Task Seven - Creating Pace

Creating Pace
Pace is created by engaging the viewer in the film, ways of doing this are:

• Speed of Editing - The speed of editing is one of the best ways to create pace within a scene, this allows for either a fast paced or slow build up for a climax. Movies that used this technique to a great extent have been movies such as 'Bourne' series where the main character is being chased by people and there is fast cuts between the main character and the villains.
• Cross Cutting - This is also a great way to create pace by showing two sequences connected to each in a certain way that the audience would need to know, this is often used in movies as events happening at the same time in different locations or a character relieving a memory. This can be effectively used to develop drama such as making scenes more dramatic like in the movie 'Scream' where the character Casey in the opening scene of scream is made more dramatic with the cross cutting to her parents approaching and almost making it in time to her home before she is murdered.
• Cutaways - A cutaway would be used to reveal details to the audience without detracting from the narrative or the action such as when a child leaves behind a toy unintentionally.
• Creating Pace - by creating pace we allow to create feelings for the audience such as making the audience excited and interested in what will happen next in the film.

• Development of drama - This allows the audience to be more engaged into the film and we do this by using pace to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat not being able to wait for what is next to come.

Creating pace is vital within a video or movie in order to engage the viewer into the film rather than having them bored and take the video/movie off instead.

Task Six - Non-Continuity

Non-Continuity

Although most directors usually make movies following continuity editing, some directors create deliberate non-continuity edits by using jump cuts or breaking the 180 degree rule. One famous deliberate non-continuity edits have been from "A Bout de Soufflé"

In this short clip there is deliberate jump cuts along the scene having the character 'jump' from one action to another.
 

Another famous scene is from The Shining where a scene would include deliberate non-continuity shots where they would break the 180 degree shot rule multiple times in one scene.

 

 

Task Five - Continuity Editing

Task Five - Continuity Editing

Continuity editing is a style of editing which has been used in many famous movies as well as T.V shows, Continuity editing serves as a sort of guideline whilst filming.

Continuity Editing Techniques 

Match-On-Action is one of the techniques which is about matching an action whilst filming with a different camera angle shot, for example if one character starts an action in one camera shot; the character has to replicate the action for the other shot.

Eye-Line Match is another one of the techniques where we film a shot at something as if the character is looking directly at that something, for example if a character is looking at a car across the street the camera will go as if it's a first person view of the character looking at the car.

180 Degree Rule is one other of the techniques where we follow what is more like a guideline and is kind of complicated to understand, what it is about is that when filming the shot the camera can't pass this 180 degree line. Where is this line? well the line is located where the characters are in a shot, for example say a camera shot is looking at two characters talking to each other; the 180 degree line is going through the two characters so if the camera was to film the other side of the two characters then the 180 degree rule will have been broken.

In this diagram you can see how the line can be passed by the camera.

Shot, Reverse Shot is the final technique and is about how two shots follows two (or more) characters having a conversation by showing one of the characters whilst the character is speaking and then switching the shot to face the other character whilst they are speaking; the shot, reverse shot normally happens till the end of the conversation. This technique is used in nearly every movie or T.V show at least once, T.V shows which use this the most are usually soaps like EastEnders since they are mostly speaking to each other in deep conversations.

Our Practical

We filmed a short movie to show our understandings of the techniques in continuity editing.

In our short film we show how the techniques of continuity editing by trying to make them feel 'fluid' how they would be used in an actual movie.

Task Four: Montages

Montages

Montages is a type of edits which contain many different shots put together particularly quickly,
For our first montages, me and my media group have decided to put together some inspirations from movies we have seen in the past as well as some ideas of our own.

In French film practice "montage" has it's literal french meaning 'Assembly, installation) which simply identifies the techniques of editing that you need to do for a french montage.

In Soviet filmaking a montage is a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. A popular example of soviet film montage is by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925 called "Strike", this included a worker strike mixed with a gruesome killing of an animal:


In Hollywood cinema a "montage sequence" is a short sequence in a film in which narrative information is present in a condensed fashion with quick jump cuts and music. A great example of hollywood cinema montages is the rocky training scene where it shows how the boxer would train over a period of time with quick edits and great music:

We filmed two sets of montages, the first was a "Hollywood Montage", the second montage was a "Russian Montage".

The Hollywood Montage

This is our Hollywood Montage where we portrayed a boxer getting ready for a big match and added a montage sequence of him training while being interview, yes our main inspiration for this montage was 'Rocky' but has also some other ideas and inspirations too.

The Russian Montage
This is our Russian Montage where we had one character thinking about something but just by looking at the first scene you can't really tell what he was thinking about until we showed another scene where we showed how the character had recently been robbed however we then showed back to the character thinking where we then showed that he was thinking about money.

Task Three: From Analogue to Digital Editing

From Analogue to Digital Editing

Analogue Editing
Analogue films are made up images printed on acetate negatives which are 'spliced' together to form a reel of  film. These images are fed through a projector at a constant speed of 24 frames per second (24 Images per second) making the pictures move.
Analogue editing was by a person hand cutting and sticking reels of film together this was called "Splicing", this had many cons such as the reel of film being destroyed on accident or can be very expensive. No backups of film were store as there was no way of copying the reels of film.

The First Moviola
The Initial editing was first done on the first moviola was a device produced to be able to make editing easier and quicker by making the device to be able to cut and paste pieces of film together. This was done by using a splicer then threading the film on a device with a viewer such as the moviola.

Video Editing
Video editing is the process of editing when segments of motion picture, special effects and sound recordings are edited together perfectly in the post-production process before the film release. Before digital technologies became available, magnetic tapes otherwise known as video tapes would have been used to store film. Most video editing had been superseded by the more superior digital editing which is usually a cheaper and faster process.

Digital Editing
Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored digitally (instead of Analogue Form) which took up less space in physical form and would be much more difficult to destroy.
Digital editing is the use of computers to order and manipulate the digital data allowing the editing of the movie to be quick and easy.
Non-Linear Editing
Non-linear editing is a method that allows you to access any frame within the digital video clip regardless of the sequence in the clip and be able to edit the frame any way you wish by adding effects or by moving/deleting it. The freedom to access any frame and use a cut-and-paste method allows you to easily include effects such as fades, transitions and effects that cant be achieved without linear editing. The pros of this is that it is very easy to do and can be done quickly however can be very difficult to learn and edit film.
Final Cut
Most digital editing is used on software such as Avid or Final Cut Pro which allows a bypass of the positive film press altogether, this meant that a physical copy wouldn't have to be cut and spliced to edit and is done digitally and easily

Task Two: In-Camera Editing

In-Camera Editing is a linear editing technique where you would film scenes chronologically in a film by starting and stopping the camera then by moving the camera to film another scene in the film and start/stop the camera again, this technique is used frequently in early cinema and is still in use from modern movies today
In-Camera Editing was the only way of editing in early cinema as the technology wasn't advanced enough to begin non-linear editing and was the only way to begin filming for cinema at the time.




In our in-camera editing short film we would use the camera by starting and stopping to edit different scenes together. We would begin by having one character enter the scene then we would stop the camera move the camera to a new position to carry on the scene from a new perspective, we would have one character speak their lines then stop recording and switch to a new character speaking and would repeat till the scene has finished.

The Pros of In-Camera Editing is that there is no 'real' editing would be so filming would be quick and easy to do and wouldn't cost any extra apart from the equipment.

The Cons of this however is that if you were to mess up on camera while its recording that would mean that you would have to redo the scenes again because you can't edit it out on the camera. Another con would be that the screen on the camera is really small to looking at what your recording would be different when its the full screen. The sound recording on a camera is also very bad and recording the voices will be difficult and will pick up background noise, you will not even be able to check the audio after recording.

Task One - Editing in Early Cinema

Thomas Edison

Task One – Editing in Early Cinema

The art of cinema has changed a lot from the early beginnings to modern day from silent movies to the first simple techniques of editing. It all starts with work by people like Thomas Edison who was an intelligent scientist of his time that ran a film laboratory that had invented the kinetographic camera and kinetoscope, Thomas Edison had also invented the '35mm Film Strip' that he had used and it had quickly became industry standard of use.

Thomas Edison worked with many people such as the Lumiere Brothers, Edison and the Lumiere Brothers had produced short films that contained one long, static shot. The motion in these 'moving pictures' was all that was needed to amuse the audience, Initially the first films only contained motion and no story nor editing and each film ran as long as there was film in the camera. An example of a short film was "Sortie D'uisine" by the Lumiere Brothers which had showed factory workers leaving the factory, and just that motion of these factory workers leaving their workplace had the audience amazed.

Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès

Only a few people such as George Melies that had seen the possibilities of a film having more than just having motion in it's self. George Melies was a magician who had seen films made by the Lumiere Brothers and thought that he could do more, Melies acquired a camera, built a studio, wrote scripts, designed sets and soon he discovered and exploited the uses of basic camera tricks. It had been rumored that the way George Melies had discovered the art of stop motion was by accident when a camera he had been using had broken down for a second which looked like a cut and when he looked it over, he then realised how what he had been filming had changed and realised how people that were in the shot previously had disappeared or 'Vanished'. Soon after in 1886 George Melies had created "The Vanishing Lady" using a technique called in-camera editing, the film showed a magician moving a woman to a chair and making her turn into a skeleton and back to human form by using simple camera cutting tricks. "The Vanishing Lady" had people in shock and made people amazed.

G.A. Smith was one of the few people who saw the possibility of films and in 1899 he created "A kiss in the tunnel" which had added something new to film, story. This film is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing (Creating a story), although the story was not intense and full of detail, it had showed romance between a couple in a train. At the time a genre of film was very popular called "Phantom Ride" which shows a panoramic first person view of a train or vehicle moving; cameramen would often strap themselves in front of a train to film, the phantom ride would eventually evolve into a technique of filming something moving whilst having no visible means of propulsion. Smith took advantage of the brief onset of darkness as the train went into the tunnel to add a little 'Spice' in the shot of the the couple through editing.

Edwin S. Porter, former electrician before joining Thomas Edison's film laboratory made a film that had a breakthrough, a film which had action, a plot and close ups. The film Porter made was "Life of an American Fireman" (1903) where it had showed firemen get a fire alarm and going to the scene of the fire putting it out, this film had a plot (Firemen going to put out a fire), action (Firemen fighting the fire) and a closeup of a fireman pulling a fire alarm. This film was like anything ever seen before and gave the audience a shock and immersed them into the moving pictures, even the closeup showed that having closeups of actions performed would eventually be used in many films years after. Porter then made the popular film called "The Great Train Robbery" where it also had a plot with action and involved the robbing of a train whilst stationed at a train station. Porter showed that splicing together shots creates in the viewers mind a contextual relationship with the film.

Soon after Porter a new film expert called Charles Pathe introduced the first examples of the film technique called "Parallel Editing" which was cutting between two different storylines whilst in the film. Pathe used this technique in his film called "The Horse that Bolted" which showed two different storylines of the horse and the milkman. This had encouraged D.W. Griffiths to become of the earlier supporters of the power of editing, Griffiths made use of cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations with his film "Birth of a Nation". D.W. Griffith's work is highly regarded by many and greatly influenced the early film makers understanding of editing.