Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  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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  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-