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Post-classical editing is a style of film editing characterized by shorter shot lengths, faster cuts between shots, and containing more jump shots and close-ups than classical editing characteristic of films prior to the 1960s. [1]
Prior to "post-classical editing" came classical editing. The first filmmakers merely filmed anything of interest or anything that amused them, continuing the shot until they got tired of it, or the film ran out. Edwin Porter, an employee of Thomas Edison discovered that by cutting shots together he was able to create a story. Later, D.W. Griffith further advanced the story telling tools Porter had developed. Griffith invented and popularized techniques that went on to define the basic grammar and narrative format of film. One of the techniques Griffith used in film that went on to impact film editing style is the invisible cut. The point of the invisible cut is to mask every cut, so the audience could forget they were watching a movie, and fully immerse themselves in the film. Invisible cuts are accomplished by matching the motion and making the switch between shots so smooth, making it look like one fluid motion, even if there is a change of shot composition. The Russian revolution started a film editing revolution as well. Melodrama films were disappearing and films that better represented real life were emerging. Propaganda films began to emerge. Certain cuts were used to foster a specific psychological and emotional affect from the audience members. These films, unlike the films of D.W. Griffith and others that embraced the invisible edit ideology, were constantly reminding the audience that they are in fact watching a movie. It was not long before American cinema began to absorb this style of montage. [1]
David Bordwell states, since 1960, US studio filmmaking has entered a "post classical" period, and that although it is argued this so-called "post-classical" period changed cinema to an incoherent narrative, films today still generally abide by the same principles as classical filmmaking. [2] This post-classical style of editing, sometimes referred to as the "MTV Style" of video editing, which has become the visual language of American culture, is a way to edit using fast paced, very quick cuts between shots. [3] Since the 1930s, the average shot length in feature films has decreased from 8–11 seconds to 4.3-4.9 seconds. In the 1970s, average shot length was between 5 and 8 seconds for feature films, dramas, musicals, romance while comedies often contained shorter ASLs. In the 1980s, average shot lengths (ASL) in the double digit range virtually disappeared from feature films. Movies such as Top Gun, and Pink Floyd: The Wall (which were influenced by music videos) demonstrated ASLs from 3–4 seconds. [2] Prior to 2006, this fast cut editing was most prevalently seen in fast paced action movies [4] such as Michael Bay's Armageddon (1998 film) and Pearl Harbor (film) (2001), although they could be found (less often) in other genres of film as well. [5] Editors who had once labored to preserve the illusion of continuous time and space were now fracturing time and space at will. These decreased shot lengths, and jump cuts led not only to a new visual style, but a new generation of narrative, a new style of storytelling. [1]
One of the key differences between the post-classical, sometimes referred to as MTV style of editing, and the classic continuity way of editing is that the post-classical approach emphasizes less on time and space, than a film edited with continuity does. Instead of focusing on the character and the entire narrative, MTV style of editing or post-classical editing is focused on each individual set-piece [6] In films from the 1940s and 1950s, less was left to the imagination. If someone was going from one room to the next, they were shown walking out of one door, closing that door, across the way opening the next door, walking through it and ending up on the other side. Today, it is not uncommon to show someone leaving one place, and arriving at the next, without showing precisely how the character did so. [1] Essentially, it allows the narrative to jump from one scene to another, while still telling an understandable story. MTV Style is often considered disjointed, discontinuous, with a non-linear narrative. Films edited in this style are also multi-layered, meaning they contain more than one story, within a bigger story. This style of editing makes it possible to establish what is happening at two different locations within the same time frame. [7] All of these components which differ from the classical editing style lead to a rhythm in the films which is much faster than that of a traditional narrative pace. Fast cutting is an editing style that can make a difference in emotional impact of a film on the audience. Editing film is a way to receive a specific reaction from the audience. By making certain cuts, an editor has the ability to manipulate the audience to have a certain reaction. The quick cutting characteristic of MTV, post-classical style of editing encourages a different reaction and emotional response from the audience than classical editing. [1]
The quick cuts which are characteristic of post-classical editing are something that younger generations have become accustomed to. [5] The influence of MTV on the fast-paced, quick-cuts that can be seen in movies today is not something all filmmakers agree upon. Director Lawrence Kasdan states in the documentary titled The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, that the generation of people who grew up on MTV and 30 second commercials can process information faster, and therefore demand it. Editors were pushed in the direction of the quick cut style of editing in order to stay in tune with what their audiences wanted and demanded. Top Gun is an example of this. Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson were listening to the demands of their audience and felt the quick pace and fast cutting was what the audience wanted. [1] Some other feature-length films in which the MTV style of editing is used are Flashdance and Thelma & Louise. [6] Jan-Patrick Stolpmann states that movies such as Flashdance and Footloose (1984 film) were actually feature length music videos based on the way their montages were edited. [8] Martin Scorsese, whose films are more closely edited in the classical style of editing states: "I guess the main thing that's happened in the past ten years is that the scenes have to be quicker and shorter. Good Fellas is sort of my version of MTV... but even that's old-fashioned". [2] Director Alexander Payne argues that MTV did not invent the idea of fast cutting. He points out that quick edits can be found in The Wild Bunch. For some who did not grow up with MTV, VH1, and short commercials, the fast cuts that are characteristic of post-classical editing can be too overwhelming, to the point of making the film not enjoyable. [1]
Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology. When putting together some sort of video composition, typically, you would need a collection of shots and footages that vary from one another. The act of adjusting the shots you have already taken, and turning them into something new is known as film editing.
Formalist film theory is an approach to film theory that is focused on the formal or technical elements of a film: i.e., the lighting, scoring, sound and set design, use of color, shot composition, and editing. This approach was proposed by Hugo Münsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, and Béla Balázs. Today, it is a major approach in film studies.
Film style refers to recognizable cinematic techniques used by filmmakers to create specific value in their work. These techniques can include all aspects of film language, including: sound design, mise-en-scène, dialogue, cinematography, editing, or direction.
A jump cut is a cut in film editing that breaks a single continuous sequential shot of a subject into two parts, with a piece of footage removed to create the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera positioning on the subject across the sequence should vary only slightly to achieve the effect. The technique manipulates temporal space using the duration of a single shot—fracturing the duration to move the audience ahead. This kind of cut abruptly communicates the passing of time, as opposed to the more seamless dissolve heavily used in films predating Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, which extensively used jump cuts and popularized the technique in the 1960s. For this reason, jump cuts are considered a violation of classical continuity editing, which aims to give the appearance of continuous time and space in the story-world by de-emphasizing editing, but are sometimes nonetheless used for creative purposes. Jump cuts tend to draw attention to the constructed nature of the film. More than one jump cut is sometimes used in a single sequence.
The New Wave, also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.
A film transition is a technique used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing by which scenes or shots are combined. Most commonly this is through a normal cut to the next shot. Most films will also include selective use of other transitions, usually to convey a tone or mood, suggest the passage of time, or separate parts of the story. These other transitions may include dissolves, L cuts, fades, match cuts, and wipes.
Cross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time, and often in the same place. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the case. Cross-cutting can also be used for characters in a film with the same goals but different ways of achieving them.
In filmmaking and video production, a shot is a series of frames that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. Film shots are an essential aspect of a movie where angles, transitions and cuts are used to further express emotion, ideas and movement. The term "shot" can refer to two different parts of the filmmaking process:
In filmmaking, the 180-degree rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. The rule states that the camera should be kept on one side of an imaginary axis between two characters, so that the first character is always frame right of the second character. Moving the camera over the axis is called jumping the line or crossing the line; breaking the 180-degree rule by shooting on all sides is known as shooting in the round.
Continuity editing is the process, in film and video creation, of combining more-or-less related shots, or different components cut from a single shot, into a sequence to direct the viewer's attention to a pre-existing consistency of story across both time and physical location. Often used in feature films, continuity editing, or "cutting to continuity", can be contrasted with approaches such as montage, with which the editor aims to generate, in the mind of the viewer, new associations among the various shots that can then be of entirely different subjects, or at least of subjects less closely related than would be required for the continuity approach. When discussed in reference to classical Hollywood cinema, it may also be referred to as classical continuity.
Narrative film, fictional film or fiction film is a motion picture that tells a fictional or fictionalized story, event or narrative. Commercial narrative films with running times of over an hour are often referred to as feature films, or feature-length films. The earliest narrative films, around the turn of the 20th century, were essentially filmed stage plays and for the first three or four decades these commercial productions drew heavily upon the centuries-old theatrical tradition.
Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the latter years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 to 1969. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.
This article contains a list of cinematic techniques that are divided into categories and briefly described.
The 30-degree rule is a basic film editing guideline that states the camera should move at least 30 degrees relative to the subject between successive shots of the same subject. If the camera moves less than 30 degrees, the transition between shots can look like a jump cut—which could jar the audience and take them out of the story. The audience might focus on the film technique rather than the narrative itself.
David Jay Bordwell is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film (1985), Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (1988), Making Meaning (1989), and On the History of Film Style (1997).
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In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a cut is an abrupt, but usually trivial film transition from one sequence to another. It is synonymous with the term edit, though "edit" can imply any number of transitions or effects. The cut, dissolve, and wipe serve as the three primary transitions. The term refers to the physical action of cutting film or videotape, but also refers to a similar edit performed in software; it has also become associated with the resulting visual "break".
The psychology of film is a sub-field of the psychology of art that studies the characteristics of film and its production in relation to perception, cognition, narrative understanding, and emotion. A growing number of psychological scientists and brain scientists have begun conducting empirical studies that describe the cognitive and biological underpinnings of motion pictures or what has been called "psychocinematics". Early theoretical approaches included works by psychologists Hugo Münsterberg and Rudolf Arnheim. Cognitive film theorists David Bordwell and Noël Carroll fostered its philosophical underpinnings.
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This glossary of motion picture terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to motion pictures, filmmaking, cinematography, and the film industry in general.
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