Styles of editing/continuity editing

Styles of editing/continuity editing

Straight cut

• Most common and "invisible" form of transition
• One shot moves instantaneously to the next without attracting the audiences attention
• Straight cut helps retain reality. They do not break the viewers suspension of disbelief

Dissolves

• Fading one shot off screen while another shot is fading in
• The audience will be able to see both shots on the screen at the mid point of the dissolve used: if the film maker wants to show a connection between two characters, places or objects

Fades

• A gradual darkening or lighting of an image until it becomes black and white
• one shot will fade until only a black or whit screen can be seen

used to:

• indicate the end of a particular section of time within the narrative
• can show the passing of time

Wipes

• One image is pushed off screen by the other - left or right - more common to be pushed left, consistent with the sense of time moving forward

used to:

• A signal of movement between different locations that are experiencing the same time

Jump cut

• A jump cut is where the audience attention is brought into focus on something very suddenly
• This occurs by breaking the continuity editing
• This is known as discontinuity
• It appears as if a section of the sequence has been removed

Graphic match

• The film maker can choose to place shots in certain order so as to create a smooth visual transfer from one frame to the next
• When two consecutive shots are matched in terms of the way they look it is called a graphic match

Montage theory

• Lev Kuleshev was among the very first to theorise about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. He argued that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot by shot) the building (film) is erected
• Sometime around 1918, Russian director Lev Kuleshev conducted an experiment that proves this point
• He took an old film clip of a head shot of a Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different imaged

Continuity editing

• Retains a sense of realistic chronology and generates the feeling that time is moving forward
• May use flashbacks or flash forward. But the narrative will still be seen to be progressing forward in an expected or realistic way