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Now the effectiveness of this gag depends on the audience realising where Will and Claude are before they do themselves. The sequence of angles was designed to help this. From a mid-shot inside the tower in which they go through the door, the cut was to an enormous long-shot outside, showing the whole top of the Big Ben tower, with the two tiny figures of Will and Claude getting to the parapet. The next shot necessarily had to be close enough to show their reaction to what the audience already knew, thus topping off the gag.
The difficulty was this. We had to let them go through the door in the inside shot, to make clear what they were doing. Once we did this, the point at which in strict continuity we could pick them up in the outside long-shot left so few feet of that shot before we had to cut to a third shot, that the action it contained had insufficient time to register. I suggested to the editor that, without altering either of the shots on either side of it, he should make the long-shot of a length sufficient to enable it to be seen. " But that means I'll have to repeat the action," he said. " Precisely," was my reply. " You've taken them through the door in mid-shot ; nevertheless, start your cut of the long shot with the door closed and repeat all the action of opening the door and coming through." He did this and found that by this repetition he gave time for the audience to adjust their eye to the extreme change in size of shot ; and this adjustment was complete at just about the point in the long-shot where it was in exact continuity with the inside mid-shot.
These two examples throw light on the whole problem of smooth cutting. In the first passage a portion of the action is omitted ; in the second, a movement is partially duplicated. (The second device is relatively common in comedies.) Yet both passages are smooth because the continuity of ideas is forceful and clear. The conclusion we must draw from this is that mechanical smoothness is only a secondary factor in good editing. A smooth flow of ideas from shot to shot, that is to say a series of purposeful juxtapositions, is the primary requirement. There is sometimes a tendency in modern film studios for the editor to be so preoccupied with the mechanical details of presentation that much of the positive value of editing is lost in the process. This is the result of an entirely misplaced professional pride. Smooth cutting is not an end in itself; it is merely one of the means to a dramatically significant continuity.
Timing
The ability to lengthen or shorten the duration of an event in bringing it to the screen gives the director and editor a highly sensitive instrument for the control of timing. We have seen how unimportant intervals can be bridged and how certain actions can be shown on the screen happening much faster than they do in real life. But the control of timing which the film-maker gains through editing can be used for more positive purposes than the mere cutting down of unnecessary intervals. It enables him to present a series of consecutive events in such a way that each new 232