372 CHAPTER 8EDITING
123Fade-in and fade-out In Cries and Whispers(1972; editor:
Siv Lundgren), Ingmar Bergman builds the emotional
intensity of his story by cutting back and forth between
scenes of the past and the present and ending most of those
scenes with a fade-out to a blood-red screen. Bergman has
said that he thinks of red as the color of the human soul, but
it also functions here as a symbolic system that has much to
do with the film’s focus on women. Just before this brief
scene, Agnes (Rosanna Mariano, playing her as a child) has
been hiding behind a curtain watching her mother (Liv
Ullmann, who also plays Agnes’s sister); when her mother
sees Agnes, she summons the girl to her side. Agnes fears
that she will be reprimanded, but instead Bergman gives us a
moment of great simplicity and tenderness that unfolds in
three shots: [1] Agnes touches her mother; [2] her mother is
moved by the caress; [3] the image fades to the blood-red
screen. Can we find words to explain the purpose of this
fade-out to red?an important connection for our understanding of
Earp, who quells a ruckus in a saloon and, as a
result, is made the town’s sheriff.Wipe Like the dissolve and the fade, the wipeis a
transitional device—often indicating a change of
time, place, or location—in which shot B wipes
across shot A vertically, horizontally, or diagonally
to replace it. A line between the two shots suggests
something like a windshield wiper. A soft-edge wipe
is indicated by a blurry line; a hard-edge wipe, by a
sharp line. A jagged line suggests a more violent
transition.
Although the device reminds us of early eras in
filmmaking, directors continue to use it. Such
diverse movies as Lewis Milestone’s original ver-
sion of Ocean’s Eleven (1960; editor: Philip W.
Anderson), George Lucas’s Star Wars(1977; editors:
Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch, and Marcia Lucas), and
Guy Ritchie’s Snatch(2000; editor: Jon Harris) con-
tinue to make imaginative use of this transitional
technique.Iris ShotAn iris shotappears on the screen in
two ways: the iris-outbegins with a large circle that
closes in around the subject, while the iris-inbegins
with a small circle and expands to a partial or full
image. It is both a shot and an editing technique
because it functions as a transition to the next shot
and thus involves an editor’s decision. (Because it is
named for the iris diaphragm, which controls the
amount of light passing through a camera lens, it is
usually circular, but can be any shape.) Filmmakers
can create it in the camera, with special effects, or
with a mask. The obvious function of the iris is to
draw our attention to a particular place on the
screen, thus emphasizing what we see there.