Task 8- Transitions and effects

Task 8-




This is our video about a women who worked in a shop that was attacked and the other shop keepers flashback of what had happened. It was aware that in this video the time periods had changed as the colour had disappeared to show that it was a different time period and that something was being shown from what another person had seen. In this video there has been a dissolve added to show the transition from one period to another. These were used successfully as they were put into part of the video that they were needed in and this made them suitable to be put into these parts of the video. Some improvements that could have been made throughout this video would have been that some parts did not match up and could have been match up better, the concept of the story may not have been understood. This was a successful video as was edited so that the clips were linked together and the editing techniques used matched up with what was going on in the video.

Transitions- 

Straight cuts are the most common forms of editing and are invisible forms of transitions, one shot moves immediately to another without attracting the audiences attention. Straight cuts are used to make a film more realistic and they do not break the viewers disbelief. Dissolves are used to fade one shot off a screen while another shot is appearing on the screen, the audience will be able to see both shots on the midpoint of the screen. A dissolve is used if a film maker wants to show a connection between two characters, places or objects. Fades are used in film making as a gradual darkening or lightening of an image until it becomes either black or white, one shot will fade until the screen either goes fully black or white. This issued to indicate the end of a particular section of time within the narrative, this can also show the passing of time. Wipes are used as one image is being pushed off a screen by another one, these images can be pushed either left or right. It is more common for the images to be pushed off the left hand side, this is because this is the movement that is more consistent with the sense of time moving forward.

Graphic match- 

Graphic match is when a image is put next to another image that it matches up to. If you were to put a person next to an object they would match to give the sense of how a person is feeling. An example of this would be if you were to put a plug hole next to an eye they would match up as someone being dead looking at a camera and then zooming out to see who the person was.

Following the action-

Following the action is when there is a movement, or in an action scene the camera would follow the event that is being performed. In an extract of the film Mr and Mrs Smith the camera rotates around the two characters as an action scene takes place, this shows more of the action then staying at one angle.

multiple points of view-

Multiple points of view is where the characters/ actors are showing points of view. It is when it will show what the character is seeing and then it will change to show the other character and does the same thing.

Shot variations-

Shot variation is when a shot is not interrupted by editing and the shot distance changes, the shot can be still or mobile but it must be of continuing motion. A shot would begin as a wide or long shot and end up in close-up, for example, in the matrix it begins in long shot and the camera then moves in a circular motion and ends up in a mid-shot.



Manipulation of diegetic time and space-

Manipulation of diegetic time and space is when a film uses effects to show an age or time change. This could be anything from a person, an object or when an environment is getting younger or getting older. This can also be something as simple as using a colour filter or the desaturation of a picture to show a distinct moment in time, there are many different films that use this technique and a traditional example of this is from the film time machine. There are many more examples of this editing technique that are modern such as harry potter, as in this film there is a film using a time turner to go back to a previous moment in time that was recent to the time they were already in.

Engaging the viewer/ Creating pace

Task 7 -

Speed of editing -

In a film the pace of each clip could be anything from a few seconds to a few minutes, the length of each sequence establishes the pace of the film as a concluded whole. In a film the speed of editing will help to oversee the mood of the entire film as a whole. If a film wants to create suspense for the audience or anxiety for the audience the editing will be fast pace, actions films tend to use this editing technique. An example of a film that would use this is would be things such as 'James Bond', this uses fast pace action sequences to cause distress to the audience. This would not happen in a film that is more relaxed and does not need to have short, fast paced clips. In some film trailers it is vital that they fit is as many clues as possible about the film but do not give anything away, they make these film trailers fast pace so that people do not get many clues.

Cross cutting -

Cross cutting is when two film clips are cut together so that the audience understand that they are connected in some way, this is important as things that do not necessarily look like they are meant to be linked are in fact linked. This can be linking two sequences that are happening at the same time but in different locations or this could happen when a person is reliving a memory. An example of a film that uses this is 'Inception'. Cross cutting is sometimes used to create drama within a scene and this gives that effect to the audience this happen in the first scream movie at the beginning when the girl is murders as it cuts between her being murdered and trying to get help and here parent, who are almost at the house in time to save her.

Cutaways -

A cutaway is used to reveal a intricate detail that the viewer needs to be able to put the film together and this is done without detracting from an action sequence that is happening, this may give the audience an understanding of what is about to then happen within the next sequence. An example of a clip that uses a cutaway to show something important is in 'Zombieland' as in this film there is a scene where by a zombie clown attacks the man, he then looks at a hammer, looks back at the clown and runs for the hammer to kill the clown.

Developing drama -

When a director uses all of these different effects they create a sense of drama for the audience as it shows the developing of the film and how the actors are reacting to what is happening in the film. A director will try t create drama in a film to show that what is going to happen may be shocking and otherwise surprising to the actor, this will then make the audience feel what the actors are feeling throughout the whole of the rest of the film up to the closing scene of the film when everything gets brought together to show what has was actually meant to be explained from the beginning of the film. The director uses things such as emotions to make the viewer understand what is going on in the film and then this will develop a sense of guessing what is about to happen, even though the viewer may grasp the concept of the story they may not always guess what is going to happen next they may just have some idea of what may happen in the next scene. An example of a scene that develops drama is 'Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 2'. In this film there is a development of drama towards the big fight scene that is about to happen that everyone would have been trying to guess since the beginning of all of the films.

Creating pace -

Creating pace in a film sequence is important as it is used to show to the audience how two people act to the same issue and how eventually they will then meet up in the same situation. In our short film there are two people who are both late to class but one is rushing and one is relaxed, we use fast pace movements for the person that is rushing and at the end of the film the actors eventually meet. The film we produced creates a sense of stress that is shown to the audience and is demonstrated within the film when it cuts from the two different people and how they are both handling the situation is very different, they both show different emotions such as the person in a rush is the actor showing the stress of being late and the person who is relaxed is demonstrating the fact that they do not care about if they are late to their lesson or not. The film also creates a sense of distress when they look at the person who is rushing as their pace begins to increase further through the film, when they then make the mistake of entering the wrong classroom the person panics even more then they originally were and this makes their pace gradually become faster until they get to the classroom where they can then relax.

Non-Continuity Editing

Non-Continuity Editing -

Some filmmakers choose to use non-continuity editing in their films as it means that they can make the film quick and this then uses less money to create a film. Non-continuity editing is used to make a film seem more dramatic in different part and director may also choose to use it because of this advantage that they have to make the viewer feel more involved with the film. French new wave filmmakers chose to do something a bit more different with films that they had created, people such as Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut chose to take a non traditional approach to film making and chose a more carefree way of editing that was both fast and effective. By not using a traditional method of editing it reminded the audience that they were still only watching a film and they also realized that french new wave editing have drew attention to itself from lack of continuity.

Jump cut -

A jump cut is when something is quick cut from the beginning to the scene to the end of the scene, and the first one was in the film 'A bout to souffle (breathless)'. This film was created by Jean Luc Godard that grasped the attention of its audience and emphasized the use of a jump cut. There was a certain clip that both startled and amazed its audience as it drew attention to itself. In this scene a man and women are driving in a car in France and at the beginning of the scene there is nothing in her hand but a mirror then appears in her hand for a moment, then disappears. This is used to confuse the audience and to make them have to think about how the mirror may have got into the young ladies hands.



Breaking the 180 degree rule -

When a film is being produced using continuity editing the camera will always be on one side so that the actors positions do not change. If you cross or break the break the line it will appear as though the characters have swapped positions on the screen and this may become confusing for some people. Some directors deliberately break the 180 degree rule so that it appears as the the person is say looking around a room or something similar to that. This was first broken in the film 'The Shining' by Stanley Kubrick and then again in the well known film 'The Hunger Games' by Gary Ross. In The Hunger Games it was done as a way of showing someone looking around a room, and was used to show that the person was amazed by what they had seen. But in The Shining it was used in a scene were their were two men having a conversation in a men's bathroom, this is used to show the different reactions and emotions on the two peoples faces and to confuse the audience.

Continuity

Task 5-

Continuity editing is the most popular form of editing, developed by early european and american directors such as D.W.Griffiths. Continuity editing is a classic editing style that ensures everything in the films are perfect, In continuity editing techniques that are used are 180 degree rule, match on action, shot, shot reverse and eye-line match. Continuity editing is also the sense of something being realistic and the feeling as though time is moving forward, this does not mean that they cannot use flashbacks or flash forwards as long as it seems to be progressing in a realistic way.

180 degree rule:

The 180 degree rule is when any two things in the same scene must always have the left/right relationship to each other this means that the camera should not cross the line of 180 degrees when filming a scene. A filmmaker may use the 180 degree rule as they may need to take the camera to a different position but would like the actors to be in the same places they originally would have been in.

Match on action:

Match on action is is linking two shots together, this is when the audience would see a character start and action in one shot and the camera would move to a different angle where the audience would see the character finish the action in the second shot. This ensures that the action appears to be one continuous movement when in fact it is two, to make the movement look more natural. A filmmaker would use this to change the position of a camera to show a person and then show what that person is doing.

Shot, reverse shot:

Shot, reverse shot is when again two shots are linked together, this is when the first shot reveals a character and another shot then reveals the other character. This connects two characters and makes the audience realise they are interacting with each other. A filmmaker may use this to link two people together and would use this to make the two separate shots look like one shot.

Eye-line match:

Eye-line match is a shot that link two shots together, it is when a character is in a shot looking off screen and in the second shot shows what the character is looking at. This allows the audience to experience an event in a film as a character would be experiencing. A filmmaker would use a eye-line shot to link a character with what they are looking at this would ensure there emotion is matched with what they are looking at.

If a film maker did not use these techniques then they would not be able to link up shots with each other and this would mean that the audience would not understand what was going on throughout the due course of the film.



Our film incorporates a number of these different techniques a it uses them to link the film together entirely. We used a eye-line shot to show the actress in a first shot and in the second shot what she was looking at, this was used in the beginning of the short film and linked the two different shots together. We used a match on action to show the other actress in the film and this linked two shots together where by the actress began to walk into the room and in the second shot continued this motion, the actress was told to stop when she was out of the shot and start the next shot from where the last shot finished.  In the film we used a shot, reverse shot to show the two actresses and this linked them both together so the audience would know that those two people were linked in some way, but we did not give all of the information away about what was going on throughout the video.

Montage

Task four-

Montage is the term that is used for a film that is made up of different sequences where by they control a certain time, place and information, the first person to use montage was Eisenstein and he then introduced this to cinema. Montage often contains different effects such as fades, dissolves and split screens .etc, this was one of the first ever forms of editing. Some existing montages that have been produced are very famous, these are famous clips such as the rocky training montage and the karate kid montage. This technique is used in many different kinds of film these are,

• Soviet montage
• Hollywood montage
• French montage

Soviet montage always relied largely on editing and even though soviet filmmakers did not use editing it was then widely used after Eisenstein found this out that montage was possible to use and incorporate in film making. Montage developed soviet cinema massively as some filmmakers found that this was able to be used to create a story in there film and to make a film easier to develop even if the film was not produced in the way that the filmmaker would have imagined that it would have been. Soviet montage then began to develop other forms of cinema such as Hollywood cinema.

French film practice, 'montage' has its literal french meaning and simply identifies editing in a french term.

Hollywood montage is a sequence of shots that have been cut into short clips that looks like the film was meant to be developed throughout a longer period of time. It is important that in a hollywood montage it is shot in this certain way.



- Lev Kuleshev
- Sergei Eisenstein

Lev Kuleshev

Lev Kuleshev was one of the first film directors to come up with a montage film by putting the two different shots together, he believed that film making with like developing a building brick by brick. He also believed that building a wall is by layering brick on top of one another and making a film was by layering many different shots together. He developed an experiment to prove this theory. He used a head shot of an old Russian actress and he then put lots of different shots over the top of this image, he then would show this to an audience where they began to develop their own meanings of what was happening. Kuleshev was awarded for his findings and then summarized with the meaning that two shots places onto one another would create a clip and the audience would make up their own minds about what was happening in this film.

Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein had realized that if you were to put two unrelated shots together it would develop a link between the two shots. He was briefly a student of Kuleshev's, but the two then parted ways after they had different ideas about montage. This film is about the strike that happened in russia and shows how the people were treated if they joined the strike. There are two shots that cut through from the strike to the cow being slaughtered, the strikers are being shown as being treated like animals and they use the cow in the pervious shot shown to demonstrate that the workers are being treated like animals. The cow getting slaughtered in this clip also demonstrates how the workers were killed by the stronger people in their society.



Soviet montage



This montage was successful as we made the film to be like a traditional soviet montage, this clip contains short scenes where something is happening between two people and then quickly cuts to something that is associated with what one of the people is feeling that are in the clip. There are some issues as some of the pictures does not necessarily match up with the way that the people in the film are reacting.

Hollywood montage

This video is a classic example of a Hollywood montage, this was a successful video as it demonstrated the different ways of editing that are involved in a montage film. This is a Hollywood montage as it displays a day long situation and cut it into a small clip, it demonstrates this as it shows these smaller clips as one film. In this video there are some things that could be improved such as the way it was edited as it could have been a bit more precise and their are some glitches as the editing when entering the classroom does not necessarily match up.

From Analogue to Digital Editing

Task 3:

The pros and cons of analogue film and editing:

Analogue Editing is cutting together of pieces of celluloid film, and these pieces of film are printed on acetate negatives. The pros of Analogue Editing are that people would use this to make longer films and would be able to play 24 frames per second. The cons of Analogue Editing are that it would take a long time to do even a 5 minute film due to the fact that you would have to cut and stick lots of pieces of film together.

'Splicing' is when you cut and stick two or more pieces of film together to create lot of film in one large strip. people would of had to use splicing to make films but then a machine was made called the Maviola that would splice pieces of film together, this was a breakthrough as it meant that films could be made longer.

'Linear Editing' is the process when people would arrange the images and sound to predetermined the ordered sequence. They do this regardless of what order the pieces of film were filmed and whether or not they were filmed by a video camera, tapeless cord or filmed in a television studio.

The pros and cons of Digital Editing:

Digital Editing is a form of electronic media when data is stored in a digital form, it is the use of computers to order and manipulate the digital data. The pros of Digital Editing are that it is fast to do and does not cost a lot of money depending on how long the person takes to film this or if there are any problems during the course of filming. The cons of Digital Editing are that if there are any problems with the filming the person would most likely go over budget due to have to pay for the film space and everyones salaries.

'Non-Linear Editing' is the method that allows you to access any frame in a digital video clip. This gives the person the freedom to access any frame, us a out-and-paste method, this is similar to the ease of cutting and pasting text in a word processor, allows the person to easily include fades, transitions and other effects that cannot be achieved with linear editing.

developing editing techniques

In Camera Editing

In camera editing is a technique that was used firstly by George Melies, who would film individual shots of his magic tricks and would film them in order at which he would be doing the trick. This technique was used a lot in the early cinema and made splicing easier.



We created this short clip by using in camera editing to make it the right length, we did this by taking simple shots and stopping the camera, then we would move the camera into another position and do another shot to continue the video. The difficult things about this was getting everybody rehearsed and making sure that the camera will go into the right positions so that you get the right shots. This was also difficult as everybody has there own things to do and trying to get them done at the same time was harder than doing them all separately.  The good thing about this video is that it was something that nobody else thought of and we used old films styles e.g. silent movies. We used this technique throughout the remainder of our short film and i think we could of improved this by editing this so that it would of been black and white and could of had music in the background. One thing that we could of also improved on would have been to avoid for people to have to watch the actors wait to start performing.

The pros of in camera editing is that it is cheap to make and produce, it is also quick to make and easy to scrip and it is better filming for shorter films. The cons of in camera editing are that you cant rewind the video camera, and that it is harder to get the right positions on the camera. Another con is also that you cannot interpret your own ideas into the video as you only get one shot so cannot change anything during the shot.