Editing in Cinema

Editing is often seen as an alternative to mise-en-scene and camera work. Editing is a process that involves selecting, adding or as a whole adjusting things from a document. It is now possible to have a hero come closer to the camera rather than cutting to a close-up of the hero’s face. There are film theorists who state that editing ruptures the concrete reality in a movie. Film theorist Andre Bazin claim that concrete reality is better respected by cinematography and mise-en-scene techniques. Film editing is a two phase technique where the first phase includes selecting and arranging the available film into the final visual form. Second phase includes mixing of the sounds tracks into the master sound track and then matching the soundtrack with the visual images. Editor helps the director by shaping many hours of raw film into a few hours of finished movie. The primary responsibility of an auditor is to create spatial relationships between shots. At the same time he also has to create a temporal relation between shots in the form of flashback, flash-forward and ellipsis. The editor must also be able to create a condensed series of images that shows us a series of event. One of the major approaches to editing is called continuity where an editor’s arrangement of a series of shots can create or disrupt continuity. Continuity in editing makes the shot appear naturalistic where all of the elements are connected, the graphic, spatial, and temporal relationships maintained from shot to shot. While creating shots, continuity is an important aspect to analyze. There are different types of shots that cab overall affect the editing process of the movie. Master shot orients the viewer, sets the scene that is shot from different angles which eventually establishes the scene. Reverse angle shots are permitted as long as everything is kept continuous. Directors began framing actors tightly because of the fact that most films will ultimately be seen on video, and because on...