Week Two: Editing

I rather enjoyed the editing lecture this week in class as when I am working on my pieces of animation; the editing process is a major and, in my opinion, is the most important part of the outcome of an animation.

I learned that editing a film divides it up into three key stages; a beginning, middle and an end.  I also learned that movies are actually like a language with the way they are constructed and portrayed to the viewer.  They are almost like coherent "sentences" that are being spoon fed to the viewer. I became more familiar with bridges within films (Dissolves, Wipes and Fades).  These are placed in film where a change of environment is taking place within a story; a Wipe is usually used as a "meanwhile..." to show other characters in another place and Fades are usually to show a change of time - normally the next day.

Cross cutting was also a main thing to take away from the class this week as it is a major factor for me, especially when I am drawing out storyboards and wondering who/what to cut to next:

"Cross cutting is the kind of narrative cinema with which we are most familiar tends to occur between characters or locations whose relationship is already clear (or will shortly be so).  By indicating simultaneity, cross cutting also functions to stabilize rather than problematize a film's representation of time.  It should thus be distinguished from parallel editing, in which alternating sequences of action do not share a temporal framework but rather, belong to distant periods of narrative or symbolic connections the spectator is required to explore". - (Andrew Dix, Beginning of Film Studies, Manchester University Press, 2008, p.54)

I agree here with Dix as cross cutting in a sequence allows us to show the reader exactly what we need to convey within a film and not have to worry about the "in-betweens" - unnecessary information which has nothing to do with the narrative, which could overload and confuse the viewer.

We were shown a Spanish film which was entitled, "Le Notti Di Cabiria", which I found fascinating.  The clip we were shown in class involved a woman walking through a small wooded area and into a street, which was populated by a mass of people playing musical instruments.  The woman seemed sceptical and nervous in front of the crowd at first, then eased herself into the music and began to smile and dance herself.  I found this scene very well constructed as the music ascended with the woman's mood and emotion.

I learned quite a lot about continuity editing within a piece of film and to "cheat" by fooling the human eye.  A line from "The Art of Cinema" by Bordwell and Thompson inspired me:

"The purpose was to tell a story coherently and clearly, to map out the chain of character's actions and in an undistracting way"

Basically, camera cuts are positioned so skilfully within a film that the viewer doesn't sub-consciously notice. These kinds of cuts are usually placed in action scenes in films or when a character is talking or doing some form of action with another object.

We were told about the "Kuleshov Effect" in filming and I completely agree with this terminology.  This effect is that each shot is a chunk of information, almost like a building block.  When each of these building blocks is placed together, they form a specific film layout.  Each of these blocks derises its meaning around the other blocks (it has an effect on blocks around it).  If one single block is moved or changed it could have an effect on the entire film as a whole.

Although the Kuleshov Effect is effective in film, Noel Carroll argues that is does not correspond to the typical structure of POV editing:

"For the standard POV editing uses the character's face to give us information of emotional state with respect to what the character sees.  That is, the character's face is not, as standard versions of the Kuleshov experiment claim, emotionally amorphous, merely waiting emotive shaping from ensuing shots". (1996: 130).

This is true for The Nightmare Before Christmas, as the character of Jack Skellington has an immense amount of emotion in the film and it is shown and expressed to the viewer in incredible detail - mostly through face-on shots and for long pauses, to almost "cement" this these feeling into the viewer - to engage them more and bring them into the film world. 

I chose this film to study as a short five minute piece.  I studied specifically on the three minute sequence where Jack sings the "What's This?" song:

Immediately in this scene we have matching in the action as Jack burst out from under the snow to represent his massive lanky posture as the camera is almost looking straight up at him.  The camera has a lot of the camera cuts that I mentioned earlier from "Bordwell and Thompson" while Jack is singing and moving around Christmas Town.  

In this three minute piece there are so many camera cuts and cross cutting, however, it more or less goes unnoticed due to the style of editing and the way the cuts go along with the song and the movements of Jack.  

There is eyeline matching with Jack and the children while they are sleeping in bed and indeed the cuts from Jack's face to his face in another shot - like a 180 degree rule.  The sound editing would have been major in this scene alone, and of course the entire film, considering every sound that it heard is post-production.  

I feel that the sound flows ridiculously well whether it being the sound of Jack in the snow, touching objects around him or his lip sync with him singing.  

In my opinion, sound syncing is one of the most difficult parts of sound editing and I believe that this scene flows very fluently and there is not anything that I would change if I had a say.

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References:

Andrew Dix, Beginning of Film Studies, Manchester University Press, 2008.

Valerie Orpen, Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive (London: Wallflower, 2003).