Film editing

About: Film editing is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 109 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1075 citations. The topic is also known as: film cutting & editing.

In the blink of an eye : a perspective on film editing

Abstract: In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated film editor Walter Murch's vivid, multifaceted, thought -- provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question -- Why do cuts work? -- Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers his unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more. In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing (which accounts for a third of the book's pages) in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.

The Technique of Film Editing

Abstract: Based on the skills and knowledge of ten film makers called together by the British Film Academy, this book centres its arguments on practical examples - excerpts from famous films analyzed by, or with the help of, the makers. A new section has been added to take account of recent developments.

The attentional theory of cinematic continuity

Abstract: The intention of most film editing is to create the impression of continuity by editing together discontinuous viewpoints. The continuity editing rules are well established yet there exists an incomplete understanding of their cognitive foundations. This article presents the Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (AToCC), which identifies the critical role visual attention plays in the perception of continuity across cuts and demonstrates how perceptual expectations can be matched across cuts without the need for a coherent representation of the depicted space. The theory explains several key elements of the continuity editing style including match-action, matchedexit/entrances, shot/reverse-shot, the 180° rule, and point-of-view editing. AToCC formalizes insights about viewer cognition that have been latent in the filmmaking community for nearly a century and demonstrates how much vision science in general can learn from film.

"Here's looking at you, kid": Detecting people looking at each other in videos

Abstract: If you read any book on film editing or listen to a director’s commentary on a DVD, then what emerges again and again is the importance of eyelines. Standard cinematography practice is to first establish which characters are looking at each other using a medium or wide shot, and then edit subsequent close-up shots so that the eyelines match the point of view of the characters. This is the basis of the well known 180o rule in editing.

Group Artistic Creativity: Creative Clusters and Cinematic Success in Feature Films1

Abstract: Filmmaking represents a distinctive form of group creativity in which many individuals contribute to a single creative product. This exploratory investigation examines these contributions in 1,327 English-language, narrative feature films. Besides control variables, the measures included 2 criteria of impact (Best Picture honors, movie guide ratings) and 16 assessments of outstanding cinematic contributions (direction, male and female lead, male and female supporting, screenplay, art direction, costume design, makeup, cinematography, film editing, score, song, visual effects, sound effects editing, sound). A factor analysis showed that the contributions formed 4 creative clusters: dramatic, visual, technical, and musical. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that a film's impact was a positive additive function of the dramatic and visual clusters, with the dramatic having the primary role.