15 March, 2017
Media Lecture – 3
The topic of this week’s lecture is ‘editing’.
‘Editing’ is the most important part in the process of making films or televisions or dramas, because it would affect how the audiences understand the main idea and the whole content. However, for me, it is also the most difficult part of all. Actually, I had no idea about how to editing or making the integrated content and really do not interested in that before had this lecture.
The amazing point that grab my attention is to order the sequence of the story and make it completely different. It also can use the clip to cut the story and separate them into different pieces, then order again. It will have different vision of the story completely from the beginning of production to the completion of editing.
At the start of the lecture, ‘The Kuleshov Effect’ has been introduced and gave us two examples to experience it. This theory editing two pieces of clips that irrelevant together and form a short moment that continuity. The relevance of the plot to the audience or the director’s intention to guide would be showed through using this method. The two examples short films about robberies showed us and it was clearer to explain the gaps among different pieces of clips, so that we could understand the reason why we need to edit. Another example was about two people’s conversation and the scene of party. The editor cut different clips between people and the party, then use editing to edit these moment together.
The next section was about edit over 30 photos in a right order. The teacher cut the whole story into over 30 pieces and we need to complete it in the right order. It is really difficult to complete and nobody could do that within 30 minutes even in the group of 2 or 3 people.
The different content of each photo could not link to each other, so the first difficult thing was we could not see each one clearly because we need to change photos all the time. Secondly, each person has their own ideas about the story, so it is hard to decide which photo is the beginning of the story, which one is the next and what is the ending. Different orders would give readers different feelings. In another words, the frame of the story and the following content have huge impacts here.
To sum up, editing is exactly a important and difficult work, but it also has great influence on the story. It can create gaps or fill up gaps, and help audiences interpret a sequence.