Moving Images, Understanding Media

Chapter 2 Inventions and Origins 59

When you edit digitally, you look at a screen just as fi lm editors have

stared at devices such as the Moviola or fl at-bed editing machine. You are also

able to move around the pieces of fi lm in any arrangement because you can

cut them apart and piece them back together freely, just as editors did when

they had to splice and paste each segment of fi lm together by hand.

Continuity through Cutting

During the mid-1910s, directors and editors were making astonishing

progress in advancing the complexity, precision, and expressiveness of

cinematic art. By the end of this period, a range of editing traits can be

observed in numerous fi lms produced by a variety of directors. Editors

began to use match cuts to move action forward from one shot to the next.

Directors would establish screen direction by fi lming from one side of the

axis, such as the previous example of a battlefi eld sequence. Continuity

also was established in matches between the eyelines of characters looking

at each other in a scene.

When you think of a standard dialogue scene today, what comes to

mind? Th e pattern of shot and reverse shot, moving the camera from one

side of a scene to its opposite viewpoint, so that two characters looking and

talking to each other can be seen from each perspective, was also established

during this period.

How about when you see a brief close-up of a weapon that a character

is secretly taking out of a pocket in order to attack another character? Th is

example of an insert shot is fi rst seen during this period and became a standard

technique during the 1920s. A common insert from this time was a close-up

of a letter or page being read by a character. Directors oft en use insert shots

to provide a dramatic detail that adds important information, and it can be

shot separately from the primary takes with all the actors.

Figure 2-23 Twenty-fi rst

century digital editing home

studio setup of editor Ross

Martin with computer linked

to two monitors to track

picture and sound edits

and view full screen picture.

(Courtesy Ross Martin)

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