The Art of Editing (Jeremy Bowtell talk)

A former student of the RMIT Media course Jeremy Bowtell explained the deeper concepts behind ‘the edit’ in Monday’s Media 1 lectorial. It was an insightful perspective on how editing plays such a vital role in the portrayal of a narrative and how one cut can advance the story, fix or break footage and ultimately change the impact of a film. Jeremy explained the term juxtaposition which in reference to editing is combining parts together to create new meaning and this can sometimes be a process of fixing, other times breaking, contraction of footage which in turn can work to the film makers advantage. To expand this point made by Jeremy, Lev Kuleshov a soviet filmmaker was one of the first to analyse the effects of juxtaposition. Through this analysis, research and experimentation Kuleshov uncovered that the audience will attach an emotion to the vision that they see depending on the order of the shots. In Kuleshov’s experiment he edited the shots of an expressionless actor looking directly at the camera, intercutting between three different subjects; being hot soup, a young girl in a coffin and an attractive women lying on a sofa. The same actors expression was used for all three edits for the different subjects and to Kuleshov’s amazement the audience argued the actors performance was different for all three edits being hungry for the soup, sad about girl in the coffin and lust for the women on the sofa.

Jeremy explained the importance that editing has in creating meaning for the intended audience. Jeremy specifically quoted Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein who contented that a film must be ‘a tendentious (argumentative) selection and juxtaposition’. This quotation by Eisenstein is illustrated in Soviet director Dziga Verov experimental masterpiece ‘A Man with a Movie Camera’. The film is insignificant as it is an experimental silent documentary film, with no story and no actors, but the film is highly significant for being one of the first films to employ a wide range of editing masterstrokes. This range of cinematic techniques included fast and slow motion, freeze frames, footage played backwards and jump cuts. Jeremy also quoted American film director Edward Dmytryk who remarked very significantly “Never make a cut without a positive reason”. Dmytryk’s philosophy extended as far as when he was undecided about the exact frame to cut on, he would cut long rather than short. Subsequently the importance was placed on the substance first then the form, which translates to worrying about content more then how you’re going to say it.

Jeremy touched on multiple Oscar winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, who was instrumental in establishing the ‘Rule of Six’ which is outlined within his book ‘In the blink of an eye: A perspective on film editing’. Murch intruigingly described the six elements to building a story within the edit, “What I’m suggesting is a list of priorities. If you have to give up something, don’t ever give up emotion before story. Don’t give up story before rhythm, don’t give up rhythm before eye-trace, don’t give up eye –trace before planarity, and don’t give up planarity before spatial continuity.” Jeremy provided us with a watered down version of the Rule of Six, containing emotion, story, rhythm, eye trace, two dimensional place of screen and three dimensional space. Emotion relates to how the cut will affect the audience emotionally at the particular stage of the film. The story questions whether the edit moves the story forward in a meaningful way or advances the story. The rhythm refers to how the cut at that point in the story makes rhythmic sense. Eye Trace is important as it asks the question whether the cut affects the location and movement of the audience’s focus in the particular film. Two and three dimensional place poses whether the axis is followed properly and if the cut establishes physical and special relationships. Overall I found Jeremy’s analysis of editing very thought provoking because as an audience if you don’t notice the edits the edits must be cleverly and purposely executed, but I would extend that further, I believe if the elements of film work together in harmony including well thought and precise edits, the story is usually enhanced and exceptionally told. Therefore I believe editing is a vital element in film and without it a film would be very hard to read as an audience and the story would possible lack it’s true meaning.

 

Bibliography:

http://www.elementsofcinema.com/editing/kuleshov-effect-and-juxtaposition/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_a_Movie_Camera

http://videoandfilmmaker.com/wp/index.php/tutorials/film-editing-walter-murchs-rule-6/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Dmytryk

Jeremy Bowtell speech (7/3)