In this chapter we’ll expose mismatches from a few well-edited movies — half of which won or were nominated for the Academy Award for editing — and discover how the editors mitigated the mismatches. We’ll also explain jump cuts and their many functions in movies. Lastly we’ll define crossing the line and the 180° rule — a mystery to many filmmakers — and discuss what a bad cut really is.
MISMATCH
A cut in which continuity is lost due to a difference between elements such as action, eyeline, lighting, camera framing or position, props, weather, wardrobe, or makeup.
A mismatched cut can cause confusion, but more often than not, viewers miss the mismatch due to the skill of the editor. Mistakes in continuity — and getting around them — are part of daily life for editors. How do they do it? By keeping continuity of other elements — usually action or sound (sound effects, music, and/or dialogue) — and concentrating on propelling the story forward.
The following mismatched cuts from popular movies show how editors sustain continuity of other elements to shift the viewer’s attention away from the mismatch.
MISMATCH 1: Someone got left out of the rain. The second shot contains none but since his rain cap shows raindrops, the cut is short, and it’s the last shot in a gray scene, it splashes by.
Hot Fuzz
The next few examples deal with actors and mismatches and how editors work around them. Ralph Winters, editor of Gaslight, The Pink Panther, 10, and Victor Victoria and other movies, believes, “Nobody [no actor] does anything twice the same way, so the trick is to get [cut] in and out at those times when you don’t think an audience is going to be disturbed… You put them where you want them to be. They’ll watch action, they’ll watch movement.”
MISMATCH 2: The background continuity and motion of the falling leaves obscures the sword mismatch — pointing down in first shot, up in second shot — of the striking warrior.
Hero
MISMATCH 3: The mismatch of the actor’s hand (absent in first shot, grasping phone on second shot) is masked by the change in camera angle and the continuity of the girl’s piano playing.
Munich
MISMATCH 4: A literal sleight of hand by the editor. Both the left-hand position of hatless Howard Hughes and the background action are mismatched in this cut. However, the brisk camera movement and dialogue disguise the mismatches in this Academy Award winner for best editing.
The Aviator
MISMATCH 5: The head positions and eyelines of the actors in the first shot don’t match those in the second shot. Again, the dialogue, pacing, and actors’ performances smooth these mismatches.
United 93
MISMATCH 6: getting goats or a crowd of people to match is impossible. But the movement of the herd, along with the lighting and screen direction matches, carries the viewer’s eye and obliterates the mismatch.
Babel
MISMATCH 7: Can you count the mismatches in this confusing cut? See below for answer.
Cars
There are four mismatches: Screen direction, position (sports car), background, and foreground. The movement of the sports car to the front of the line helps keep the focus off the confusion.
JUMP CUT
A cut where objects or characters appear to jump because the shots are so similar. Technically, this is due to the camera angles of the two shots being less than 30° apart.
JUMP CUT 1: using jump cuts in lovemaking scenes has reached cliché status, which is mocked in this film as Jean-Do lets his imagination carry him away.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jump cuts are disorienting by nature; they counter continuity and shaft seamless editing. This is why they were spurned by Hollywood and traditional U.S. filmmakers for decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, French New Wave directors famously embraced jump cuts and they were then taken up by independent U.S. filmmakers. Nowadays jump cuts are accepted, used, and appreciated for what they bring to movies: Few action scenes, horror movies, video games, and music videos exist without them.
William Chang, who edited Red Dust, Ashes of Time, In the Mood for Love, and other films, states that, “A movie, by its nature, has to economize the usage of time to tell a story. I view a jump cut like any other cut — its function is to economize.”
Jump cuts are employed in a myriad of ways: To make dramatic points, shorten time, express a character’s thoughts, perceptions, dreams, or nightmares, and to add or subtract a person or object from a shot, to name but a few.
JUMP CUT 2: In this scene of multiple jump cuts, a widower remembers a time of joy when his expectant wife set up their baby’s room prior to its stillbirth and her murder. Even though this cut jumps him from foreground (frame 1) to the background (frame 2), the near match of her hands, the lighting, and the strong connection of the actors make this jump cut work.
The Constant Gardener
JUMP CUT 3: A clown car leaps into frame via a jump cut at the beginning of this innovative anime film.
Paprika
JUMP CUT 4: Jump cuts shorten time as the pirates advance across the wide expanse of sand and sea.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
JUMP CUT 5: The silhouetted lecturer pushes a slide projector’s remote button and click! He jumps forward and to the left side of the screen.
Hot Fuzz
JUMP CUT 6: Three pairs of jump cuts increase the intimacy and sense of passing time as Jean-Do shaves his 92-year-old father.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (selected cuts)
CROSSING THE LINE THE 180° RULE
There is an invisible line in every camera set up that bisects the scene horizontally at 180 degrees. If the camera crosses this line, it breaks the 180° rule, and viewers can lose their reference to where people and objects are in the scene.
Disorientation works fine for war and other chaotic scenes but in most situations, crossing the line can confuse and lose the audience. For instance, if the camera shoots from both sides of a football game, sports fans will be mixed up about which team is going in which direction for the goal. For this reason, sporting events are routinely filmed from one side of the game.
If all this seems a bit murky, let’s turn to Paprika, named for its redheaded heroine, a young girl who is also unclear on the concept. The subtitles and shots provide the answers.
Cut 4 crosses the line and breaks the 180° rule. Why? Because the girl (Paprika) appears to be on her director friend’s right side when she’s clearly on his left side in cuts 1-2. Cut 5 correctly observes the rule: Paprika appears to be on his left. Notice that the characters do not change positions or eyelines: Keeping their geography clear relies on filming according to the 180° rule.
Paprika
Directors film footage from both sides of the 180° line. So how do editors take the audience from one side to the other of the line? There are three main ways to manage this, as the next few pages illustrate.
Managing the 180° Line with a Cutaway 1: In the first shot, a play with two actresses is watched by a family, visible in the background. The middle shot — a cutaway to a spectator — creates a smooth cut to the third shot where the actresses are seen from the audience’s POV. Eliminating the middle shot would cross the line, potentially baffling the film audience with the swap of the actresses’ positions.
Finding Neverland
Managing the 180° Line with a Cutaway 2: In this tense scene with a lot of players, the cutaway to an overhead shot bridges to the third shot, avoiding crossing the line and keeping the audience from losing all sense of the scene’s geography and its players’ positions.
Munich
A second way to observe the 180° rule is for the director to tell the actors to move.
Managing crossing the line with character movement: The husband moves from left to right in the first shot (frames 1 and 2). His movement lines up the cut to the second shot (frame 3) where he faces his wife. The circling movement of camera and characters in this scene undersco
res the underlying tension between the couple.
The Constant Gardener
The third way to avoid crossing the line is for the camera to move. The camera breaks the 180° line and creates a new one once it stops moving. This method keeps the audience riveted to the action and allows the editor to cut in other shots, as this scene from Lust, Caution demonstrates. The first and last cuts are cutaways; the three middle cuts show the camera circling clockwise around the mahjong table.
In this last example of crossing the line, the editor simply ignores that the line has been crossed. Disorientation is not a problem since the audience is totally immersed in the movie and the music is playing in this MTV style cut. After all, who cares? The hero has just won 20 million rupees in an arduous TV contest, triumphed over a life of poverty, crossed several railroad tracks, and relived forced separation from his true love. Here, in these final two shots of the movie, the lovers are united with their first kiss. The cut brings them from a shadowy yellow light into a bright white light as they break the 180° rule and break away from their past to embrace the dawn of their life together.
Managing crossing the line with camera movement: The climactic moment and last cut of this movie cross the line and no one notices. Why? Because the editor shows the audience what it needs and wants to see: The full faces of the couple as they are finally able to express their love for each other.
Slumdog Millionaire
BAD CUT
A cut that does not move the story forward and risks disengaging the audience from the movie.
It could be a perfectly matched cut of two gorgeous camera shots and still be a bad cut. Why? If the cut doesn’t move the story forward — by giving new information, changing the locale, or building the drama, idea, or emotion — it doesn’t serve the audience or the movie and is a bad cut.
For these reasons it is impossible to show a bad cut; it must be recognized within the context of a movie. So how do you detect a bad cut? If you find yourself bored, confused, or suddenly aware of the movie theatre or your life and not the movie, a bad series of cuts, perhaps adding up to an unnecessary scene, has probably led you there.
Why are there bad cuts? There are a few reasons. The editor may be a novice who puts in too many shots that go on too long or fly by too fast and generally do not show the rhyme or reason for the story — its heart and soul. Secondly, bad cutting occurs when the editor’s voice and skill are thwarted by the higher authority of an inexperienced director, producer, or client. Ordinarily, editors do not have final say on the cut, so cuts and scenes can be kept in that bog down the movie and beg to be eliminated or more tautly edited. Lastly, the script may be full of holes or the footage may be so insufficient or inferior that there isn’t enough to construct a proper scene.
WRAP UP
Next time you’re watching a flick or viewing your current project, challenge yourself to look for good cuts and bad. This will enhance your moviegoing experience and help in evaluating your own editing work. Now we’ll make a jump cut of our own to the arena of effects. We’ll start by defining the ordinary effects you’ll see in most movies.
chapter 4 CUTS THAT USE
BASIC EFFECTS
Usually an editor uses a cut to make the transition from one shot to another. However, many times the editor employs an effect, such as a dissolve, to make the transition from one shot to another. In this chapter we’ll define these common effects and look at the creative ways filmmakers use them. Some of the effects are routine, some are inventive, some underscore the emotional intensity of a scene, and all must pass the test of serving the movie and advancing the story.
We’ll start by repeating the cut shown at the beginning of Chapter 1. This way, you can clearly appreciate the difference between using a cut to make a transition and using an effect.
Using a cut (as opposed to an effect) to transition between two shots.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
DISSOLVE
A transitional effect where the first (outgoing) shot disappears as the second (incoming) shot appears.
In this first shot, the mom-to-be prepares for the baby.
To understand how cuts and effects operate differently to transition from one shot to another, compare this dissolve to the cut on the opposite page.
Her shot (bottom frame) dissolves to another room in another house.
Then we see baby paraphernalia accumulating on the bed (right frame) as the pop-to-be (offscreen) also prepares.
Knocked Up
Dissolves typically portray the passage of time or a change in location or both as the dissolve from Finding Neverland illustrates. Regularly, dissolves are employed to eliminate jump cuts. They’re also frequently combined with other effects, as we shall see later in this chapter.
A trip from town to country and a change in tempo made possible by a desultory dissolve.
Finding Neverland
Short dissolves quickly transport us to the next day and the next turn of the plot.
SHORT DISSOLVE: Night becomes day in the life of a cartoon trucker.
Cars
Long dissolves allow us to somberly reflect on the passing of time before being carried on.
LONG DISSOLVE: The years have not been kind to the town of Radiator Springs.
Cars
FADE IN AND FADE OUT
A fade is a dissolve to black, sometimes white, and once in awhile to yellow, blue, or another color. A fade in starts with black frames and dissolves to a filmed shot. A fade out does just the opposite; it dissolves from a filmed shot to black frames.
Many scenes and most movies begin with a fade in and end with a fade out. When placed in the body of a film, a fade out (usually paired with a fade in) often follows a scene of heartrending drama; the fades give the audience breathing space to absorb the emotion and be ready for what happens next.
FADE OUT: This scene takes on the look of a Renaissance painting with its fade to black as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies’ life runs out.
Finding Neverland
FADE IN: The next scene fades in as people gather for Sylvia’s funeral.
Finding Neverland
WHITE OUT
When a shot cuts or dissolves to white.
A white out often involves organic elements such as a light, a camera flashbulb, or steam. Along with black outs and fade outs, white outs are common devices for portraying death.
WHITE OUT 1: At the beginning of the movie, a white out uses the sun to bring Ofelia from her underground fantasy world to her real and dangerous world.
Pan’s Labyrinth
WHITE OUT 2: Toward the end of the movie, an unusual white out uses the color yellow and repeats the sun imagery to take Ofelia from her death back to her fantasy world.
Pan’s Labyrinth
WHITE OUT 3: A shot of Ron whites out to a photo flash and reporter Rita Skeeter.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
WHITE OUT 4: A white out from the glare of an oncoming headlight is all in a day’s work for an L.A. cop.
Crash
BLACK OUT
When a shot cuts (as opposed to employing a dissolve or other transitional effect) to black.
A black out is an abrupt and quite effective edit.
Cars begins with a series of cuts to black as a narrator describes the opening car race, setting the audience up for the rest of the movie.
FLASH FRAME
A frame of black or white inserted between two shots.
The audience doesn’t notice a flash frame but feels its power as it energizes the cut and zaps the action forward. Flash frames are often used to soften jump cuts, commonly in an interview with many cuts of the same person. White flash frames are also routinely used to simulate a camera flash and to extend a lightening flash.
FLASH FRAME 1: This movie sizzles from beginning to end, sparked by white flash frames all the way. This one jumps the audience from Bourne’s train to the CIA bureaucrat out to nail him.
FLASH FRAME 2: Here a black flash frame (frame 3), sandwiched in between one-frame dissolves (frames 2 and 4), brilliantly simulates how Jean-Do communicates with his only non-paralyzed part — his left eye. One blink — one black flash frame — means “oui”; two blinks — two black flash frames — means “non.” And the answer to the question in the subtitle is (frame 3) “Oui.”
Film Editing Page 4