Editing Techniques
Vsevolod Pudovkin noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of film making originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. Kubrick was quoted as saying: "I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."
- Edward Dmytryk stipulates seven "rules of cutting" that a good editor should follow:
- "Rule 1: Never make a cut without a positive reason."
- "Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short."
- "Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'."
- "Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'."
- "Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continuing action."
- "Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'."
- "Rule 7: Substance first—then form."
- According to Walter Murch, when it comes to film editing, there are six main criteria for evaluating a cut or deciding where to cut. They are (in order of importance, most important first, with notional percentage values.):
- Emotion (51%) — Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment?
- Story (23%) — Does the cut advance the story?
- Rhythm (10%) — Does the cut occur "at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and 'right'" (Murch, 18)?
- Eye-trace (7%) — Does the cut pay respect to "the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame" (Murch, 18)?
- Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) — Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule?
- Three-dimensional space of action (4%) — Is the cut true to the physical/spatial relationships within the diegesis?
Murch assigned the notional percentage values to each of the criteria. "Emotion, at the top of the list, is the thing that you should try to preserve at all costs. If you find you have to sacrifice certain of those six things to make a cut, sacrifice your way up, item by item, from the bottom."-Murch
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