Task Eight – Transitions and Effects

In this post i will explain how different transitions and effects can be used to manipulate the diegetic time and space in a film. Examples of how you can manipulate the time and space are:

• transitions: Using transitions are a good way of manipulating time and space as you are able to do a wide range of effects. For example when you want to jump to another place / scene you could use the fade or wipe transitions as it shows you are to another place as one time / space disappears into another time / space. eg cut, dissolve, fade, wipe;
• Graphic Match: This is when you get something and match it to something else that is a similar shape and / or size. For example in the famous film Pshyco, there is a famous graphic match of the bath hole with blood going down it, to someones eye.
• following the action: This is when there is someone doing an action (generally in an action film) and as there is a load of things happeneing and movement, but the camera follows it all. For example in Mr & Mrs Smith at the end in the gun scene within the supermarket, the camera follows them around the whole scene.
• multiple points of view: This is where it shows you multiple points of view, through the eyes of different characters. This is a good technique if one of them is doing something good and the other is bad as it shows the contrast between them.
• shot variation: This is when your 'shot' changes / variates within the same scene, for example it starts of on a wide or / long shot and finish with a close up. For example in the Matrix, when 'Neo' is getting shot by the 'Agent' and he dodges them, the shot angles and distances changes, it is constantly moving.
• manipulation of diegetic time and space: Is when your character travels through time / space, this can be shown through a simple colour change, as in the Wizard of Oz. Also another example would be in Harry Potter when they go in time, they add a spin / whirlpool affect so that you as the audience know they are time traveling.

 In our film  the main transition we have used was the manipulation of diegetic time and space, so the audience can distinct between the present and past, is the fact we have used the whirlpool transition to show the going back and going forward in time and once they are in the past it goes into a black and white colour just like in the Wizard of the Oz, at the beginning it is in black and white but once the tornado has gone it goes to colour as she as manipulated space. 

At the end of our film, i used a fade transition once David closed the door to give it a better ending, as it makes it more dramatic and not as simple as just a normal ending. The methods i used i feel that i used them to good effect, the criticism i could give to this film would be that i have not used as many effects as i would of liked to. I would of also liked the two whirlpool effects i used to have be simultaneous as one of my whirlpools spins faster and in my eyes it does not look like it is matching.

Task Seven – Engaging the Viewer/Creating Pace

The pace of editing can be used to create a range of effects, such as;

• Engaging the viewer - Engaging the viewer is a technique director use to keep the audiences attention, examples of this are when they put music on over the scene, for example in Pshyco, before the well known shower scene they played a dramatic music to build up tension. 
• Speed of Editing - The speed of editing his a very common technique used by editors / directors, as it allows you to control the mood for the scene, for example if you are aiming for an action theme, the speed of your switches would become a lot more frequent. Also by increasing the speed of which you show scene, increases the suspense, for exaple in a 'Hunger Games' advert which lasts 0:36 seconds and has 37 scene changes.

• Cross Cutting - Is a technique used by editors that cuts between two scenes  to show that they are connected, or maybe it is because it is a characters memory.
• Cutaways - These are used in films to give the audience relevant details, without distracting them from the over plot / action.
• Creating pace - Is a technique that can also show the audience the mood of the scene as if the actually cut between scenes become quicker it is used to show that something is going to happen.
• Development of drama - This is a very similar technique to that of cross cutting, for example at the beginning of scream at the death of casey it is made more dramatic as if cuts between 'scream trying to kill casey and her parents approaching the driveway. 

At the beginning of our clip, we showed what our two actors was racing for. At the first clips of our two actors Luke (Winner) and David (Loser), the lengths of the two clips are very long compared to the rest in the video. Once they both made it through the gates, they time gap between cuts became shorter and shorter, to build up the tension and suspense of who's going to win. Once Luke goes through the automatic doors through to the courtyard that is when the speed goes up. At the beginning you would think David is going to win, but to create tension we sped up Luke once he was going up the stairs where as we made david go slowly, to build up the tension as he is just strolling, and cut between them five times once they hit the stairs to make you wonder who is going to win. The issue i have with the short film is that i would of liked to have included more scene changes to build up the intensity and keep the audience guessing who is going to win. I would have also liked to make the opening two scene where you see them come into the school, a lot shorter as it just seems to take ages for them to get through the gates. Even though i would have like to use more scene changes, i do feel that we used the changing pace effectivly as at the beginning the clips was really long and wasnt many scene changes, but about halfway in it all speed up and by the end they was changing very quickly, that is why i feel it wen't really well.

Task Six – Non - Continuity

Directors will choose to do non - continuity editing, instead of the more widely accepted continuity editing as they want to remind the audience to some extent that they are watching a film. The first two directors to start using these methods and making them popular was Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's. They used methods such as jump cuts, to emphasise the lack of continuity in the films. Also a film can only be a certain lenght of time, so by skipping some of the more boring proceesses like walking, they can skip half of it to save time.

One of the main catalysts of non - continuity editing, Jean Luc Godard liked to use jump cuts when filming when using non - continuity editing. One of his most famous jump cuts was in the film 'A Bout de Soufflé' (Breathless), when the two actors are in the car and one moment you see her talking to the man (driver) and then it cuts back to her and all of a sudden see is applying make-up with a mirror. The reason it makes it a jump cut as in continuity films you would of seen her go into her purse and get it out, but as it is non - continuity she has automatically.

Another more recent filmmaker Stanley Kubrick used non - continuity editing in his widely popular film 'The Shining' as in the popular toilet scene there are two characters called Jack and Grady. Stanley  purposely broke the 180 Degree Rule, his reasoning for this was to give the illusion that jack was in-fact crazy / losing his mind, to make this an even clear fact, Grady is actually a ghost of a previous caretaker.

In a more recent films, Gary Ross also broke the 180 Degree Rule in the film 'The Hunger Games' as he was trying to show out of place she was once she got to the hotel suit as she was from a poor town, to now becoming something of a celebrity. Also he was trying to show how new and confusing it was to her as she has entered a new room, one that was probably bigger than her whole house back at home.

                                             

T:5 Continuity Editing - Unit 16:P1, M1, D1

Continuity editing became known as the popular 'classical hollywood' style of editing, which had be developed by early European and American directors. In particular D.W. Griffiths, as in his films such as 'The Birth of a Nation' and 'Intolerance'. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using techniques such as the 180 degree rule, Match on Action, and Shot, Reverse Shot.

It helps to make sure that the film feels like it is moving forward, it doesn't mean you can't use a flashbacks or flashforwards, as long as the narrative is still seen to be progressing forwards in an expected and realistic manner.

In continuity editing, there are four types of shots you should use: Eye-line match, The 180 Degree Rule, Match on Action and finally Shot, Reverse Shot.

The 180 Degree Rule
The 180 degree rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters (or other elements and objects) in the same scene should always have the same left / right relationship to each other.

Eye-line match
This technique links two shots together. We see a character looking at something off screen and then we cut to a shot of what they are looking at. This allows the audience to experience an event in the film just as the character is experiencing it through his eyes.

Match on Action
This technique links two shots together, when we see a character sarts an action in one shot, the camera then cuts to a different angle and we see the character finish the action in the second shot. This technique ensures that the action seems like one natural and realistic movement even when the actor may have already performed it twice.

Shot, Reverse Shot
This technique links two shots together, the first shot reveals one character and then the second shot reveals the second character. This allows the audience to connect the two characters and realise that they are interacting with each other.





Our Match on Action went really well, as in the end of the first scene we see Luke start to open a door, which is the beginning of his action and then in the beginning of the second scene we see him from the other side of the door, opening it and letting it close behind him, which is the end of the action.

My Eye-Line match went good as well, as in the fourth scene you see David point and say your book is over there, and then in the fifth you see a close up of the book he was pointing at. He then starts to walk towards the book that we zoomed in on. The shot is quiet dark and blurry as we had the caerma facing a window with light shining on it, if we could change it, we would have closed the blinds to get a clearer picture.

Our Shot, Reverse Shot happens during our third and fourth scene, during our conversation between our two actors. This scene was effective as it showed you both characters, but also told you the relationship between them (student and teacher). This went well as we showed the first character (luke) speaking and when finished we showed the second (david) with his resonse.

First of all we got it wrong as during those scenes we crossed the 180 degree rule, so to fix the problem, we 'flipped' the scene to fix the problem to make sure that the characters stay on the same side.

After we fixed the problems we made, i believe that our clip was successful on showing the key continuity techniques.

Task Four – Montage - Unit 16:P1,M1,D1

There are three different key meanings to the word 'montage' in film editing. The first of the key meanings is the French term, which stands for assembly, installation and simply identifies editing. The second of them is the soviet term, which can about in the soviet filmmaking of the 1920's, it was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. The third and final key method is the hollywood term, which is when it is a montage sequence and is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion to fit a long period of time into a short scene of the film.

There were two key filmmakers that done montages in early cinema, their names were Lev Kuleshov and Sergei Eisenstein.

 Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to theorise about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920's. He argued that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (Shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. He did an experiment that proves this point, he took an old film clip of a head shot of a Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images.When he showed the film to the people they praised the actors editing. The audience was able to infer the meaning from looking at two shots.

Sergei Eisenstein was breifly a study of Kuleshov's but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montaging techniques. By contrasting unrealated shots Eisenstein tried to provoke associastions in the viewer, which were indulge by shocks.

 For example the film Strike was a Soviet montage as it showed you two clips within one another of a cow getting slaughter and workers fleeing the mines getting gunned down by soldiers. He tried to demonstrate the similarities of how those workers were being treated, to that of an animal.

In hollywood cinema a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion, for example Rocky's expersise scene before the fights. It is showing you a long period of training and improvement over a very short amount of time, which hollywood montage is, a long period of time, within a short clip.

The montage above is a soviet montage




Hollywood

Task Three – From Analogue to Digital Editing

Analogue Editing

Analogue editing when you edit your film but cutting and gluing together pieces of celluloid film. Traditionally films are made up of images that have been printed on to acetate negatives. These are then ‘spliced’ together to form a reel of films. These are then feed through a projector at a constant speed of 24 frames a second which makes the pictures appear to be moving as there are so many of them in such a little space and every one of them is different by only a little bit to give the illusion of movement. The advantage of using analogue editing is that it will give people a sense of nostalgia, especially to the older generations as it may bring back memories of their youth. The disadvantage of this is that when it comes to editing you have to do it by hand which will take many hours and you will also need to edit it from the beginning to end, not in any order you want.

The First Moviola

Before the widespread of non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all the films made was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film work print (cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as the Moviola. The advantage of using a Moviola is that people could actually see what they was editing while they was doing it, which made it easier to edit, which meant less chance of mistakes. The disadvantage of this machine is that it also needed to be edited from the beginning to end, not in any order you wanted.

Video Editing

Before digital technologies become available, magnetic tapes were used to store information – these are known as video tapes. Most video editing has been superseded by digital editing which is faster and cheaper to make than video editing.

Digital Editing

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data are stored in digital (as opposed to analogue) form. Digital editing is the use of computers to order and manipulate the digital data. Digital cinema uses bits and bytes (Strings of 1’s and 0’s) to record, transmit and relay images, instead of chemicals on film. The whole process is electronic so there in to printing or ‘splicing’ involved. The advantages of using digital editing is that you are able to edit in any order you want which was a big benefit to the editors as if they had an idea they could do it there and then in case they forgot it. Also there is no ‘splicing’ involved there is less chance of mistakes and also you are able to go back on the changes you made as you have not physically cut anything. The disadvantage of this type of method is that people might not be up-to-date with technology and not know how to edit the film, or they like the sense of nostalgia and actually prefer doing it by hand and ‘splicing’ the film to edit it, as it may give them a sense of achievement.

Non-Linear Editing

In digital video editing, non-linear editing is a method that allows you to access any frame in a digital video clips regardless of sequence in the clip. The freedom to access any frame, and use a cut-and-paste method, similar to the ease of cutting and pasting text in a word processor, and allows you to easily include fades, transitions, and other effects that cannot be achieved with linear 

editing.

T:2 Developing Editing Techniques

In-camera editing is one of the simplest and one of the most earliest forms of films editing. It is a filming  technique which only requires the filmmaker to record when he wants the film and pause it when he wants it to stop, that is why this technique is very difficult as you can only do it once and there is no retakes or post editing. The film has to run in order you wish to show it, as you cannot edit it at the end to go in the order you wish to show it. This technique became popular thanks to a magician called George Melies, who made a little film called 'The Vanishing Lady' which in its time was revolutionary. Here is his film:




Below is the short film, me and my group made using In-Camera editing:



In our firsts two scenes, it shows David walking down a set of stairs, we put the camera in the middle of the stairs, aiming up so that David was walking down towards the camera, and once he was out of view we stopped it and put it down the bottom of the stairs so it was a similar view which in my opinion made flow better.

The third scene we decided to place the camera out side of the building, and got him to walk outside the door, so it looks like he walked down the stairs and gone straight outside the door and walk along side the path to make the film look continuous from the last as it he stopped walking it would not flow.

The next scene we brought in another actor to join David, once the scene started we saw Tony come into the shot as he appeared around the corner to greet David, then Tony decides to go with David to where ever he was going. We made a mistake as we was talking in the video and you can hear laughing, and the film was meant to be silent.

In the fifth scene we see them walk in between two buildings... talking, thus giving the illusion they know eachother and generally talk to eachother. In my opinion it was a very good scene as we had the camera low, so as they walked further away the got smaller and smaller, more so than if we had it eye hight. We stopped filming when they got about three quarters of the way down so that when we shot the next scene and they wasnt already turning it gave the illusion that they still had to walk down to the end.

In the sixth scene we see them turn the corner, carring on their conversation, not looking at the camera to give a better illusion that the camera is not actually there. In comparision to the rest it is a fairly short scene.

In the sixth shot we decided to change the camera angle by shoting them through a window, instead of just being directly behind or infront of them. This made it seem as if you was actually watching them walk and we could also do two scenes at once which required less setting up as in stead of filming them coming up to the doors, then through them and then start going up the stairs, we could do it all at once. Also at the end you see two girls walk past which give it more of a real effect as they walked accross a whole school without seeing one person is quiet unusual so that aspect added a sence of realness to the scene.

In the seventh scene it shows them coming up from the staircase they entred at the end of the previous shot, this scene ends with a 'close-up' of David using his card on the machine so that they can get into the study hall.

Finally film ends in them walking through the door and then it ends by the door closing behind them.


The pro's of in-camera editing are that it can be very quick to record, as you do not need all the hastle of editing the clips afterwards as you have done it in-camera. Also it is not as expensive to make as you do not have to pay for the recording equipment and software.

The cons of using in-camera are that if you make a mistake you cannot edit it out, also the are times in your clip when it doesnt 'flow', as if you are running for example in the next clip it is hard to make it look as if he was continuasly running as he would have been standing still until the director told him to run.