Last week we shot a scene about two people on a train. It was a really interesting shoot because of how differently everyone read into the script. While our group instilled our version of the scene with an odd and palpable tension, the other group leant towards a more comical and lighthearted approach. It emphasised the fact that the same script in a different director’s hands will produce an entirely different scene. And while the director’s choices of shots and the cinematographer’s camerawork affects this, a hugely important and often overlooked element of coverage is editing.

Rob and I worked on an edit of our group’s scene together. We made the piece quite heavy on the tension, through our lingering shots and longer, slower edits. The other pairs who created edits of the scene only used two close ups, but Rob and I added in one more reverse shot so the cold stare down at the end became very intense and lingering. It’s astonishing how simple it is – just let a shot run for an extra couple of seconds rather than trimming it down, and it imbues the scene with a completely different tone. Other groups who cut up the shots quicker still had a trace of the tension, but it wasn’t quite as palpable.

While the other shooting group’s rushes were more inherently lighthearted, the same divide was apparent in their separate edits as well. Vera created an almost YouTube poop-esque scene, which was hilarious due to its abandonment of the realism that everyone else had tried to create with their cuts. She used the same clips multiple times in a row, played clips in reverse briefly, and played up the slapstick acting in the scene, to create something which nobody else even thought to do.