in a series of flashbacks within a flashback, each of which covers the same incident, a rape and killing, from a different point of view. The original story was written as a series of testimonies by witnesses at a trial exploring the nature of subjective truth, but the film’s editing takes it to a new level with the complex interaction among the incident itself, the conflict- ing trial testimony, the people telling the story of the trial, and the people listening to the story.

Many, if not most, films, of course, have the plot order predetermined by the screenplay, but the editing process gives the director another chance to shuffle scenes around, delete them entirely, show events more than once from different points of view, or completely restructure the plot.

7.3 The Basics The editor is charged with the actual construction of the film. Again, working in collaboration with the director, the editor selects the best takes of individual scenes and then places them in the order that best tells the story the director is trying to tell. Often this is chronological order, which is the most straightforward method and the easiest for the audience to follow. However, some films challenge the audience with incongruous editing, using various tools to jump around in time and space. Like the cinematographer, the editor has many tools at his or her disposal to help tell the story. But also like the cinematographer, the editor must think of them as tools to advance the story, not crutches to limp it along.

Shot and Take

The process of editing involves arranging what has been photographed and joining shots into the most effective order to communicate the content to the viewer. In writing a story, an author uses words as basic elements, choosing and arranging them into sentences. Sentences are organized into paragraphs, and multiple paragraphs become chapters or sections that tell the complete

Courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ In Memento, character Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) uses his tattoos, among other techniques, to fill the holes in his mem- ory as he searches for answers to his wife’s murder. The editing techniques used to show Shelby collecting jumbled memories puts the audience in the shoes of the protagonist, leaving them feeling equally lost and confused.

The Basics Chapter 7

story in a carefully ordered manner. As we have learned previously, with film, the basic element is the shot, the view a camera takes from a single position or setup (stationary or moving), obtained by turning the camera on for a certain amount of time and then turning it off. Each time this is done, it is referred to as a take, and if a shot is performed badly or ruined for some reason, the director will order additional takes until that shot is satisfactory. The best take of a shot or the best portion of a take is later used in the film, and that portion used in the finished film is also called a “shot,” even though it may not be the complete take. As we’ll soon see, different portions of different takes of the same shot setup can be assembled to fine tune an actor’s performance. This can be obvious, using jump cuts, or imperceptible, if there is coverage that can be exploited, both of which we’ll discuss shortly.

From Frames to Acts

A shot may be as short as a single frame (one still image lasting 1/24th or 1/30th of a second on the screen) or as long as the entire movie, with the maximum length determined by how much film or tape the camera can hold, or how large a digital file will fit on a digital camera’s hard drive

or memory card. The earliest films, pro- duced back in the 1890s, each consisted of a single shot about a half-minute or less to a minute or two, sometimes simply showing a place or person of interest, and sometimes depicting a brief story acted out in front of the camera. One of the most famous exam- ples is the 1895 French comedy Arroseur Arrosé (A Sprinkler Sprinkled), sometimes called Watering the Gardener in English, which lasts about 50 seconds. When motion pictures were a new technology, there was no concept of editing, unless an exhibitor decided to splice together a variety of the- matically related films (such as news events or travel views) into a longer presentation, turning each shot into a scene that told part of a longer story.

A scene, as we discussed in Chapter 5, is a portion of a film that takes place in a single location over a specific time period, show- ing viewers an episode in the story before

moving on to another scene. By the late 1890s, filmmakers who wanted to tell stories longer than a minute or two would connect a series of scenes, each one shot in a single take. Good examples include such films as the six-minute 1899 version of Cinderella by Georges Méliès. Even today, a scene may be a single shot, especially if it’s a short scene, but ever since the early 1900s, each scene is more often made up of several and sometimes numerous individual shots that direct the view- ers’ attention to what the director thinks is most important at any given moment. Several related scenes follow each other to form what is called a sequence, a dramatic unit comparable to a chap- ter in a book. Several sequences then might make up an act of a film that follows the traditional three-act or five-act screenplay structure, or of an extra-long epic film that has an intermission between two major and dramatically cohesive sections of an hour or two each.

Photo by Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ This simple single-shot from L’Arroseur Arrosé (The Sprinkler Sprinkled) of a man being sprayed in the face is the great- grandfather of physical comedies. The Lumière brothers (along with Thomas Edison in the United States) are credited with inventing motion pictures.

The Basics Chapter 7

Transitions

When filmmakers decided to expand films beyond individual single-shot scenes into a series of single-shot scenes, and eventually into a series of multiple-shot scenes, they had to decide how to connect them in ways that would not confuse the audience.

Cuts The most common method of changing scenes and joining shots within a scene is the cut, so called because film originally had to be physically cut with a razor blade or scissors before being glued or taped to another piece of film (even though almost all movies today, whether shot digi- tally or on film, are edited on computers rather than by physically cutting film). Shots, scenes, and sequences are assembled by the editor to tell the story, and the editing process is commonly called cutting a film. A direct cut is the simplest of many possible transitions between two shots. On the screen, the viewers see one shot instantly replaced by another one after a cut. Technically, a direct cut does not even provide a transition, but merely an immediate change to a new shot of the same scene (showing continuous action) or a new scene taking place at a different loca- tion or time. When action flows smoothly from one shot to the next, direct cuts are usually just taken for granted by viewers if they’re noticed at all. See Table 7.1 for the different types of editing transitions.

Table 7.1 Major types of transitions between two shots

Direct cut One shot instantaneously replaces another on the screen.

Fade-out/fade-in Image slowly fades to black or fades from black screen slowly into the image.

Dissolve A fade-in superimposed over a fade-out, so both shots are briefly seen together.

Wipe One shot pushes the previous one off the screen, typically from side to side or top to bottom, but various other shapes and effects may be used, such as a page turn, Venetian blinds, multiple stars or diamonds, or a rotating cube.

Iris A circle (or square or other shape) closes down on the image from the outer edges until the image goes black for an iris-out, or opens up for an iris-in.

If there is an obvious jump in the action with something either missing or repeated, or if the new camera position is very similar to but not exactly the same as the previous shot, the scene has a jarring effect, and this is referred to as a jump cut. Jump cuts may be accidental on the part of the editor, or they may be done intentionally as part of a film’s style, as in the Australian thriller Kiss or Kill or the German film Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run). A scene of Lola running from the camera in Run Lola Run starts with her a short distance away, but as she’s running she is suddenly many yards away and then several yards further, as jump cuts eliminate part of the shot’s action without changing to different camera angles. Throughout Kiss or Kill, the editor eliminates perhaps a second or a few seconds from a shot every so often, again without cutting to a different angle. This jarring, jump cut effect, first popularized in French New Wave films such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), adds to the nervous energy of the characters and the film’s edginess. In Seijun Suzuki’s audacious and kinky yakuza crime thriller Branded to Kill (1967), jump cuts and elliptical editing get straight into the heart of scenes, eliminating unnec- essary connecting action and exposition that audiences are expected to understand already as part of the conventional genre formula. Many films now use this technique to indicate passage of time, such as scenes of a character getting dressed or working or eating, instead of the more traditional fades and dissolves.

The Basics Chapter 7

Fades, Dissolves, Wipes The second most common transition used in films after the cut is the fade, either a fade-out or a fade-in. These are often used at the beginning or end of a scene or sequence as a sort of punc- tuation mark, fading into a shot from a black screen or fading to black at the end, like bringing the lights up or down during a stage play. A fade-out/fade-in often signals a significant passage of time. Another common transition, the dissolve (sometimes referred to as a cross-fade), is just a fade-in to a new shot superimposed over a fade-out from the previous shot, so the two adjoining scenes can both be seen simultaneously for a moment. Georges Méliès’s Cinderella has a dissolve between each of its single-take scenes. Like the fade-out/fade-in, dissolves are often used to indi- cate time passing, and a montage sequence is typically made up of numerous quick dissolves or wipes to chronicle a series of events in a short time on the screen.

A standard wipe, just as it implies, looks on the screen like one shot is “wiped” off the screen by another shot, whether from side to side, top to bottom, or diagonally. More spectacular wipes may be done in fancy shapes such as stars, Venetian blinds, an imitation of a page turning, and more. Some filmmakers like to use wipes to introduce split-screens smoothly, rather than cutting directly to a split-screen or multi-image effect. Run Lola Run uses a split-screen to show Lola racing to her boyfriend on one side, her boyfriend waiting anxiously on the other side, and a clock ticking away at the top. Having a split-screen shows two or more scenes happening at the same time, eliminating the need to cut back and forth between them and allowing the viewers to

Photos by Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

▲▲ While these two shots of Lola in Run Lola Run are similarly framed, she is magically transported from one background location to the next. In classical Hollywood editing, jump cuts were seen as serious errors that inter- rupted the flow of the story, reminding viewers that they were watching a fabricated reality. Today, jump cuts are just another kind of stylization, which viewers take in stride.