The following is a blog post written for my Introduction to Cinema Studies class, re-published here so all my work is in one place.

If mise-en-scène concerns what’s in the shot, and cinematography is how the shot is captured, editing dictates the relationship between shots. By editing, a director joins two shots together to steer the audience’s perception and experience in a particular way. There are a number of ways a director or editor can join shots together: a simple cut (instantaneous change from one shot to another); a fade in to or out of black; a dissolve (briefly superimposing the end of one shot to the beginning of another); or a wipe (one shot replaces another by means of a boundary line moving across the screen). By deploying these techniques, a director controls the relationship between the two shots in terms of time, space, rhythm and graphic qualities.

In Enemy of the State, Tony Scott uses editing in a number of precisely controlled and kinetic ways to evoke mood, drive the narrative and create contrasts between characters and settings. As just one example, the rhythm of cutting is often ramped up to heighten the sense of tension and paranoia felt by characters during chase or fight sequences, and the same techniques are used to depict the high-tech surveillance equipment used by the CIA (the capability of the CIA to quickly locate Robert Dean is integral to the plot of the film).

Cross-cutting is often used to show the simultaneous action of characters being surveilled (usually Robert Dean) alongside the people doing the surveilling. This cross-cutting invites comparison of the two sets of characters, and emphasises the power relationship between the two — the CIA knows much more about Dean than he knows about them.

One particular example of this is a scene in which Dean and his wife are driving through a tunnel, unaware that at that moment CIA agents are ransacking and vandalising his house to cover the installation of recording equipment. The shots of Dean and his wife are mostly medium shots of the two conversing in their car, well-lit by overhead street lighting, with few cuts to different angles/perspectives other than the occasional close up to one of the characters while they talk. When it cross-cuts to the CIA agents ransacking Dean’s house, the editing changes drastically to emphasise graphic contrasts (the setting in Dean’s home is much darker and shot with higher contrast, low-key lighting), rhythmic contrasts (shot length becomes much shorter as the agents violently trash the environment), temporal contrasts (the scene condenses time by jumping forward through actions), and spatial contrasts (depth is shortened by extensive use of close ups and camera movement).

These techniques (governed by an approach to editing known as continuity editing) are working constantly through the film to affect form and create meaning.