Moving Images, Understanding Media

14 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

needs to be changed signifi cantly, particularly with the angle of the camera

in relation to the subject of the shot.

Th e key to the concept of continuity editing is that there is a screen and

a viewer. When you look at the screen, it is as if you are sitting in front of

the scene that you see in front of you. How things move in that world can

be seen as making logical sense or not. Th e two concepts we need to think

about for this are space and time.

Continuity Editing: Time

When we watch a movie, the editing can show us time in a variety of ways. It

can show us ten years rushing by in ten seconds or it can use slow motion and

editing to make ten seconds pass by in a number of minutes—or even through

an entire movie, if the fi lmmakers wanted to do this! As we watch movies, we

are reacting to time passing on the screen, and how we interpret that time is

a key to how we experience and interpret the movies we see and hear.

When filmmakers encountered the challenges of editing motion

pictures, they observed a variety of effects as they cut shots together. They

noticed that if there was a shot of a woman sitting in a chair followed by

a direct cut to the woman standing on the other side of the room and

opening a door, it would seem like there had been an abrupt passage of

time. On the other hand, if the director simply let the woman get up from

the chair and leave the frame in the first shot, then the cut to the person

opening the door would not be as odd, because we would feel that our

sense of time had not been disrupted.

Th e term continuity editing makes us think of the word continuous,

and that is exactly what this concept is about: a style and system of editing

designed to make time seem relatively continuous on the screen. But does

time have to feel continuous when we are watching movies?

Jumping Time

To ask the question another way, can we make the fi rst cut described above—

from the person in the chair to suddenly opening a door—and say that it’s

“okay?” Of course! However, it’s useful to make the decision consciously and

for the eff ect that is intended. Such an edit is typically called a jump cut.

• Can you think of examples of films or shows that
  use continuity editing consistently?


• Can you think of an example of a motion picture
  you have seen recently that shows examples of
  filmmakers not using continuity editing? Describe
  the sequence or movie.
  
  
  • What types of moving images do you usually see
    (on television, in a cinema, on the Internet, and so
    forth) and what editing styles do they typically use?
  
  
  
  

Framing the Discussion

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