Editing Techniques
There are many editing techniques in movies I will be analysing a few, for my first piece of editing analysis I would like to talk about the montage scene in Brian De Palma's 1983 crime film Scarface.
In this scene we see Tony Montana the protagonist living a high life there are many continuity editing pieces in this clip one being close to the beginning of the clip where Tony and his associates are taking millions of dollars to the bank we see the van pull up and just before the characters get out the van the editing shifts from the side of the van to the front see we can see the bags being carried into the bank. There is another small continuity shot I like where Tony walks from a business he's just bought and he walks into the camera and for a brief second the camera goes dark and then it's another shot of Tony now walking away from the camera. The montage in the scene is a good reason to tell us how earlier in the film Tony was a nobody but now we see him grow to a millionaire and it shows us how he spends his money. The techniques used in this piece are a lot of small cuts showing us different things this is showing us that now Tony in rich he is a busy man as in the montage it shows us him doing lots of different things. The purpose of a montage in film is to show us the viewer lots of different things happening in a small period of time so that we don't lose interest if the things being shown are long as they are sorted in small little snappy shots and cuts to show us what's happening.
Ratatouille
In this specific scene the main editing techniques is a flashback in the scene these are used in editing typically to tell us about a characters past experiences or a something that important that has happened to the character to make them what they are in film weather this be good or bad. In Ratatouille the continuity can be where Anton Ego the food critic drops his pen and the shot then changes to the pen hitting the floor this shot shows the suspense that the character is in as the way the pen falls and the way the camera makes the pen the main focus point by blurring the background slightly. We know that this is a flashback because as the way it zooms into the characters face and shows us a part of his childhood the purpose of this is to get us to feel for the character and reassure us that he wasn't always an off-putting person and he was once friendly like most people. The technique of a flashback is to interrupt the current scene by making something that happened in the past the main focus point and to tell a backstory.
The Godfather Part 1 (Parallel Editing)
In this scene from the Godfather Part 1 we see a lot of use of parallel editing this is a technique were 2 or more scenes are happening at the same time however they are usually in different locations. The purpose of this specific type of editing is to tell the audience things that are happening either in different places or to different people however it's happening during a certain scene like my example in the Godfather where Michael Corleone has just become the boss in his crime family and he is making sure that there is no loose ends by assassinating the competition. The technique produce a chilling effect as we now know Michael is unstoppable they achieved this by shooting different scenes then placing them together making them happen at the same time by having the audio from the church and Michael speaking to the priest in the background while the murders are happening to solidify the fact that they are happening the same moment as the church scene. The impact and effect of this techniques makes this scene spine chilling as it shows how power can effect a humans mind and how he will not let anything disrupt his family. The way this technique is used in a crime film also creates tension as we know that the violence is something that is associated with in that genre.
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