Editing

One of the most critical processes in the making of a movie is editing.  The compiling together of the scenes, sound and music is really what makes a film successful in my mind.  The cutting during a scene to give the viewer different looks at the actors and the action is apart of editing too.  The director takes editing in mind when he’s setting up shots.  But what does editing mean and what are various types of edits?  We’ll talk about them today before the movie and maybe some of you can share one of your favorite edits with the class.

For example, one of mine is the shower scene in Psycho.  You never see the knife enter Janet Leigh’s body and the only time you see blood is at the end of the scene when there’s a shot of it going down the drain.  And the music heightens the horrific scene to an extreme level.

Intercutting– The alternation between actions taking place at two distinct locations to make one composite scene. For example, cutting between two people involved in the same telephone conversation. The distinction between this and cross cutting is one of compression of time. The intercut can be used to speed up a scene and eliminate large pieces of time that would slow a story down.