340 CHAPTER 8EDITING
far more than an assembly process, for film editing
controls the creative and expressive power of the
movies.
Film editor and scholar Ken Dancyger distin-
guishes among the technique, the craft, and the art
of editing. The technique (or method) involves
cutting the desired shots from the exposed roll
of film or digital storage device and then joining
them together so that they form a continuous
whole. Before digital editing, this manual and often
tedious process was called cutting and splicing,
because the editor used scissors to sever the shots
from the roll of film before using glue or tape to
splice them together. Editors were responsible
primarily for visual images. With digital editing, the
work is simpler, cleaner, and easier to manage, and
editors are now frequently responsible for editing
all elements of the film, including the visual, sound,
and special effects elements. The craft (skill) is the
ability to join shots and produce a meaning that
does not exist in either one of them individually.
The art of editing, Dancyger declares, “occurs
when the combination of two or more shots takes
meaning to the next level—excitement, insight,
shock, or the epiphany of discovery.”^1 That is the
essence of editing.
The basic building block of film editing is the
shot(as defined in Chapter 6), and its most funda-
mental tool is the cut. Each shot has two explicit
values: the first value is determined by what is
within the shot itself; the second value is deter-
mined by how the shot is situated in relation to
other shots. The first value is largely the responsi-
bility of the director, cinematographer, production
designer, and other collaborators who determine
what is captured on film. The second value is the
product of editing.
The early Soviet film theorist and filmmaker
Lev Kuleshov reputedly demonstrated the funda-
mental power of editing by producing a short film
(now lost, unfortunately) in which an identical shot
of an expressionless actor appeared after each of
these shots: a dead woman, a child, and a dish of
soup. The audience viewing this film reportedlyWhat Is Editing?
Editing, the basic creative force of filmmaking, is
the process of selecting, arranging, and assembling
the essential components of a movie—visual,
sound, and special effects—to tell a story in a
unique way. The director and his on-set collabora-
tors capture those elements, but it is the editor who
shapes them into the movie you experience. The
editor controls what you see, when you see it, its
speed and pace, and what you understand and feel
about all this. Indeed, editing is what distinguishes
the movies from the other dramatic and visual arts,
a point that cannot be overemphasized. It involves
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be
able to
✔understand the relationship between the
shot and the cut.
✔describe the film editor’s creative and
technical responsibilities.
✔explain the various ways that editing
establishes spatial relationships between
shots.
✔describe some of the ways that editing
manipulates temporal relationships.
✔understand the significance of the rhythm
of a movie and describe how editing is
used to establish that rhythm.
✔distinguish between the two broad
approaches to editing: editing to maintain
continuity and editing to create
discontinuity.
✔describe the fundamental building blocks
of continuity editing.
✔describe the methods of maintaining con-
sistent screen direction.
✔name and define the major types of transi-
tions between shots and describe how they
can be used either to maintain continuity
or to create discontinuity.(^1) Ken Dancyger, The Technique of Film and Video Editing: Theory
and Practice, 2nd ed. (Boston: Focal Press, 1997), pp. xiv–xv.