First of all, I will explain how the editing within a film can help tell a story. Several Soviet film makers, such as Lev Kuleshov and Vsevolod Pudovkin, had a view that film making should rely heavily upon editing. The Kuleshov effect, named after Lev Kuleshov, is a way in which editing is used to tell several different stories with one repetitive shot of a expressionless man and several other shots of subjects. The man stared into space, with the following shot alternating between subjects such as a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, and a woman on a chair. This film was shown to audiences who then believed that each expression on the man's face was different when looking at different subjects, even though he had the same expression in each shot. This experiment shows just how effective the editing of clips can be within the film world and how this can be used to tell a story.
Editing can also be used for the purpose of keeping a viewer engaged, keeping their interest within the film. If an event takes a long time to take place, the viewer will get bored and their attention will go astray. To keep a viewer interested, the editor can remove parts of long footage so that a scene isn't shown for a lengthy period of time. The editing process will also take out all of the faults within the film, leaving only what is needed to be seen by an audience. An example of an editing technique used to shorten a long action within a film is a jump cut. This is when, for example, a person could be walking down the road and they appear to walk from one side of the road to the other with the middle part cut out; it is as though they are jumping to the other side, although the audience know it is logical that they must have walked through the middle of the shot. This shortens the time the clip needs to be seen and keeps the audience interested.
An example of when this was first used is within a scene from the film "À Bout de Souffle". In the clip below, there is a scene from this film where a conversation within a car is being recorded. As the car drives around, the background changes several times although the conversation is continuous. This cuts down, what could have been in the real world, a very long journey into around one minute and a half. They converse all the way to the destination, so there is no waiting around; this means that the audience have something to watch and listen to for the duration of this scene, which makes sure that they do not lose interest or bored with the film.
The development of drama within a film can be created carefully by editing a sequence as it allows the viewer to view a scene in a particular way. To provoke a heightened sense of drama within a scene, the pace of editing and angle of the camera can play a big part. An example of fast pace editing to create drama would be if someone is scared of an action taking place or person in a scene, there will usually be a shot reverse shot of the character's reaction to the action taking place. These shots will last for a matter of seconds to show how fast paced and intense it is within the film world. Another technique used to increase the drama, which is shown in the scene from the film ''The Lovely Bones'' below, is the placement of the camera. When the camera is looking at the female character, it is looking down on her; this shows that she is inferior in this situation and is being looked down on. The shot is then reversed to look at the male figure talking to her, with the camera pointing upwards at him. This reflects a POV style of what the girl is looking at, she is looking up to him and it is though he is superior; he is in control and the audience, too, look up at him.
The relationship to the genre can be created in editing process using several techniques; this can be done as all genres have different conventions. The first example I will use is when a scene has fast editing, showing an action sequence. This mimics the fast pace on screen, as action films will always show a fight scene or car chase. If these scenes were shown in one continuous shot, it would give the feel as though the fight is going on for a long time and the audience will become uninterested in this same shot. An opposite technique used would be slow pace editing, instead, where it would be used within horror films; this is used to frighten the audience as it allows their mind some time to wonder what is going to happen next. This builds up suspension which is the main convention of the horror genre. An example of this is below in the film Scream, where the clips are on screen for a long duration, leaving the audience's minds to wonder what will happen; this creates suspension and leaves them frightened.
Another purposes that editing can be used for is to create motivation within a film. This is when the continuity within a film looks smooth so that one shot flows to the next. This keeps the audience motivated to watch the film as there are no 'jerky' shots which can cause the film to not be an easy watch. A good example of this would be when a conversation is taking place in a film. Instead of having a continuous shot with the back of one character's head being seen the whole time, the camera can take advantage of the 180 degree rule and use shot-reverse-shot to keep the audience interested. Walter Murch, a famous American film editor, has certain "rules" behind the cuts within a scene. He will only use a cut if, for example, the cut will affect the audience emotionally at that moment or if it will affect the location of the audience's focus. If it does, then he will cut it accordingly, giving the cut meaning and motivating the audience to engage with the film.
Finally, another way of editing for a purpose is by combining shots into sequences. This is when different shots are combined although still following a logical sequence. A man by the name of Edwin Porter, who some consider the pioneer of film editing, was brought to fame by his ability to construct a film using multiple shots; before this, most films were just one static shot, with the actions taking place directly in front of this camera. His theory was that the editing is what tells the story and plays a large role within a film, not the actors. The scene below, titled "Life of an American Fireman", is from a film by Porter. He edited these clips together in a way that shows the action on screen from two perspectives; it shows the actions taking place from both inside and outside the building.
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