Editng notes
[15/03, 8:35 PM] Anuj Aj: Summary
The lecture deals with the discussion on the ‘Basic concept of Film Editing’. As Christian Metz said that – ‘Cinema is difficult to explain as it is easy to understand’.
Editing has six stages: assembling, sorting, joining, ordering, synchronizing and cutting. The sound was synchronized with image using the clapper.
Edwin S. Porter brings in the ‘concept of editing’ in the film ‘Great Train Robbery’. D.W Griffith had perfected editing to a large extent and it was Griffith who brought in the concept of match cutting. In editing, to move from one shot to another or from one scene to the next, cut is used. There are other transitions like a) the dissolve, b) the fade-in, c) the fade-out, d) the wipe.
A dissolve can be defined as the superimposition of a fade-in upon a fade-out. A shot may be defined as an uninterrupted flow of action, a continuous flow, beginning from the time the director says action to the time he says cut. The moment when the director says cut or the continuity is changed it becomes a different shot. So editing consists in joining these different shots. Montage is basically the juxtaposition of shots with the view towards creating an effect in the minds of the viewers, a psychological effect.
Decoupage was a system followed by Hollywood. Decoupage literally meant slicing or cutting as oppose to Montage which meant assemblage. So whereas Montage has a building concept – construction, Decoupage has a cutting concept. But both are editing.
Both Pudovkin and Eisenstein were students of Lev Kuleshov. Eisenstein was influenced by Griffith and despite been steeped in Marxist-Leninist ideologies, he was open to all kinds of filmmaking activities around the world. As Lenin put it –‘For propaganda to be truly effective, it has to be art.’ Eisenstein was influence by the poet, Vsevolod Meyerhold and the old tradition of Russian drama. Eisenstein was not only a filmmaker but also a theoretician. He wrote about cinema and he also wrote about his philosophy. Some of his famous books are ‘Film Form’ and ‘Film Sense’ in which he told about his kind of editing.
Eisenstein talked about five kinds of montage, a) Metric montage b) Rhythmic montage c) Tonal montage d) Over tonal montage and e) Intellectual montage. Pudovkin on the other hand talked about five kinds of relations – a) Contrast, b) Simultaneity, c) Parallelism, d) Leit-Motif and e) Symbolism.
[15/03, 8:36 PM] Anuj Aj: The Lecture deals with the essential things of editing i.e screen-direction, the imaginary line, match cut and jump cut.
Leit motif is not peculiar to cinema or even to editing. Satyajit Ray used several very significant motifs in a film called ‘Charulata’. A motif may be defined as an element, which repeats itself with thematic import with a view to expressing a theme or certain element in a repeated way. In the film ‘Charulata’, the first few minutes are almost entirely silent and we see Charu in different situations, it conveyed the loneliness of Charu.
The idea of editing is to present a narrative in a smooth flow, so that the audience is not disturbed. Screen direction presents the narrative in a smooth way by keeping in mind the point of view in a way that will not disturb the viewer. The imaginary line or 180 degree line dictates that the camera should stay on the side of action to ensure the consistent left-right spatial relations between objects from shot to shot. Otherwise it will completely disorient the viewers.
Yasujiro Ozu had a non-classical approach towards editing and filmmaking. His entire filmmaking was anti-Hollywood and therefore he broke the line.
Mise-en-scene is another French word derived from the theater and literally means putting into a scene. Therefore, all that we put into a scene – the location, the sets, the props, the light, characters, the make-up, dialogues, the camera and the camera angles are included.
A match cut may be defined as a cut in which the action that flows from a long shot into a medium shot is perfectly matched and reflects that one continuous piece of action is shown from two different angles or perspectives.
Godard first used ‘Jump Cut’ in a film called ‘Breathless’ made in 1960, when he was a part of film movement called the French New Wave. The meaning of jump cut has changed over the years. Video now occupies a very important position in our society. The primitive editing machines were Pic Sync or the Eddy sync, Moviola, and Steenbeck and now non-linear machines are used for editing.
[15/03, 8:37 PM] Anuj Aj: The Lecture deals with the essential things of editing i.e screen-direction, the imaginary line, match cut and jump cut.
Leit motif is not peculiar to cinema or even to editing. Satyajit Ray used several very significant motifs in a film called ‘Charulata’. A motif may be defined as an element, which repeats itself with thematic import with a view to expressing a theme or certain element in a repeated way. In the film ‘Charulata’, the first few minutes are almost entirely silent and we see Charu in different situations, it conveyed the loneliness of Charu.
The idea of editing is to present a narrative in a smooth flow, so that the audience is not disturbed. Screen direction presents the narrative in a smooth way by keeping in mind the point of view in a way that will not disturb the viewer. The imaginary line or 180 degree line dictates that the camera should stay on the side of action to ensure the consistent left-right spatial relations between objects from shot to shot. Otherwise it will completely disorient the viewers.
Yasujiro Ozu had a non-classical approach towards editing and filmmaking. His entire filmmaking was anti-Hollywood and therefore he broke the line.
Mise-en-scene is another French word derived from the theater and literally means putting into a scene. Therefore, all that we put into a scene – the location, the sets, the props, the light, characters, the make-up, dialogues, the camera and the camera angles are included.
A match cut may be defined as a cut in which the action that flows from a long shot into a medium shot is perfectly matched and reflects that one continuous piece of action is shown from two different angles or perspectives.
Godard first used ‘Jump Cut’ in a film called ‘Breathless’ made in 1960, when he was a part of film movement called the French New Wave. The meaning of jump cut has changed over the years. Video now occupies a very important position in our society. The primitive editing machines were Pic Sync or the Eddy sync, Moviola, and Steenbeck and now non-linear machines are used for editing.
[15/03, 8:38 PM] Anuj Aj: The Lecture talks about the creative role of the editor. One editor’s job may vary from the other editor’s job. There is no right or wrong in cinema as in any creative activity and there aren’t any rules even. Rules are meant to be broken. But we need to know the rules first i.e about the imaginary line, point of view shot (P.O.V), subjective shots, screen direction and then comes the creative role of the editor. Film ‘Eight and a Half’ made by Federico Fellini, in early 60s is an example of non-diegetic sound becoming diegetic. Pacing of film can be determined in several ways. The Hungarian film maker Miklós Jancsó who made films like ‘Hungarian Rhapsody’, ‘God walked Backwards’, ‘Red Psalm’, doesn’t cut much. In ‘Electra’ he used only 12 to 13 cuts.
Michelangelo Antonioni gives importance to the film space. Antonioni emphasizes context over content, so even when the character leaves the frame, he will keep it on. Yasujiro Ozu also emphasizes the space, and the character would come into that space. The pacing of one director would vary from another. Chaplin was the master of timing. In the right moment in ‘Modern Times’ and ‘Great Dictator’, he does a gag which is very funny.
Editors must also have a sense of timing. In a comedy sequence if someone is given a particular line, the next line which is the punch line has to come at the right moment. If it comes late, the joke will fall flat, if it comes early the audience will not comprehended. For example film ‘Marx Brothers’. The pacing of the content is important. We cannot use the cutting style of ‘Stagecoach’ in the Hindi film ‘Devdas’. Shot which has no elements of movement, absolutely static shots are called the Synchronic shots. The moment we shift focus there is an element of change and this is a Diachronic shot. When the editor uses Diachronic shots, he must know where exactly to place them, a moving shot cuts well with a moving shot for example in Alain Resnais’s film ‘Hiroshima Mon Amor’ there are lots of track shots.
[15/03, 8:38 PM] Anuj Aj: The lecture focused on the ‘creative role of the editor’. The greatest living editor of the world today is Walter Murch. He is not only the film editor but also a sound editor. He has done linear editing and then has shifted to non-linear editing working on the Avid and now he is working on the F.C.P. He has edited several of Francis Ford Coppula’s films including the ‘Godfather’ and ‘Godfather II’ and also the ‘English Patient’, a very famous Oscar winning film by Anthony Minghella. An auteur is an author who has creative control over all the department of cinema. If you were an auteur, you wouldn’t have a place in the studio system. As Orson Welles didn’t like the cut of the ‘Magnificent Ambersons’ which was done by the studios.
The assembly line production would be found in the comedies. When the comedies were being produced for the first time, producer Max Senate employed Charlie Chaplin. Pink Panther series came into being with Blake Edwards as the director.
A subjective shot on the other hand is the camera taking the place of the character seeing. These subjective shots could be static where they are often more effective when they are moving. For example there is a very important subjective shot found in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy’. Another very famous subjective shot is in Ray’s ‘Charulata’ in the song ‘Phule Phule’ when Madhavi playing Charu is on the swing, we find that the camera is also on the swing and when the swing moves, the camera also moves. And from this movement we can see the floor. That is a subjective shot taking the place of the person.
There are millions of wipes which are available in the non-linear system if we use an Avid, F.C.P or a DPS velocity. Satyajit Ray’s editor was Dulal Dutta. Mrinal Sen initially began with a gentleman called Gangadhar Naskar. But later, when Steenbeck came in, he switched onto a man called Nirmal Chakravarty. Rwitik Ghatak’s editor was Ramesh Joshi. Hrishikesh Mukherjee was an editor who has later became a film maker.
If you look at the works of Ramesh Joshi, editor of Rwitik Ghatak. A great deal of creativity goes into the editing.
[15/03, 8:39 PM] Anuj Aj: The episode mentions about the ‘creative role of an editor’ which has changed since the days of Griffith and Eisenstein. The editor is concerned not only with the cuts alone but also with transitions. The different kinds of transitions used in editing are fade-ins, fade-outs, wipes, dissolves etc.
Wipes were mainly used in silent era films and even sometimes after that. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin used wipes. A modern film that used wipe is ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’, directed by the famous editor turned director-Karel Reisz, who wrote ‘Techniques of Film Editing’. Harold Pinter was a famous playwright. His most well known plays are ‘The Birthday Party’, ‘The Servant’, ‘The Dumb Waiter’ etc.
A match cut is basically a continuation of the action from one shot to another. The action is perfectly matched so that it seems to be one continuous action. The most suitable example is the shower scene of ‘Psycho’, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. There are 45-50 shots in that sequence which last for hardly one and a half minutes. It’s here that the Montage gives the impression of Mise-en-scene. In ‘Psycho’ the dissection is so perfectly matched that the viewer does not feel the cut. A single cut can be very effective. One of the greatest cuts of all times is found in ‘2001 - A space odyssey’ by Stanley Kubrick is one in which there is a piece of bone in the air and it suddenly becomes a spaceship. It’s a transcendental cut. We move from the past to the future. A series of dissolves are called Lap Dissolves. An editor’s creativity comes to the fore - when a shot fades out and the next shot fades in. Dissolve is a super-imposition of a fade-in over a fade-out. There is a beautiful Dissolve Montage in ‘Padma Nadir Majhi’, directed by Goutam Ghosh based on a story by the same name by Manik Bandopadhyay. There is another famous film called ‘Carnal Knowledge’ by Mike Nichols, in this film there is a college campus and one shot dissolves to bring the next in the fall. The beautiful nature of the campus is revealed in the very slow dissolves.
[15/03, 8:40 PM] Anuj Aj: The lecture discusses about the ‘Creative role of the Editor’. There was director like Miklos Jancso who used minimal
cuts because their films were basically dependent on the mise-en-scene technique, films like ‘Electra’ or ‘Allegro Barbaro’ had sequences composed of single shots. During the making of a film the director becomes so involved with his materials that sometimes He/she can’t give an objective view. It’s the editor who can provide the outside impression, can cut the shots mercilessly. One should not be fascinated by the shots. If one becomes self-indulgent then he/she will harm the film. The director must give the editor some creative freedom and the editor must work
in conjunction with the director An insert is a particular shot which is inserted into the dialogue of someone else.
The European directors do not believe in coverage. For example Antonioni’s film ‘La Notte’, is beautifully structured but Roland Joffé used a lot of coverage in his film ‘City of Joy’. There are other directors who use coverage. So if we use coverage then it becomes very creative for the editor as editor has a lot of material at his disposal to manipulate.
The introduction of sound makes it very creative for the editor. Basically the simplest kind of sound is a dialogue, then there is music, then there are sound effects. Diegetic sound is sound that is directly related to the story and non-diegetic sound is not directly related to the story. Music is non-diegetic. Music emphasizes or counterpoints the scene. Another example of non-diegetic sound is a voice-over or a commentary. In film ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’ and in ‘Lagaan’ Amitabh Bachchan gave a commentary. There is also a psychological sound which is again non-diegetic for example, the whip-lashing in Ritwik Ghatak’s ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’. So the editor has a creative role in deciding what sound would go where, in the sense that it enhances the story, creates a psychological impact. He also decides where the music would exactly fit in. So action continuity is using the same action at the time of saying the dialogue. It has to be done correctly. There are some editors who want smoothness but some do not. Jean-Luc-Goddard and Eisenstein did not want smoothness rather they wanted emphatic editing.
[15/03, 8:40 PM] Anuj Aj: The Motion Picture was born in Edison’s New Jersey laboratory in 1889 and spent an innocent childhood at fairground sideshows around the world, amusing and astonishing audiences with its one trick – single shot representations of events like The Sneeze, The Kiss, Train arriving at the station, workers leaving the factory. Then in 1903 it discovered the intoxicating effect of montage. What emerged out of this adolescence was, cinema. The construction of a coherent and emotional story from discontinuous and sometimes conflicting images is the fruitful paradox that lies at the heart of the equation: Motion Pictures + Montage = Cinema.
The first films that were shown way back in the last decade of the 19th century were essentially single shots. ‘Workers leaving the factory’ or ‘A Train entering a station’ etc. These films, which may appear boring to us now, were sensational during the time it was made. People for the first time could see images moving and they looked almost real. We can actually compare this with the feeling of 3D films with 11.1 surround immersive sounds that we experience nowadays. Maybe a few years later these would be as normal as anything like it happened 1020 years later in the early part of the 20th century.
An editor’s most basic job is to keep the audience unaware that they are being manipulated by the cuts – unless the editor is intentionally trying to shake up the audience. More often, though, an editor wants to make those cuts seem invisible by having the shots flow together in a smooth, continuous motion. One would think that this would be achieved by a ‘matched cut’ where the action of the previous shot matches up perfectly with the subsequent shot. But often that is not the case. Say the editor has to cut from shot of an actor walking through a door to a subsequent shot showing the actor from the other side of the door. It may seem easy to cut around as the actor continues to come through, but it’s not, even for the most experienced editor. The editor may find out through trial and error that the cut appears smoother if it is not a matched cut.
To begin with the language of filmmaking, the first thing that the editor needs to know about is the ‘cut’ and to face and answer the haunting question, “where to cut?”. Once that is solved, then he is faced with the challenge of structuring the story and dramatizing the apparently uninteresting looking scenes. At the next level, the editor thinks of using shots, disjointed in nature, but when put together gives us a new meaning. This is the concept of ‘Montage’. All these things put together makes a film work.
[15/03, 8:41 PM] Anuj Aj: No other crewmember will ever spend as much time alone with the director as the editor does and the relationship between them functions much like a marriage. If the chemistry of their two personalities click, if they are both willing to listen to and respect each other’s opinions, are both prepared to give and take, and most of all trust each other, then they will have a healthy relationship.
The most basic editing tool known so far is the ‘cut’. Whenever two shots are joined we call it a ‘cut’. If we look at the practice of watching images before films came, we would notice that a ‘cut’ earlier used to happen in the mind of the beholder. If we take the example of a comic strip, which came as series of images trying to narrate a story, we would find that the eye moves from one image to the other and fills in the gap that might develop between two successive images.
But in films the advantage of letting the audience think and fill up gaps was not present. One shot should seamlessly progresses into the next shot so that the audience does not need to bridge the gap created in between. Cuts are done on the basis of the following principles.
1.Carrying the action from one shot to the other.
2.Dramatic emphasis
3.Adding information
4.Establishment of space, and
5.Sense of Time.
A cut should always carry the information given by the previous shot a little forward. Otherwise the narrative in question will not progress and the audience will not find the experience of watching the film interesting. But an additional shot also can give a certain dramatic emphasis on a particular action or an element within the scene. This regulates the audience’s mind in a certain way so that he thinks the way the director wants him to think. Additional shots give additional information and with that it creates space and the sense of time. This is not always part of the narrative, but with individual shots the scene is built up brick by brick establishing the locale and the time of the scene without emphasizing.
Transitions also add meaning to the scene. Fades and dissolves are the most commonly used transitions in films. A shot dissolves into the other shot or just fades to black, or maybe can come to light from black calling itself a fade in. Fade ins and fade outs signify a new beginning and an end respectively. A dissolve attempts to merge the meaning generated from the first shot to the next. Depending on the treatment the meaning of these transitions may change and add value to the scene and at the end makes the experience of watching much more interesting.
In general the editor understands that the eye searches for the greatest intensity within the frame whether it be motion or emotion. The eye will naturally focus on the center and foreground of the frame unless,
• The eye was focused somewhere else in the previous shot.
• There is movement away from the center and/or foreground particularly towards the horizon.
• An actor is in dramatic close-up or just shows strong emotion, and then the focus will be on his eyes,
wherever they are within the frame.
• The eye is pulled to a point somewhere else within the frame, because a person r object is much denser, brighter, bigger, or in greater focus.
[15/03, 8:42 PM] Anuj Aj: Editors all around the world have tried and are still trying hard to make the experience of watching the sequences of a film as seamless as possible. By seamless we mean that the editor attempts to flow one shot into the other and make the cut in between invisible. Only an investigating eye can actually see the cuts. For a normal moviegoer, the scenes should actually look as if they are being performed in front of the camera in real time. To make such cuts invisible, the best method to choose a cut point would be just before, within or just after an action.
When we are watching a film we often tend to participate in it psychologically. We laugh, cry, get angry, get surprised, anticipate and speculate what is going to happen next. This is the main tool for an editor. His role is to construct the scene shot by shot so that all human emotions, which are necessary for the scene are evoked and sustained till such a time as desired or expected by the story line. This construction takes into account the nuances of human emotions and places where the brain fast forwards and quickly arrives at a conclusion much before the real time. The audience goes through similar experiences like what is happening in the film that he is watching. So certain things are understood easily without explaining. This is called the social knowledge of the viewer. The editor should be well aware of this and his decisions to structure a film should depend on how fast the audience can think forward.
To make your edit seamless, matching on action has graduated to the next level through these years. Now matching similar actions are also taken into account when cutting from one shot to the other. It may not be the same space, or the same time. But still the action may be similar. This also creates a seamless feel and the edit thus appears invisible. For example, if a man who used to play in a room when he was young used to play with a ball. He used to throw a ball which used to come back to him after hitting the wall. Now the scene is about his revisiting the hall after 20 years where he finds the same ball lying unattended. He again does the same thing and the ball comes back to him like before. If the editor here wants to play with the shots and create a surprise, he may do it like this. A little boy is playing in a room and he is playing with the ball.He throws it, we see a frontal shot. The ball hits the wall, we see the shot of the ball hitting the wall. Now the ball is supposed to come back to the boy in the reverse shot maintaining action match. Now the action is matched but the character changes to a man 20 years older than the boy. In this case the comfort of seamless editing is exploited and a major timelapse is established through editing.
[15/03, 8:43 PM] Anuj Aj: Editing involves creation of space within the frame that the audience can see. At a time the audience can only see a particular angle at which the camera is pointed on a 2D plane. With cuts he can take the audience at different positions within the space. The intention behind this shift of camera angles is to generate a 3 dimensional space in the audience’s mind. Can we then put our cameras anywhere we want? The answer is no. Because to preserve this sense of space, the editor needs to define the position of the audience.
The 180 degree rule thus states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have a left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. This rule if maintained, gives the audience the comfort of being at a particular position within that space and it is easier for the audience to get involved and participate in the narrative. This rule becomes more important when the reference of the character who is has his back to the camera is not kept in the frame. When we have part of the person’s head or hand in the frame is is usually called an OTS or an over the shoulder shot. Changing the position of the camera within that 180 degree half circle, is only needed for dramatic emphasis. This does not lead to the feeling of a position change.
The 180 degree rule does restrict the camera within a particular space and angle. But when the filmmaker is attending to the narrative he may often find other angles which are more interesting and useful for the story. It is possible for the camera to cross the 180 degree line and go to the other side. Apart from films which are experimental in nature we also have seen this rule being broken in films made by Ozu. Since his films takes a lot of the Miseenscene into consideration, the jerk if any is not so disorienting. But in case the director wants to jump axis and go to the other side, there are ways to do it. In such a situation, the audience should see the crossing of the line. Once the line is crossed, all the other shots should be reversed in terms of screen direction and it will look as normal as before. Another method to hide a line jump is to add inserts or cutaway shots, as applicable, and let the audience forget the screen direction. When the scene comes back the audience does not remember the previous positions of the characters.
Another aspect of screen directionality is the eyeline match. When two people are talking to each other they may or may not have the same height. One character may be in a standing position and the other may be sitting. In this case when we are taking shots from both the angles the eyeline of the respective characters should direct towards the other character or objects where he intends to look at. A significant example can be given from the film the “Rear Window” by Alfred Hitchcock.
[15/03, 8:43 PM] Anuj Aj: The experience of watching cinema is often similar to that of watching a theatre where the audience is invisible and can walk around the stage without disturbing the actors. But for an audience who doesn’t know what is going to happen next the freedom may often result in a botheration. Because many a time he will miss the important dramatic points. So the shift from the first row at the auditorium to the stage is driven by narrative compulsion. The audience will only move in, when it is necessary. Similarly an edit is required when it is necessary. So, we cut to a mid-shot from a long shot when we want to get closer to a character or an element in the frame. The shot that explains the relationship between the characters/elements and the surroundings by showing a wide long shot and also explaining the time of the scene is called an establishing shot. A master shot is often confused with the establishing shot. But the purpose and the nature of these two types of shots are different. A master shot is the full coverage of an entire scene, or a substantial part of a scene in case the scene is too long. A master shot is what the audience would watch from the first row of a theatre hall. All the characters are visible in this shot and they play their Respective roles.
A scene is developed with a lot of information about the surroundings, specific details and the actual happenings within the frame. While cutting from one dialogue to the other the dramatic emphasis may need to go to certain specific objects or characters, which are not the primary attention in the scene. But as the drama develops, those particular elements need attention. This is called an insert shot.
Cutaways are another kind of inserts, which do not belong to the scene, which precedes or follows the cutaway shot. A cutaway shot can be a break between two scenes or sequences. It usually serves as a time lapse between two shots. Editing occurs at two levels. One is at the micro level and the other at the macro level. At micro level we think about how to join two shots. Which should be the last frame of shot 1 so that it smoothly flows into shot 2’s first frame. With each cut we develop small scenes and then sequences. But once these are ready, we now take each block of edits and place them in an order, which looks and sounds most interesting to the audience. We often do not tell a story in a linear order. The story might get boring if we do so. But telling the story in a nonlinear fashion often makes it interesting. These are also specific editorial decisions that the editor has to take to make the story that he is narrating, interesting. In this case, the linear order of the narrative changes. If we move back in time and narrate something from the past, this is called a “flashback”.
[15/03, 8:44 PM] Anuj Aj: Editing a film is not merely confined to match cuts, continuity and screen direction. Once these issues are solved within the scenes, a wider perspective is taken by the editor to assemble and formulate the entire story. In Films the act of editing in french is called ‘montage’ which means “assembly’ in English. The word “editing” indicates shortening a body of work to make it more apt, smart and appealing. “Assembling” on the other hand implies integrating small pieces to achieve a greater form. Many editors around the world prefer the word “montage” over “editing”. Parallel editing, often referred to as ‘cross cutting’ is a method of alternating two or more sequences cinematically happening at the same point of time which usually culminate at a common point.
Parallel editing evokes the sense of suspense in the narrative because the audience is taken from one place to the other and given a fair chance to anticipate what is going to happen next. The parallel sequences end with what the audience expected or maybe just the reverse of it to introduce the element of surprise. Parallel editing style, as told by historians, started with Edwin S Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery” Two sequences which are intermingled with each other are happening at the same time. Once the two characters enter a common space and we continue the pattern of parallel cutting, the term that is used here is called “intercutting”.
This means that the two characters are together and we see both of them, one at a time in quick succession of shots. Intercutting is actually valid for any scene where we have taken a shot of a person and a counter shot of the person who is sitting on the opposite side. In a normal dialogue sequence the cutting pattern is guided by natural human instinct. The editing should be done the way a person would react if he were there in the scene. This is generally not termed as an intercut. But a person who is being followed by another one and we quickly show the two shots in quick succession, will amount to intercutting. Apart from coverage shots, which happen when the characters are observed from an angle which does not have a physical existence in the scene, the camera can sometimes assume the role of one of the characters.
The audience will now watch the scene from the perspective of the character. The other characters will now look into the camera to address the person. This is called a “point of view” shot. This kind of a shot may not have other characters in frame. Editorial decisions are often taken on the basis of sound. It is not always necessary that the image that is shown on screen will always have the sound coming only from that shot. The editor can also play with the sound from other sequences, previous or preceding. This is termed as sound overlaps. Hollywood has termed this event as an L cut when it happens between two scenes/sequences.
[15/03, 8:44 PM] Anuj Aj: Digital editing software has become a great source of reliance for all the special effects and editing needs in the post-production stage. Adobe’s Premier Pro enables an editor to make all possible changes to a film.
Having the right equipment for filming is generally the first step to reduce the work in the post production stage. The fewer mistakes the original footage has, the lesser work the editor has to do in correcting the footage.
[15/03, 8:45 PM] Anuj Aj: This is going to be a little intimidating at first if you have zero to little experience with professional editing software. Don't worry. This first lesson is here to get you acquainted with all the stuff you see on your screen, explain how a few things work, and get you more comfortable before actually doing much of anything. In subsequent lessons, we'll look at creating a project from scratch, colour correction, effects, and more. Video editing with professional software is actually very easy but it's just intimidating because of all the buttons and options. Once you know what things are and have the basics down, you'll be able to do all sorts of great things.
[15/03, 8:45 PM] Anuj Aj: Editing is where the material that has been shot is blended together to form a convincing, persuasive presentation. However, editing has a much more subtle role to play than a simple piecing together process. It is the technique of selecting and arranging shots; choosing their order, their duration, and the ways in which they are to be joined together. Editing is where graphics, music, sound effects, and special effects are added to the footage shot earlier. It has a signifi - cant infl uence on the viewers’ reactions to what they see and hear. Skilled editing makes a major contribution to the effectiveness of any production. Poor editing can leave the audience confused and bored. The mechanics of editing are simple enough; but the subtle effects of the editor’s choices are a study apart.