Sunday, 10 May 2009

Some resources to help you better understand and analyse EDITING

From marking your TV Drama mocks, it has become apparent that EDITING is the weakest link! Often considered invisible, editing can be tricky to write about, but you must explore how it aids the construction of meaning about representation. To help you, here are some goodies:

Editing is a way of compressing time and space or creating the effect of a dream sequence or flashback; it usually is ‘seamless’ and natural-seeming such that we tend not to even notice it.

  • Editing is the cutting and joining of lengths of film to place separate shots together yet still manage to suggest a sense of a continuing, connected and realistic flow of events and narrative 
  • A montage is an edited series of shots that works as an ‘individual unit’ of meaning greater than the individual mise-en-scenes from which it is created. 
  • Continuity editing refers to editing techniques that keep the sense of narrative flow such as matched or eye-line cuts. 
  • A jump-cut is a dramatic edit that breaks time / space continuity yet still appears 
  • continuous and ‘natural’; an MTV edit is a rapid sequence of fast jump cuts that creates a conscious effect such as in music videos; a cross-cut follows action in two separate scenes; a follow-cut follow action to its consequence, e.g. a character looking out cuts to what they look at. 
  • Fades (sometimes to black) and dissolves create the sense of scenes moving forward. A sound-bridge carries sound across shots. 
  • Parallel action allows two scenes to be viewed yet still retain the continuity and realism and uses cross cuts. 
  • A sequence is a series of shots (i.e. a montage) that leads up to a climax as in a story sequence.
Daniel Chandler's Grammar of TV site is great for supporting you in developing your vocabulary and extending/reinforcing your K and U of TV production technique:


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