Edit Theories and Ideas
“The foundation of film art is editing.”
Today we looked at some theories of film editing, focussing on the experiments and writings of Soviet Film makers - Pudovkin, Kuleshov, Eisenstein and Vertov.
'At its core, the early Russian film theorists, like Pudovkin, believed that editing, the organization and placement of shots, was a means of expression that was unique to filmmaking — something that wasn’t (and still isn’t) done in literature, theater, paintings, or the plastic arts. “The foundation of film art is editing.”
Pudovkin’s five editing techniques are:
Contrast
Parallelism
Symbolism
Simultaneity, and
Leit motif.
See clips below of Hitchcock describing the Kuleshov Effect, a video essay by filmmaker Evan Richards explaining each of Pudovkin's 5 edtiting techniques in detail, offering examples from contemporary films and the infamous 'Odessa Steps sequence from Eisenstein's 'Battleship Pottempkin’
Walter Murch
‘Walter Scott Murch (b. 1943) is widely recognised as one of the leading authorities in the field of film editing, as well as one of the few film editors equally active in both picture and sound.’
Web of Stories [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2016]
In this clips he discusses his six criteria of film editing:
9 Cuts Every Video Editor Should Know | Filmmaking Tips | (From Shutterstock)
Reading
Film Art An Introduction 12th ed. - David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith
Published by McGraw-Hill Education (2020) Shelved at 791.4301 ISBN 1260565661
See Chapter Eight on Editing.
Linked In Learning
Linked in Learning has some great tutorials about editing as well as other aspects of Film Production Skills, log in with your ws email, or via link in Sharepoint for free access to these online courses. Try these courses below
These courses would provide really good research for your Film Production Skills Journal (see brief on sharepoint). I suggest you work through 1 for each of main Film Production skills Learning Objectives - Camera, Sound, Editing, Pre Production, Production ..
Other links to useful tutorials and resources below