Film language editing

Last lesson we looked at editing in films and how they play a crucial part in the making of a film and what the purpose of editing is.

We looked at this scene from the Bourne Supremacy to help further our understanding of why editing plays such a crucial role in film making.




Editing is a crucial part of film language. It helps structure the film properly and makes the narrative easy to understand. It also helps links scenes and events together which makes it easy for the audience to follow and keep up with and understand what is going on in the film. Editing also makes it easy for the film to be put in chronological order making sure the film makes sense and is not just all jumbled up.




There are also many different types of edit cuts: change scene, compress time, vary points of time, montage which helps build up an image or idea for the audience. Cutting an action which shows a subject moving, cut away, cross cutting which will occur when switching locations, jump cut which shows the passing of time, matched cut which match  action or composition, verbal matched cut, cutting rate which is how many cuts are in a scene, cutting rhythm and buffer/insert.


There is always a research for a cut, this makes sure that the scenes are always ordered together correctly and the film makes sense. The more research done means the film and the cuts will be better this also means that the transitions are less abrupt which are achieved with a fad, a dissolve or a wipe.


 Editing transitions


Fade in and out
Dissolve
Iris
Wipe
Smash cut
Invisible cut
Combinations
Whip pan
Object entering
L-cut
J-cut