Offline Editing | Film Editing Dimension


In film editing, separate shots are stitched together to tell a story. Those combined shots create harmonious relations that can build the audience's understanding of the story. The relation between those shots can be categorized as graphical, rhythmical, spatial, and temporal.

  •  Graphical relation

The graphical relationship between visual elements in consecutive shots based on the similarity or contrast of form, composition, shot type, color, movement, or lighting.

To create a graphical relation, there are some methods or tools that can be used. One of them is match cut, which can be utilized to show time change or contrast. (eg. morning – night, crowded – quiet). It can also unite two shots with the same composition. (eg. shots with one point perspective). Putting together two contrasting shots with a match cut can also create juxtaposition, which is the placement of two or more things side by side, often to compare or contrast or to create an interesting effect. (eg. showing two people who are looking for each other but will never meet, as if a metaphor for night and day, which will always be following each other but also never meet).

1.1 Graphical Relation in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Source: eazel.net

  • Rhythmical relation

The rhythmical relationship between consecutive shots based on the tempo of the character and camera movements, music or sound, dialogue, and the pattern of each shot’s duration.

Every moving object on screen has a tempo or rhythm. So rhythmical relation pays attention to the rhythm that exists from combined shot. This concept is not limited to one shot, but rather to the whole sequence, or even the whole film. For example, the act 1 and 2 is slow paced but the act 3 is given a faster rhythm or a bluish tone for the first half of the film and a warmish tone for the second half.

Kinetic Editing: editing that mostly relies on the shot’s duration.

  • Spatial relation

The spatial relationship between consecutive shots to shape the audience's perception of the spatial dimension in which the scene or event occurs.

Space itself is where the scene or event takes place. So a film space can therefore be constructed or manipulated in various ways so that the audience has a complete perception of the space. For example, a filmmaker can combine different real-life space, manipulated in editing to become one single film space, unlike the real-life space where the two has different concept.

There are several ways to construct spatial relationships between shots so that the audience can comprehend the overall space of the film. Some of them are categorized into three: inductive, deductive, and combination of both.

  1. Inductive: close up-close up-wide
  2. Deductive: wide-close up-close up
  3. Combination: wide-close up-wide and vice versa

Not only can an editor combine shots from two separate real-life space, but they can also mix fiction and documentary on a sequence. (eg. putting together staged shot + news reel + staged shot into one single film).


2.1 The use of staged and documentary shot in The Life of an American Fireman (1903)
Source: pinterest.com

  • Temporal relation

The temporal relationship between consecutive shots that plays on plot linearity, manipulates duration, and also the scene’s frequency.

Plot order:

  1. Linear: the plot is in order.
  2. Flashback (parallel editing/cross-cutting): shot that happened in the past according to the plot is put afterwards.
  3. Fast-forward (parallel editing/cross-cutting): shot that happens in the future according to the plot is put beforehand.

Elyptical Editing: editing principle aimed at manipulating the screen time to appear shorter or longer than the story-time, by using:

  1. Transition (to shorten screen-time or show time changing): an effect that is used to transition a shot into another shot.

    • Wipe
    • Dissolve

  1. Overlapping editing (to elongate screen-time): repeating a shot or an action to give emphasis.
  2. Empty frame (to elongate screen-time): letting the screen empty for a few moments before cutting to another shot.
  3. Cut-in (to shorten screen-time): a shot that is used to connect the previous element.
  4. Cut away (to shorten screen time): a shot that is used to outwit time (eg. putting in a cutaway shot in the middle of a shot of someone running from the road to the train track, thus making the screen-time shorter than the story-time). It can also be used to avoid a jump cut.

Though it sounds similar, there's a difference between cutaways and cut-ins. Simply put, cut-ins is a shot that cuts into the previous shot and gives an emphasis on a certain element. While cutaways is a shot that cuts away from the previous shot and gives the audience a look to another part of the film space.

3.1 Empty frame used in Dunkirk (2017)
Source: youtube.com

Kuleshov Effect

A Russian filmmaker, Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov come up with a theory about the effect of a montage (compilation of shots that can provoke a certain theme or meaning).

4.1 The Kuleshov Effect
Source: studiobinder.com

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