Editing Styles and Conventions

There's a lot of editing styles and conventions and one which we have looked at is the use of montage. There are 3 references to montage including French montage, which simply means to edit (montage in French means edit). Then there is the Soviet style montage which was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone and finally Hollywood montage which is narrative information being shown in a condensed fashion. This is the most common and modern type of montage. The video below is an example of Lev Kuleshov's theory of editing. He came up with an experiment calle the Kuleshov experiment which he designed to point out the importance of cinema editing and the effects it can have on an audience.



Another editing style, which is the most predominant style of editing in todays film and television, is continuity editing. Here is a caption from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_editing explaining different types of continuity editing.

Diegetic sound is that which is to have actually occurred within the story during the action being viewed. It is sound that comes from within the narrative world of a film (including off-screen sound). Continuous diegetic sound helps to smooth temporally questionable cuts by overlapping the shots. Here the logic is that if a sonic occurrence within the action of the scene has no breaks in time, then it would be impossible for the scene and its corresponding visuals to be anything but temporally continuous.

Match on action technique can preserve temporal continuity where there is a uniform, unrepeated physical motion or change within a passage. A match on action is when some action occurring before the temporally questionable cut is picked up where the cut left it by the shot immediately following. For example, a shot of someone tossing a ball can be edited to show two different views, while maintaining temporal continuity by being sure that the second shot shows the arm of the subject in the same stage of its motion as it was left when cutting from the first shot.

Temporal discontinuity can be expressed by the deliberate use of ellipses. Cutting techniques useful in showing the nature of the specific ellipses are the dissolve and the fade. Other editing styles can show a reversal of time or even an abandonment of it altogether. These are the flashback and the montage techniques, respectively.

This text from wikipedia explains different parts of continuity editing, Diagetic sound is basically sound that is meant to appear in the video even if it wasn't in the original recording. For example, a car door being shut is meant to be heard but the sound may have been from a different recording. Temporal Discontinuity is when you have someone talking and it cuts to a different location but they continue the next sentence they are saying. This is done on purpose and is a good technique to use if you wanted to travel to a destination quick. Below is an example from Snatch where it shows an example of temporal discontinuity at the beginning.



Another style of editing is cross-cutting which is often used in films. The use of this technique is to show action that is happening in to different locations and it cuts between each scene to build up suspence. Cross-cutting also sets the pace of the film and can be great to lead up to a big finale. Below is an example from D.W. Griffith's A Corner in Wheat (1909) and shows cross-cutting between the poor and wealthy.