The technique of film editing (1958)

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timing is respected by the editor. Certain passages where the action is to be told primarily in pictures may sometimes be covered by the director from a large number of angles with a view to creating a special artificial rhythm in the cutting room. In Howard Hawks' Red River, for instance, there is an early passage in which a group of men are just about to start on a long trek across thousands of miles of territory to take their cattle to market. The scene is at dawn and we see — in a long, very slow panning shot — the huge herds of cattle restlessly waiting in their enclosures. The atmosphere is calm and expectant. Then the leader of the expedition gives the word that it is time to set off. The news is passed on and suddenly a large close-up of one of the cow-hands comes on to the screen : his horse rears and the man's face moves across the screen as he shouts " Yippee ! " About a dozen similar shots of the other men follow in rapid succession. After this we cut to another long shot, taken from behind the now advancing horde of cattle, as they slowly start off on their weary trek. The music-track comes in with a traditional theme and the journey has begun. It is difficult to describe in words the precise effect of this passage, for it depends so closely on the timing. The rapidly following series of close-ups acts visually as a sort of clarion call into action : it forms a kind of symphonic opening to the long trek. This is achieved through breaking up the slow monotonous rhythm of the long shots with the dozen or so close-ups. The emotional overtones produced are certainly not inherent in the unedited material : they are produced by the entirely artificial rhythmic pattern which the editor has created. Selection of shots If one were trying to formulate a comprehensive theory of editing, one might proceed along the following lines. One might take a simple dramatic situation and list the various possible ways of selecting the most fitting images to express it. Any such theoretical analysis would need to take into account the part played in the sequence by the acting, the lighting, the dialogue, the sets, the sound and the music. An analysis of the editing problems alone, would be of little value, because a given passage acted by two different players, lit by two different cameramen, or using slightly different lines of dialogue, might have to be differently cut in each case. Thus a consideration of the problems of selection would involve a detailed analysis of the respective functions of all the other creative elements of film production. It is for this reason that we have made 248