Task 8 - Our Continuity Editing

For our continuity editing task we filmed Jess and Jordan speaking to one another and throwing an orange.

I think it turned out quite well as this was the first time we did something like this and already we found out the kind of techniques that may have been used in a 'shot reverse shot' scene.

We found that it was easier to film all of the lines that Jessica said several times and film her throwing the orange towards Jordan, but not at it. We had her throw the orange behind me and the camera, but when edited it looked like she threw it at Jordan.

We then filmed all of Jordan's lines and had Jessica throw the orange at him this time, filming him catch it and then peel it.

I think it turned out quite well, but the only problem we came across was what we had to film. We had an idea that it was something about food and missing lunch, but we didn't know what Jess and Jordan had to say so we just kind of went with it. We then had to film Jordan catching the orange several times to get a clip of something that looked like the trajectory that the orange followed when Jessica threw it.

Task 7 - Understanding Continuity Editing

Continuity editing is a method of editing that film makers use very often. You see it in every movie, TV show and even adverts. This method ensures that there is not rough editing and so the viewers feel as if there is a constant continuation of time and space without confusing the viewer by breaking rules such as the 180 degree rule, match on action, shot reverse shot and eye-line match.

These techniques, when used properly, make a chronological continuation of narrative as everything makes sense and is in the correct position. When you watch a scene where two characters are conversing, you don't notice until you know the method, but the camera always keeps the two characters facing the same way and position and keeps them on the same side. This is because the camera always stays on the same side, unless it breaks the rule to show the confusion or distortion of how the character is feeling.

Eye-line match is when the camera is focused on a character's face, we see them looking at something outside of the shot, but then the camera cuts to what the character was looking. A good example of this kind of editing technique is in the film "Kill Bill Vol. 1" when Uma Thurman escapes from the hospital and tries to overcome her paralysation by sitting in a car for 12 hours trying to wiggle all of her toes. You see the camera cut from her looking at her feet to her feet and back to her face.

A film maker normally uses this technique to normally show someone looking at something in the distance when they may have seen something that the audience hasn't to create suspense or it is sometimes used when someone is looking down at someone to create a sense of authority or power.

Film makers do not necessarily need to use this but it makes some scenes a lot better when the audience can't fully see what a character is looking at as it creates tension

Match on action is a technique that is used when people are moving out of a room, for example. The technique shows a character seamlessly moving in some sort of form, be it fighting, opening a door or simply walking from one place to another, but the camera changes location and makes it look as if the moving character hasn't done the same action several times whilst being filmed to make it look seamless.

Film makers use this technique most commonly in action scenes where one or more characters are moving quickly and the camera switches positions but the characters continue to move in the same way that they moved from a previous camera position, but it is done so seamlessly and professionally that it is not noticeable that they had paused for a few minutes or even longer to re-do the scene whilst the camera changed position.

When used, this technique helps the audience to understand what is going on even though the scene has changed as the audience understands and makes the connections when a character or characters are being filmed from different positions doing the same action.


Shot reverse shot is a technique that is used most commonly when two characters are talking and it cuts from one characters face to another, maintaining the 180 degree rule which means that it stays on one side of a straight line so as not to confuse people with the sudden change in character position.

Film makers normally use this technique between two characters when they are talking to each other. It is used to show or demonstrate what it is like when speaking to someone, when the other person is listening to the other talking.

The 180 degree rule is a rule which is very commonly followed in a many films. It is a rule which creates an invisible line which cameramen need to follow so as to maintain the same the same side that the focal point is on at the start. This is a rule that is followed quite often because it is used to keep a chronological narrative where characters and areas of focus are always in the same position.

Film makers use this technique to maintain continuity and to not confuse the audience as when the rule is broken, objects and people change positions and that can cause momentary confusion in the audience.

Task 6 - Creating a Montage

In school, we had to film a montage of sorts, and since the weather was being English and bad, we decided to film a montage where three of the group studied before an exam and then getting the results.

Jessica decided to film this time, which is why it's not as steady as it normally is during our other videos.

Task 5: Montage

There are several different meanings for the word "montage" in different regions of the world:
-French film
-Hollywood cinema
-Early Soviet filmmaking

Initially, montages were firstly used in Hollywood movies to compress a large amount of time into a small, quick series of clips to give you an idea of the passage of time and what has changed. Montages are used to shorten, maybe several months of training into just a few minutes of various methods that may have been used during the training or what the main character/s that were training were experiencing during that time.

In French film practice, 'montage' simply means 'assembly' or 'to edit' in French. The term simply identifies the process of editing in French film. It is just the use of frames to create a video sequence, unlike the Hollywood version which shortens down time. This is just the basic French word for editing film clips to create a full film.

In early Soviet filmmaking in the 1920s, 'montage' had a different meaning to French and Hollywood terms. Film makers started juxtaposing shots to create new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.

Lev Kuleshov did an experiment in 1920 when he was a young Soviet film maker.
He took an old head-shot picture of a noted Russian filmmaker and inter-cut the shot with different images that made the people being experimented on think of a meaning out of nowhere. This proved that people would find or create meaning out of two things put together even when they were not shown the real meaning.

Sergei Eisenstein also made a video which showed two different videos cut together that were used to give the audience an idea of what was happening to the strikers by using a cow butchery.

Hollywood cinema still uses its version of montage to remove large amounts of time such as when there are characters who are training for something, but to keep the audience entertained and interested, filmmakers remove all of the background story during the training time so that it becomes a quick and short but informative as it shows the struggles of that character through quick glimpses of them and their surroundings as they near the end of their training.

Summary:

French montage -  to edit

Hollywood montage - to condense large amount of time

Soviet montage - to reveal a deep/hidden meaning

In my class we were also assigned into groups again (everyone partnered with the same people that they chose for the in-camera editing task) and we had to film our own montage scenes.

My group had filmed a short video of several scenes, but we stuck to our semi-comedic semi-serious videos and filmed out the quick scenes. As a result, there wasn't much to edit as we had cut out a lot of the editing just simply by filming such short clips.

The story of the video was that three characters, all students, had to study for an exam. Each of them were experiencing a different amount of stress, one was completely relaxed and seemed as if he didn't care, the second was slightly tense, but he felt as if he was ready and understood everything and the third (me) was the person who was experiencing the most amount of stress as he didn't pay much attention in classes and didn't understand half the stuff he wrote down.

Then as the exam day came, they all received their exam papers and got on with the exam, again, all showing different emotions during the exam, shown by their body positions.
We then all were given our results and it was kind of a confusing scene for some people because the person who tried the hardest revising got the middle-best grade, the person who revised a lot but didn't understand much of it received a "?" and the person who revised the least got the best mark, to which we all then filmed our responses (since I am the groups camera-man but was acting, Jess, the groups Director was filming and it wasn't the smoothest thing in the world) and the following scene was all of our expressions and emotions when we left school.

Task 4 - From Analogue To Digital

When editing was first invented, it was done using the "Analogue" method. This meant that editing was done by splicing the celluloid roll and sticking it back together.
Traditionally, films were made up of images printed on to acetate negatives which was the celluloid material back then. After splicing and sticking the frames together, the film was made up of roughly 24 frames per second.

The Moviola was invented in 1924 by Iwan Serrurier. It was the first device created that could allow a person to edit the film and view it at the same time and was also the first machine that was used for feature-length motion picture editing.

Video Editing
Before digital technologies became available for editing movie clips easily, magnetic tapes were used to store the information, instead of hard drives. These magnetic tapes are hardly used nowadays, if they even are anymore, due to them not being able to hold a lot of data on them and how easy it is to edit clips stored on hard drives now. The magnetic tapes are called VHS and VHSC tapes. The machine mechanically put clips together to form a sequence and everything had to be done in a linear fashion: meaning that you couldn't add a clip in near the end of the movie then go back to the start to add something else, everything was done from beginning to end in order. This type of editing is called linear editing.

Digital Editing
Digital media is a form of electronic media where is stored in digital form (opposed to analogue, digital is stored as bits, or binary, 1's and 0's which tell the computer what everything is, what everything looks like and how that thing is supposed to work).
Digital editing is the use of computers to manipulate the digital data stored on the hard drive. Compared to previous methods of editing movie clips, digital editing is the best, fastest and most efficient way of editing. Editing in any order, which is what digital editing allows you to do, is called non-linear editing. Programs that allow you to edit videos on a computer include Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Sony Vegas Pro, Final Cut and many many others.