We were lucky enough to have a guest speaker in our lecture this week, ex-student Jeremy Bowtell. He gave us a brief introduction into editing and what it can do, particularly in film. Personally, I have not had that much experience in editing. It’s always been something that is there, but never something I fully understood. I remember watching a film about the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (Hitchcock, 2012) and they spoke a lot about how the whole Majesty of the film was created in the editing suit. But how? Whilst I know next to nothing about editing I have always known about its significance in regard to media. I remember myself walking out of films and talking with them to my friends and saying things like “it was edited really well”. But what exactly did I mean by that? The truth is, I probably don’t really know myself.

Jeremy spoke about not only what editing is and how it can be achieved but also what it can actually do and how it can ‘manipulate’ an audience. Much like our reading for this week, Jeremy talked about editing being about the “spaces inbetween shots” and how the audience is responsible for filling in the gaps using their own imagination. Whilst Jeremy was using examples from films, our reading, a comic by Scott McCloud titled Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, demonstrated that the same principles are used in plain images. Although the image may only show the top half of a man, we, as the audience, understand that there is the bottom half of the man right underneath, where we can’t see. Over years of being exposed to such editing techniques, as an audience we have become so accustomed to filling in these holes that we do it automatically without even thinking. I found it facinating to be shown that for years I have been part of the process without even realising it or making a concious effort to be involved. For me that highlighted one of the many uses for editing. It makes the movie easy to watch, the comic easy to look at, the book easy to read, ect. For the first time I think I am starting to become aware of the importance of editing and the impact it can have. Suddenly that movie about Alfred Hitchcock makes a whole lot more sense…