Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Homework Week 9: Development of editing in Modern Cinema

Homework: Editing Techniques Practical Portfolio (Team contribution)


Pass: Write up your description of your allocated editing technique, which pioneer or filmmaker developed this and explain the specific use in an example (Youtube clip)

Embed the clips from the rest of your group on your blog and add your annotations on your blog
Merit: Explain the purpose behind the technique, (there are 5 you COULD consider across all the examples your group has made - you do not need to look at all 5 in each example)
So consider how and why they are used either:

1. Manipulation of Time and Place (180 deg rule etc)
2. Rhythm and Pace
3. Storytelling - following the Action & Drama to create emotion
4. Creating a sequence of shots - Narrative or Kuleshov?

Merit: eg: "One of the main principles of continuity editing is the 180o rule. This means that the camera must always stay on the same side of the line along which an action takes place because if it did not the viewer would soon become confused about what was happening. A good example of this is..."  

For higher marks, add these clips and annotations to your Timeline on the Development of Editing and:

Distinction: Discuss how these principles (eg Continuity) behind these techniques developed
eg: "Continuity editing was developed from early cinema, the principle is to make the editing appear invisible or 's.....ss', so as to maintain time and space relationships.Different shots are cut together to create emotional impact and drama when telling the story"

Resources:




Prep work: Timeline Modern Period - Hollywood Montage & New Wave

Extent your Timeline (remember you are being assessed on this) to plot our the developments in editing of the Modern Period 

Quiz questions to assess your completion & understanding of Modern Period:
1) What is the Nouveau Vague?
2) What is Hollywood Montage?

Pass: Describe the Filmmakers, their significant films & their contribution to editing 

(In class we will cover Merit: Explain how one development led to another - context ie Continuity vs Montage)
  • Hitchcock
  • Goddard
  • Kubrick
  • Scorcese

Resources:
Presentation on Modern period 



Hitchcock


Best Film Editing Sequences of All-Time
Film Title/ Director & Editor and Film Description
Screenshots
Breathless (1960, Fr.) (aka A Bout de Souffle)
d. Jean-Luc Godard
Film Editor: Cecile Decugis, Lila Herman

The French "New Wave" (La Nouvelle Vague) movement by film critics-turned directors challenged traditional 'rules' of film editing, repudiating most of the conventions of the time. This innovative and fresh landmark film (and others) liberally used the jump cut (in non-logical ways), the hand-held camera, natural lighting, non-linear storytelling, on-location shootings, and loose, improvised direction and editing.
The rough-hewn film was particularly notable for the use of breakthrough jump cuts in the aimless "Why are you unhappy?" discussion between young thug and car thief Michel Poiccard/Laszlo Kovacs (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and flighty, short-haired, tight T-shirt wearing American girlfriend Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) while he was driving a stolen convertible through Paris. During the scene, the camera focused from behind on her for nearly the entire sequence. He responded: "I can't live without you...I love a girl with a lovely neck, lovely breasts and a lovely voice, lovely wrists, a lovely brow, and lovely knees..."
In the first five-minute driving sequence that introduced the male character as a Bogart-infatuated male, the camera jerked around without any traditional sense of continuity or establishing shots, etc.
In the film's central 23-minute sequence that was a hallmark of spontaneous and improvisational acting/film-making, Patricia discussed romance, beauty, and novelist William Faulkner and considered where she should hang her Renoir poster, while Michel repeatedly tried to convince her to have sex with him ("I want to sleep with you again because you're beautiful...I'd like to sleep with you again"), and finally succeeded (off-screen).



Psycho (1960)
d. Alfred Hitchcock
Film Editor: George Tomasini

In Hitchcock's classic, brutal shower murder scene, an unexplainable, unpremeditated, and irrational murder, the major star of the film - Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) - was shockingly stabbed to death after the first 47 minutes of the film's start. It was the most famous murder scene ever filmed and one of the most jarring.
The scene took a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing of 78 pieces of film, 70 camera setups, and a naked stand-in model (Marli Renfro) in a 45-second impressionistic montage sequence, involving the inter-cutting of slow-motion and regular speed footage. The audience's imagination filled in the illusion of complete nudity and fourteen violent stabbings.
Actually, the shower victim never really appeared nude (although the audience was teased) and there was only implied violence - at no time did the knife ever penetrate deeply into her body. In only one split instant, the knife tip touched her waist just below her belly button.
Chocolate syrup was used as 'movie blood', and a casaba melon was chosen for the sound of the flesh-slashing knife.
The horrific scene commenced when a figure with dark face, faint white eyes, and tight hair bun entered the bathroom and whipped aside the shower curtain. The killer wielded a menacing, phallic-like butcher knife high in the air - at first, it appeared to be stab, stab, stabbing us - the victimized viewer!
The piercing, shrieking, and screaming of the violin strings of Bernard Herrmann's shrill music played a large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene - they started 'screaming' before Marion's own shrieks.
Marion turned, screamed (her wide-open, contorted mouth in gigantic close-up), and vainly resisted as she shielded her breasts, while the large knife repeatedly rose and fell in a machine-like fashion. The murderer appeared to stab and penetrate into her naked stomach, shattering her sense of security and salvation.
The savage killing was kinetically viewed from many angles and views. The only blood was seen washing down and circling into the shower drain - paired to a dissolving, rotating, zoom-out closeup of Marion's unblinking eye.
The Drain and Marion's Eye






Scorcese



Kubrick




Goddard


Hollywood Montage 




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