Speaker 1: Every artist should hold the desire to transgress his or her medium. And do so by advancing the methods of artistic creation that personify the form. This in turn can pave a path for future artists to enable even further advancement. The reinforcement of this philosophy is what makes art eternal. All art forms find their identity through characterizing techniques that make them self-contained systems which can't be replicated. And if there were one technique that distinguishes cinema, it's the craft of editing.

Speaker 2: Editing is why people like movies, because in the end, wouldn't we like to edit our own lives?

Speaker 1: Rather than the typical adage which is that editing is the cutting up a film, many editors define it as the assembly of film. But beyond the basic function of putting a film together, the craftsmanship of editing can be dealt with such subtlety that it can be the foundation of a film's pace, its atmosphere, it can even be the enriching ingredient to strengthen all the film's themes, and you may not even notice. The best editing is often one that buries details of a movie into our subconscious, only for them to be realized later. Because the purpose behind a cut is not just to keep the plot moving, it's about control. The decision of what we get to look at lies on the editor, and they in turn hold total manipulation over our emotions. Although literature too has the ability to divert perspectives, cinema is able to create tangible visual context through its absolute control of space and time. Editing turns the act of moviemaking into the art of cinema.

Speaker 3: Editing is manipulation. We're manipulating reality as the audience sees it, because you want the audience to respond in a certain way. Whether it's a laugh, or a sigh, or a fright, everything's manipulated. And some people say, well let's direct him, he's manipulating the audience. Well, that's so naive, because that's all we do is manipulate.

Speaker 1: At cinema's genesis, the notion of editing was incomprehensible. Cutting didn't exist because anything exceeding one shot wasn't necessary. Filmmakers of the era filmed nothing more than what interested them at the time, and the earliest cinema was a mere animated photograph of life. The Lumiere cinematograph was deemed an invention without a future. However, through a combination of both intuition and good fortune, artists such as Georges Melies and George Albert Smith discovered that film stock could be ran through a camera and stopped to be resumed at a different location. This camera trickery was able to progress stories through a variety of spaces, and the fundamental basis for all editing that followed was born. The cut. Filmmakers learned that through cutting, artists gained the ability to manipulate the fictional space a film took place in. Audiences quickly took to this almost abstract shift in perspective and were able to clearly infer the information that couldn't be seen. A realization then occurred in artists such as Edwin Porter, who found that if editing was able to control the space of an image, perhaps it could control time also. Prior to this discovery, the assumption was that audiences needed to be shown every piece of information. In this shot from the life of an American fireman, we see that the actions play out unnecessarily long. Even here we see a fireman exiting through a window and then cut to him re-exiting the same window from outside. But editing soon became the tool of how to compress time in singular scenes. In their later films, these very same artists would cut to a new location in the middle of an act. The notion of cutting on action had already become naturally sewn into the fabric of film, and it was the arrival of DW Griffith that would allow the full capabilities of continuity editing to become established. Both time and space could be controlled simultaneously through the development of intercutting, a device that could have numerous plots being told parallel to one another. Establishing shots expanded the geography of scenes, reaction shots became integral pieces to a sequence, and even the emotion of a shot could be punctuated by cutting in to a closer angle. Through the development of continuity editing, the possibility for how stories could be told through more visual means had been furthered. It wasn't long before Soviet cinema took the ideas put forth by Griffith and his contemporaries to generate a new theoretical concept towards editing. Montage. Opposing the emergent method of continuity editing that refined space and time, the Soviets eschewed the notion to develop a new language that communicated through the editing itself. The way in which scenes were now assembled was done so for the purpose of displaying a shot within the context of another. Intellectual montage was the theory that a shot only gave its context relative to what preceded it and what followed it. New subliminal meanings were created through the juxtaposition and comparison of a scene's imagery. Cinema could now demonstrate the rising of a lion matching the horror of the people, or the comparison of two symbols of power. Time and space took a backseat as underlying ideas became the key message of the edit. Whereas continuity editing popularized the invisible cut, ways that films could play out without the audience noticing the editing, intellectual montage made cutting salient. Editing became a lot like music. A misplaced phrase, an out-of-sequence shot, and the entire symphony falls apart. As we mentioned, every medium requires one technique that must be built upon to transgress the form further, while editing was cinema's technique. And within 30 years from the birth of film, every editing method that is used today had been established. So with this framework now set, what can editors do with it? Ultimately there are three key tasks an editor must fulfill when arranging a scene. Which shot do you use, where do you begin it, and where do you end it?

Speaker 4: In the end there will be probably 5,000 shots in the film and all of them have to be ultimately be the right shot in the right place for the right length of time.

Speaker 1: So how do these decisions build the bridge from film being a visual abstraction to a comprehensive language? First, editing should be approached knowing that any shot by itself can evoke ideas. These can be through either actions or tones. For instance, one shot may suggest a subject's intrigue, and another may represent a peculiar mindset. But finding the precise rhythm to know when these shots should end can enhance that emotion. If we hold each shot as long as it can possibly go, it allows more time to communicate its ideas to the audience. Shots have atmospheres in and of themselves and should be given time to explore them. But as soon as we sense the moment that these feelings need to change, then we cut. Translating emotion takes time and not every shot needs to be lengthy in order to convey its meaning, but cutting too soon may not accurately portray the feelings inside of the image. Think about what message needs to be conveyed in the shot and how long you think it would take to convey that message. A shot should be as long as it needs to be to fully realise its meaning and cut once the idea within the shot has been recognised. But which shot do you cut to? If we accept the logic that by themselves a shot carries meaning, then when we cut away, we're signifying that that meaning has somewhat changed. If a shot represents an idea, then cuts create sequences of ideas, thus making one concept new in the context of another. The simplest example of this is the cut to a reaction shot,

Speaker 5: which will either emphasise the mood of the scene, or depending on the reaction, juxtapose it.

Speaker 1: Editors cut one piece at a time, but in order to have the editing complement the story being told, the shot choice should be somewhat reflective of the character's thought process. A simple insert or a cutaway can be a display of information that's important to the character, and thus a greater glimpse into the way they see the world. Or you can use a cutaway to literally get into the mind of the character. Because when you see scenes cutting with basic shot-reverse-shot structure, do you really feel as though you're being taught anything about these characters through the edits?

Speaker 3: Alternatively, in this sequence from For A Few Dollars More,

Speaker 1: we're shown two emotional responses through the shot choice. A character looks at a wanted poster, and his POV shot is the bounty because he wants the reward, whereas the other character's POV are the man's eyes because he wants revenge. So if a group of subjects are interacting at any one time, how should you cut it? Exactly the same. Ensure that the cuts create new emotional information. Do you caught on a character speaking to focus on another's opposition to the situation? Or do you linger on somebody's reaction to show their own deterioration in the

Speaker 5: surrounding madness? It's a delicate process.

Speaker 1: We cut during scenes so that they're visually interesting and don't become stale, but there should be motivation behind every cut, to make every shot a subtle insinuation to the audience about what information needs to be considered, offering suggestions about

Speaker 6: setting or maybe about a character. Even though editing is thought to be a

Speaker 1: microscopic process, editors also have to envision the grander picture. The job is to manage the intricacies of single scenes as well as the majesty of the entire piece, to weave a thread from beginning to end that keeps a movie under control. Think of editing as planting seeds early so that they bloom later on. For instance, a discussion between two characters earlier in a film may be edited to appear subtly more intense in a later scene due to a growing animosity. Any changes made early on will cause shockwaves that reverberate later in the film. This can be a gradual process, such as the shot choice instilling a sense of claustrophobia as the movie progresses and tension between the subjects intensifies. An editor needs to find the best arrangement of all the movie's ideas on both a small and large scale. Editing is almost like a balancing act. In its greater proportions, it's to find a method of smooth transition from one sequence to the next. And if film is a vocabulary, then edits are connectives. Film is storytelling, but instead of using words, you supplement them with imagery. And the jump from one image to the next instigates the point of change. But what effect is this point having? Think of what transition between two ideas you want to make and the connective of which you would use for this. From here, you will know when to cut and what to cut to. For example, the musician was disrupting the class. Until... Michael Corleone baptises his child. Meanwhile... Commissioner Gordon shows defeat and anger. Because... Edits are manipulations of time and space, and we have to understand that when we use these manifestations, we're creating an intrusion into the universe of the film. We're altering its very nature, so we'd better have a good reason for doing so. To think of an edit as a connective can show us how we transition from one idea to the next. It can show us cause and effect, a reinforcement, or an opposition. All shots have a rhythm of their own, but once you find the meaning of a shot and how you then want to alter this meaning, discovering these rhythms will become all the more clearer. So if we know when and why we cut, can we add depth in how we cut? The stylistic manner of a cut can imbue added depth to a film's tone because of the psychological suggestions it offers to the way we transition. For instance, we can cut from one scene to another with an establishing shot, but this transition doesn't emotionally affect us. Yet what if the intention was for the transition itself to have a lasting impact on the viewer? Smash cuts are the most abrasive of edits and are used typically as a technique to startle us, to gain an instantaneous response. However, the way I see them is that they're implemented to show the distinction between two very polarising worlds. They're most often depicted in dreams, but it leaves the impression that we see two planes of existence that couldn't contrast each other any further. The suggestion being that we've just transitioned to a realm far more uncertain than the one we were just in.

Speaker 7: I'm telling you, if someone could bottle this air, they'd make a million dollars.

Speaker 1: Or perhaps just as interesting, are the moments wherein we focus less on the world we're now in and more on the one we suddenly left, as it may not be all for the better. That uncertain feeling that there was something we left behind and there's no turning back. The type of cut that an editor chooses creates emotional responses as they dictate how we transition. For instance, L and J cuts allow for the smoothest transition from one scene to the next. The sound of one shot overlaps either the beginning or the end of another. This way, not every edit is a hard cut, coming across as abrupt. However, from a storytelling perspective, this can demonstrate a merging of two worlds,

Speaker 6: how one life invades the other, personal and professional.

Speaker 1: Or family and social. The majority of cutting is thought of as pragmatic, not to make the editing ostentatious.

Speaker 8: And arguably the most pragmatic transitional device is the match cut,

Speaker 1: to use the action of one shot to cut to another, often making the transition a bit more difficult than it should have been. In this case, it's the transition from one shot to the next that's the most important. It's the transition from one shot to the next that's the most important. To use the action of one shot to cut to another, often making the transition almost invisible. However, on top of this being impressive stylistically, it also has the ability to show a warped mentality of the character, due to the often elliptical fusion of the shots. One perhaps hints at an unfathomably large obsession, as the transition from one location to another occurred in a single movement, suggesting a consuming solitary goal on the character's mind. The unfeasibility about the cut seems to dictate unease. Similarly, it can show that subjects' thoughts are transfixed elsewhere, as every action in this world reminds them of another. But if you don't want to cut, you don't have to. The dissolve is something far more ethereal than a cut, and has a much more nebulous feel in its transition. The boldness of a cut can mistakenly lead to a separation of two shots, instead of bringing them together. But from my perspective, the dissolve seems to show a continuation of emotion from the previous shot, as they literally merge into one another. It's as though the two shots are one in the same. Although interestingly, when we use the dissolve to move to a completely different scene, it's as though its almost distancing goes from the idea of the previous one. Its transient nature is akin to taking a breath and letting all those emotions we felt sink in, as we aren't to see them again. This would explain why we so often fade out. We've reached the end of our journey, and the visual indicator is that all those emotions are now behind us. The rhythm of editing is more in tune with the structure of poetry. It develops the visual equivalent of hanging words, line breaks, and so on. An editor is like a conductor, that waits for the perfect time to deliver a movie's emotion. Because only when a film is edited, does it truly become a film. It's the process wherein a movie's real purpose can be discovered. Sometimes the choice of cutting should be spontaneous, not based on rationality. But regardless of the reasoning, the whole point of editing is to assemble a film to gain the most out of it emotionally. Even in films with little to zero edits, there's still a conscious editing choice on every single frame. Every film has it. Not only is editing about where we cut, it's about where we didn't cut. It's about letting a shot give us everything it's got, and leaving as soon as we have the potential to be given something else. Through editing, can a film's ideas be brought into reality. When it's done right, it can give a film life. And when it's done really right, you probably didn't even notice.