Editing Techniques

Transitions

A film transition is a technique by which scenes or shots are juxtaposed. Most commonly this is through a normal cut to the next scene. Most films will also include selective use of other transitions, usually to convey a tone or mood, suggest the passage of time, or separate parts of the story. These other transitions may include dissolves, L cuts, fades (usually to black), match cuts, and wipes.

Shot Reverse Shot

used mainly in a conversation between two people.

Straight Cut

is where two shots - often with a different setting - are quickly and directly cut together. it is used to highlight different aspects in the plot of the film.

Following the action

use a series of close up shots to show sort of a mini narrative within a narrative.

Parallel editing

allows two or more simultaneous sets of action unfold within a single film sequence.

Rubicam and Young

Dr. Maslow studied both humans and monkeys and found numerous ways in which they acted similarly. Monkeys, he found, always made sure they weren’t thirsty before looking for shelter, and always ensured they had shelter before they looked for love and companionship. In this way human’s are pretty much identical. No human worried about love before they felt secure and no human sought control before they felt respected by their peers. It was from this that Dr. Maslow came up with his famous Hierarchy of Needs.

Rubicam and Young took his theory and designed a research tool to find out where people stood within it. Their system accepted that people from different countries were influenced by their different cultural backgrounds and removed the effect it had on them. They created the Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation - (4Cs) which divisive people into seven groups - depending on their core motivation. These are:

1. The explorer - their core need in life is for discovery.

2. The aspirer - their core need in life is for status.

3. The succeeder - their core need in life is for control.

4. The reformer - their core need in life is for enlightenment.

5. The mainstream - their core need in life is for security.

6. The struggler - their core need in life is for escape.

7. The resigned - their core need in life is for survival.

McQuail and Katz

McQuail and Katz came up with the theory of Uses and Gratification this explains how everybody uses media for different purposes and at different intervals of the day. For example you may watch an information programme on TV like the news in the morning and switch to an entertainment programme later on it the day. This shows that the individual has power over choosing media texts suiting to their needs and attempting to satisfy them.

The psychological basis for this is the hierarchy identified by Maslow.

Main areas identified:

1. A need for information, geographic and the social world for an individual would by satisfied by watching a programme like the news or a TV drama.

2. A need for identity, the individual would watch a film or a celebrity programme to satisfy this because of the use of characters and personalities featured, we are able to define our sense of self and social behaviour.

3. A need for social interactions and relationships, the individual would watch a soap opera and perhaps a sitcom.

4. A need for diversion by using media for play and entertainment can be satified by watching a game show and quiz programme.

Media and Audience Theories

The Active Audience theory

This theory shows there is a decoding process going on amongst the audience, not used for gratification purposes. Morley’s view of dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings of texts recognises the analysis of signs - the visual and ones which shape the modern media.

The model at its simplest:

The audience either accept or agree with the encoded meanings. We all interpret signs in different ways.

The mode of address

This theory speaks to us in a style that encourages us to identify with the text.

For instance: Friends, this programme is intended for a young audience due to a variety of factors, one of these is the music. It is fast and upbeat giving a sense of fun and excitement.

The Ethnographic model

This theory is about the researcher entering into a culture of a different group where a use of questions and interviews allows the researcher understand the media engagement of the group. It reveals the focus of domestic context, the technologies and the culture competence.

In many areas media is structured around a domestic environment in our day to day lives. We tend to find that programmes such as soaps are targeted at women whereas factual programmes are aimed towards men.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School was a group of people who developed concerns about power in modern mass media (propaganda). They were thought to be left - winged Jews and neo-marxist, under threat in pre-war Nazi Germany. The group moved to America later on and began to refine their model on media and came up with the Hypodermic Needle / Effects Theory.

This theory explains that ideas are forced in your head by the media, almost as if you are injected by what they want you to think. Nazi propaganda is a vey good example of this. Their media pretty much poisoned the minds of innocent German civilians into thinking that all Jews were evil. Nazi propaganda influenced the public to think this.

Other examples of how we can be influenced by the media are music, films, T.V and games. For instance the television show Jackass, where the people carry out stunts. Admittedly it is funny to watch but the stunts can be very dangerous.

However the Jamie Bulger Case was said to be blamed on a horror film which two boys watched before killing poor Jamie. Could this be due to the film being mis-interpreted or because of a forgotten memory which arose from a subjective image, placing the wrong idea into their heads.

Also in China we understand that they sensor some of its media coverage so as to maintain their image to the public in their country. We discovered this by typing in ‘China’ into Google images where it came up with photos of tanks and war - showing them in a negative light. Whereas if you typed ‘China’ into Google images in China you would find photos of people all looking happy - showing them in a positive light.

But is it right to sensor parts of media?

The problem with this is that not everything influences us and we are all individuals, we don’t all react the same to things. For example, I’m scared of spiders but my boyfriend isn’t.

Genre as a marketing tool - Horror

Halloween film poster

We are automatically drawn in to the bright orange pumpkin in the centre of the poster which almost seems to be glowing in the dark starry sky. The title 'Haloween' fits in with the pumpkin as you always associate the two together. We all know that halloween is the one day of the year that we all get to dress up in the most scariest of outfits and go around knocking at random people's doors asking for sweets this makes us wonder what this film could be about. However we know whatever is going to happen it's all going to end in blood shed as we can see the pumpkin holding a sharp knife. The pumpkin almost seems personified as it has a pair of evil looking eyes, sharp teeth and also as I have already mentioned it has a hand. The colour scheme is simple and effective, it makes use of black, white and orange.
'Trick or Treat'

Ideology

Ideology is a mixture of ideas that sum up a person’s actions, goals and ideas of life. For a celebrity the media can be a great way to create an ideology.

Britney Spears has had both positive and negative ideologies. Some positives focus on her talent – her passion for singing and dancing – of which she has huge fans from all over the world. She is a very pretty woman who takes care and pride in her appearance. Many see her as a sexual object. She is often seen with a smile on her face and often sets out to achieve her own goals. However a few years back she received very negative press. She went off the rails when her and her husband split up. She was often seen out with her friends clubbing, smoking and god knows doing what else. She was deemed a bad parent and had her children taken away from her. The press had a field trip with similar stories, some of them true and others not. Over this time she began to gain weight, she had stopped singing and dancing and seemed as if she had totally given up on her appearance. We knew things had taken a turn for the worse when she shaved her head completely bald. Was this was a desperate cry for help made public by the media? Or was this just a big publicity stunt to gain even more attention? I guess we will never truly know what was going through her head at that moment but one thing is for sure and that’s that she is well on the road to recovery. Since then she hasn’t been in the press as much, yet has released a new album, done a few concerts and is starting to look like her old self again. She has had a bumpy ride with the media yet I still think that she is a good role model.

Todorov

Todorov’s Narrative stages

Todorov is a Bulgarian philosopher, he believes there are five key stages to any narrative film. These include:

1. Equilibrium - here the setting is established and key characters are introduced, this is when the story line is set up.

2. Disruption - the oppositional characters appear and the story is taken in a particular direction.

3. Recognition of disruption - this is the longest section of all the stages, consisting of both the events and the characters.

4. Fixing the disruption - here we feel a lot of tension and the problem we saw at section two has been fixed.

5. Reinstatement of equilibrium - all the problems are resolved and a new balance is created.

Barthes

Barthes semiotics

Barthes argued that verbal language is just one way of communicating whereas hairstyle, clothing, body language, make up, etc can also have the same effect.

Models for understanding language are constructed by people to produce meanings within a culture. We have the…

Signifier - the physical form of the sign.

Signified - the concept or idea that the signifier produces e.g. red rose means love.

Referent - the real thing. Not the signal or the idea, but the real individual thing.

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a professor of film and media studies. She is a feminist would came up with the Male Gaze theory. She believed all women are seen as eye candy in films. She came up with identification and an objectification of how women are portrayed.

Identification is all about how with the male lead, his actions become surrogate for our own part in the narrative and we psychologically align ourselves with his point of view he is the ideal ego.

Objectification is to do with the male’s romantic interest. The male lead desires the female form and because we are aligned with his point of view, the audience too desire the female lead also.

As well as this women are also split into two categories; the Madonna and the Whore. The Madonna character is seen as the woman with class, who is well respected and is knowledgeable. She would usually wear clothes which would cover her up and not seen so much as sexually attainable in the male’s eye. However the Whore character is the opposite, she is usually pretty and we see her use her looks to get what she wants. She is often shown wearing revealing clothes and is the one who is sexually attainable for the men.

But does her theory still work in more modern times? Think about Lara Croft for example. Using Mulvey’s theory can you tell whether she is the Madonna or Whore of the film? Is Mulvey’s theory being challenged?

Freud and Lacan

Freud and Lacan

These two came up with the idea of Scophilla and Voyeurism. Scophilla is about how we construct our identities by looking at our own bodies and each others bodies. From children we derive pleasure from looking at other people’s bodies. Voyeurism is about how we secretly receive pleasure from looking at people without them knowing, this can be described with cinema and pictures. We are looking at them yet they don’t realise we are. The first time we see ourselves, for example in a mirror, is the first time we understand who and what we are.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp

Propp was a Russian structuralist scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest narrative elements. He was able to identify many narrative structures by analysing different types of characters and their actions in a story. Propp came to the conclusion that all tales display eight main characters. These are:

1. The villain (struggles against the hero)

2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)

3. The helper (helps the hero in the quest sometimes magical)

4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)

5. Her father

6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)

7. The hero or victim (reacts to the donor, weds the princess)

8. False hero (takes credit for the hero’s actions/ tries to marry the princess)