Avery McAdams

Editing is one of the most key factors in creating a movie. Post production, the editors so creatively get to work on piecing the film together in an interesting and entertaining way. After reading chapter 6 what fascinated me the most were all the different ways that you can edit scenes to grab the viewers intentions and made me think back to films I have already watched and see them in the editors perspective, and why they stuck in my mind.

Chapter 6 touched on so many different ways editing can effect the film and the viewers interpretation of the scene. For example in this worldwide famous film Titanic I think that the editing was done very well in one particular scene and grabs the attention of the viewer very well.

In this scene you can see the crew members of the Titanic frantically realizing that the ship is going to crash and isn’t going to make it:

I think that the editors did an amazing job with cutting in this scene. You can see that it cuts from the panic of their hands on the map of the ship, to their faces one by one as they realize whats going to happen to them and their passengers. I think its so well done and intentional that it cuts from each of their faces of realization, all close ups. The editors could of easily left this scene in one cut and had their expressions all going on at the same time. But the intentionality to cut to each of their faces individually really highlights the gravity of the situation. Especially in the second and third frame you can see a rack focus or pulling focus from one subject to another that was highlighted in past chapters which I also found fascinating.

The next thing that I read in Chapter 6 that grabbed my attention was the way that editors simply cut unnecessary scenes out that are implied. They described this as a flash-forward. In every single media that we watch there are flash-forwards, as they are used to attend to the short attention spans that us viewers have. For example in this scene from a very popular show Jane the Virgin there is a simple scene of the main character getting up and walking out the door.

The first to the second photo of this scene that I included cuts to the character getting up to walking to the door, shot from her back. And then cuts again to her clearly now downstairs in the main lobby of the setting of the hotel. The editors cut this to make it more appealing and easier for the viewer to stay focused on the main idea of the film. Her walking down the stairs or going down the elevator didn’t elevate the story in any way so they cut it to keep the idea generalized and its set up in a way that is clearly implied what she has just done to the viewer.

Finally, one last thing that I read in chapter 6 that stuck out to me was the idea of repeating a scene when necessary. With the creativity of editing, you can re use the same scene more than once and duplicate it to elevate the importance of that moment. We can see this in the latest movie we watched called Portrait of a Lady on Fire. We are shown this one scene of Heloise in this white dress throughout the film.

The editors clearly knew what they were doing as being shown the same cut clip in different parts of the story created this sort of mystery and grabbed the viewers attention to figure out the significance of this scene. It certainly worked on me! Its unclear if this is the exact same clip that the editors used and just edited different lightings and settings around it or it was shot more than once, but it seems to me that its the same clip that was cut and edited heavily by the editors.

Its so interesting the different ways editing has on the viewers interpretation of a particular scene. I found it interesting to connect what I read in chapter 6 to past films I have watched. Its clear to me now that editing decisions are an enormous part of what forms the overall film.