An Introduction to Film

384 CHAPTER 8EDITING

been that way ever since I was a kid.” As the cam-
era circles Rocket, suggesting that he’s trapped,
the editor allows him to “escape” by using a
match-on-action cut to a shot of a much younger
Rocket moving in a circle. This ends the movie’s
first sequence.
To understand the editing of any movie, we need
to answer these three questions:

1. What action occurs in the scene under
   analysis?


2. How has the scene been photographed?


3. What editing pattern holds the shots
   together?

If we know the answers to these questions, we can
reach conclusions about the editing. As for the first
question, we have described the basic action of this
sequence and how it establishes several of the
movie’s major themes. Second, we have briefly
summarized its cinematographic plan, which
includes the use of a moving handheld camera and
furtive camera angles, and reflects the bold, you-

are-there graphic style of the documentary cinema.

Third, the key elements of the editing pattern that

hold all this footage together are fast and slow

motion, freeze-frames, swish pans, and a montage

influenced by the editing principles of the Soviet

silent cinema. (Elsewhere in the movie, the editor

uses the split screen, fast fade-ins/fade-outs, and

superimpositions.)

Finally, what conclusions do we reach about the

editing? First, we see that the editor’s goal was to

create a highly formal structure, one in which the

cinematic conventions used are suited to the depic-

tion of a violent youth/drug culture. These conven-

tions add up to a coherent formal whole, with none

being more (or less) important than the others.

Second, the editor grabs and holds our attention on

the violence. Third, the filmmakers, who are not

out to make us squirm with disgust at the squalor

and violence or feel guilty about the injustice of this

Brazilian city—ironically called the “City of God”—

make us not only see but feelthe life depicted on the

screen.

Analyzing Editing

When we watch a movie, we see the mise-en-scène,

design, and acting; we hear the dialogue, music, and

sound effects; but we feel the editing, which has the

power to affect us directly or indirectly. Good

editing—editing that produces the filmmakers’

desired effects—results from the editor’s intuition

in choosing the right length of each shot, the right

rhythm of each scene, the right moment for cutting

to create the right spatial, temporal, visual, and

rhythmic relationships between shots A and B. In

answer to the question “What is a good cut?” Wal-

ter Murch says,

At the top of the list is Emotion... the hardest

thing to define and deal with. How do you want

the audience to feel?If they are feeling what

you want them to feel all the way through the

film, you’ve done about as much as you can

ever do. What they finally remember is not the

editing, not the camerawork, not the perform-

ances, not even the story—it’s how they felt.^11

As a viewer, you can best understand the overall

effects of an editor’s decisions by studying a film as

a creative whole. But you can most effectively ana-

lyze an editor’s contributions to a film by examining

individual scenes, paying attention to the ways in

which individual shots have been edited together.

Indeed, the principles of editing are generally most

evident within the parts that make up the whole.

(^11) Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on
Film Editing(Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1995),
p. 18.