Editing Techniques- Analyzing.

What is editing?

In 1985 the first Film was created and shown by "The Lumiere Brothers" and consisted of one continuous shot throughout the entire film. A man named Edwin.S.Porter showed the Lumiere brothers that films didn't have to be one long shot.
In 1908 D.W.Griffith released the first continuity shot film called "For Love of Gold" Whilst creating this film Griffiths discovered that you could portray a characters emotion using different camera angles and different paces of editing.
Before digital editing was created people would have to physically cut the film with scissors and stick it back together.
A man named Georges Méliès was filming a parked bus but jammed the camera accidentally, by the time he had fixed the camera the bus had moved on and there was now a car in its place, when he then played his tape it looked as though the bus had magically turned into the car, Georges being a magician decided to use this as part of his act and gave the audience the idea that the man on stage had appeared from a puff of smoke.


The first few shots that we see in this scene of "Alien Vs Predator" are called "shot/reverse shots" this is when the camera is on one character, then goes to the other, then back to the first,etc,etc.using the same axis of action This is usually used when two characters are conversing, to show where the charcters are in relation to each other. However, neither the Alien or Predator can speak so we just a get a few provoking growls and hisses.
At 1:04 we see a "POV" from Predator, and at 1:25 we get another from Alien. POV's or "Point of view's" are when we see the world through the eyes of a character, usually the character that the camera was on in the previous shot. POV's are useful for creating suspense and letting the audience in on some of the characters thoughts, for example in this shot the Predator is confused as to where that Alien has gone and the audience can connect with that.
This scene has lots of edits and is rapidly cut because it is an action scene so the fast change of shots will make the brains of the people in the audience work more and probably cause an uncomfortable feeling in the audience to put the audience on edge of their seat.
At 1:33 there is a match on action of the Alien falling through the floor. A match on action will take two shots and makes them fit together neatly so that they appear to be filmed at the same time but from a different perspective, in this particular match on action we get our first shot being a low angle long shot of the alien hitting and breaking the floor and the second shot is from below the floor, also using a low angle and the Alien is still in the same place at the beginning of the second shot, as it was at the end of the first shot.


Films usually tell us who the main characters are by giving the character a lot of screen time and close ups, just like in "Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone" We immediately know that the geeky looking boy is the main character and not just by the fact that we hear him get called Harry 38 seconds into the clip.
To get the audience to get involved more with the characters on screen the directors try to give us a lot of close ups so that we can see the facial expressions and reactions of characters, and of course, they would want us to be more involved with the main character('s) more than anyone else, so naturally the main protagonists will get the most screen time and close ups.


People will only be interested in the protagonist if interesting things are happening to them.
For example, in the clip above we see Jack Sparrow being chased by a group of "Redcoats" and due to the various different shots and how quickly they are edited together, this is a very exciting scene, we get wide shots showing why he is running (0:06), POV's so that we can be more involved with the character (0:22), reaction shots which lead to eye-line match edits (0:34) and these shots are fitted well with all the other shots to give the scene the fast paced and comedic clip you see above, this is called "Shot variation".


The clip above is made using a technique that includes selecting, editing, and piecing together parts of a film to make a whole sequence that is a "Montage" this technique is used to cover a long process of time and compress it so that we don't spend hours watching a man build a car, but we still see enough of the process to understand what has happened and we don't just a get a tank like vehicle magically appear from thin air.
This clip also withholds some information as we don't get to see the whole of the vehicle until the big reveal at the end and when we are provided with the information that had been withheld from us.


This video has been cut to the soundtrack meaning that when something happens in the song e.g. the pace increases then so will the pace of the editing and it can ass any feeling that the creator wants, in this particular video it gives us a feeling of excitement and power because of the way that the video and soundtrack are fit together.

 
This is an example of a cutaway shot, a shot that interrupts a flow of continuous shots by showing us a shot from the perspective of another object or location in this case the camera is most likely a perspective of a pen on the desk.


We first see the jumpcuts at 15 seconds in, jump cuts are when you skip a small part of the clip that has no purpose or is boring, sometimes to just create effect, it is often used in YouTube videos to get rid of some gameplay or a part story that isn't important.


This clip is an example of both cross-cutting and cutaways, the shots of Sherlock imagining the signs are cutaways and the parts where it cuts from Sherlock, to the cab, them back to Sherlock are where the editors have used cross-cutting.