Reading & Writing
Similar to the camera angle techniques we learned in Module 3, film editing styles are incorporated so seamlessly into films that the amount of time, thought, and creativity film makers put into their projects to do so isn’t always considered. The way that certain movie scenes cut from character to secondary character to various objects and back to the main character seems so natural but require a considerable amount of rationale and expertise to justify editing the scenes in this way. As someone who previously didn’t put much thought into what sort of edits films used or why and how they made a scene compelling, two sets of readings this week have made me more aware. 1. Thanks to Ryan McAfee’s “13 Creative Editing Techniques Every Video Editor Should Know,” I’ve become much more attuned to the most common types of edits I personally have seen in movies, and the effect they have on viewers. Here, I’ve listed and defined the ones that speak the most to me (all 13 can be viewed in the above link):
2. The second reading that inspired me this week was Sue Apfelbaum’s “An introduction to pacing and rhythm.” Pacing, in short, signifies how a film’s story moves over time. Apfelbaum writes: “Long, continuous shots create the feeling of actual time, which, like life, can seem slow when little is happening or rapid if there’s a lot of action. Frequent cuts and short shots quicken the pace, heighten our state of alert, and make time advance more quickly — they can also exhaust the viewer after a while.” Rhythm relates to pacing in that it is the overall result of pacing, Apfelbaum says. A film that contains rapid cuts and movements and incorporates highly suspenseful music may be considered as having fast-moving rhythm; the type of movie that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. But a film that highlights small details and takes time to do so might have a slower tempo and overall rhythm. Research to Inform
Say what you want about the femme version of the Oceans movies, but I quite enjoyed it. You don’t necessarily need to watch the entire nearly 5-minute clip to see that this heist scene employes standard cuts throughout. It also uses invisible cuts, specifically when the food dish (the main vehicle used for the heist) is being brought from the kitchen, to the wait staff, to table, and back to the kitchen. A match cut is used at 1:12 when Awkafina’s character crawls under the bathroom doors to carry out the next step of the theft. All throughout, cross-cut edits are used to show the different characters' perspectives and their roles in the plan.
(The title doesn’t give anything away, but if you haven’t seen the series and plan to, best not to watch the clip or go too far down the rabbit hole). The opener to Season 3 of BBC’s “Sherlock” was quite a delight for fans of the show but it also serves as a great example for clever and unique editing. Like the “Ocean’s 8” clip, this scene utilizes cross-cuts throughout to juxtapose the perspectives of Sherlock and Watson and how each perceives what is happening. Time is sped up with jump cuts (notably at :08 and from 1:07 to 1:09), and standard cuts are used throughout the whole scene. I caught an invisible cut at :40 when the camera moves from Sherlock’s actions to two people carrying out a dead body.
For this scene, only the first 25 seconds need to be watched in order to see the example of a smash cut that is used. The character Eleven uses white noise to help shut out any distractions from the 'real world' that could interfere with her extrasensory experience. At :25, the white noise abruptly cuts out to silence as she enters The Void. Create Enjoy my Module 4 montage, “A Song for Myself,” featuring my sister. It was quite the learning curve to figure out Premiere Pro in less than 72 hours but I had a lot of fun getting my creative juices flowing. Looking back, and after viewing some of my classmates' projects, I realize there are other, unique shots I could have/should have used but for my first-ever Premiere video, I'm fairly happy with the result.
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