In chapter 6 argues that editing is not just a tradition, but it is a viewer-oriented tool. The directors use these tools to shape viewer’s experience by manipulating time, space, and pictural qualities. These techniques can decide how the film is ordered, transitioned, and presented to guide the audience’s understanding of the whole film.
180 degrees system (axis of action).
This technique fixes the camera placement to one side of an imaginary line on screen, so that the spatial relationships stay the same. This makes the audience able to understand how the characters are doing within a scene.
Eyeline match.
The eyeline match connects the glance into shot A of character A into shot B of character B. Because of the space it created through the 180 degrees system and the space created through the connecting look, we can sense how it builds space for us to see.
Shot/reverse shot.
This shot pattern alternates views from two ends of the axis, typically with two people, each shot can represent one person talking or their relationships.
After reading chapter six, I would like to discuss it along with some shots of a film I watched recently called the Contratiempo, or The Invisible Guest.
This scene is from the ending of the story, where Adrian and the fake Ms. Goodman are discussing where exactly Adrian sunk the car, and how he should respond to the court to not get caught and be in jail.
This part starts with a side shot of Adrian’s face, then it went on to have the 180 degrees system in the apartment room.
Then follows a close shot of Ms. Goodman (fake). At this point their line of view already started to come at one point, where they each star each other into the eye. Ms. Goodman (fake) is acting angry as a lawyer role for her client not cooperating, while Adrian is angry that Ms. Goodman always leads him to say things he hide inside his heart that “will be good for him on court”.
Then it went to medium, over-shoulder shots that records their conversation. We can also see the shot/reverse shot technique used here
The last part is a long shot, but still on the 180 degree system, with the two apart, suggesting their fate will not eventually come together, and the “Ms. Goodman” will not win her case on court.
We see how the director used the 180 degree system to show their final conversation carried on, and how different camera positions on the 180 degree system is used to achieve different effect and feeling for the audience.
In short, the scene use continuity to stabilize comprehension, and create a clear map of space, time and causality, so performance carries our attention. The filmmaker can modulate intensity of a clip and its meaning through editing, and make the dramatic logic work more fluently.
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