Editing Styles

Planning Editing Styles

Editing plays a vitally important part within filmmaking and its role has grown and grown throughout the history of cinema. This started with editing just one shot back when cinema was beginning, this is nothing compared to modern hollywood style films who have about 100 to 2000 shots. This is largely down to the advances of technology, editing allows the film to flow better and one can cut out and crop film footage that either contains mistakes or could be editing to make a better fast paced impact on the audience. Editing should always compliment the film and let in achieve its full potential.

In our own thriller we will use a variety of editing techniques.
These will include:

Slow Editing: We decided to use slow editing because it builds suspense and draws the audience in because it causes the film to be more dramatic. We will use slow editing when the female character is sitting in the chair crying. This will show her as vulnerable and let the audience take in fully what is happening to her and feel empathy for her. this will also allow the scene of horror to have the most impact on the audience. This is conventional to a thriller film because it builds tension and makes the enigma of the scene stay in the audiences heads, this will make our film more of a success.

Fade: we chose to use fade at the end of our opening sequence because the end shot involved the female character sitting in the chair and the male protagonist sitting on the floor near her legs. He drags the knife over the leg and the audience can see blood on her leg. He then begins to play with the knife provoking her fear and making her scared as to what he will do with the knife next. The screen then fades to black, again this is conventional as it builds tension and shows a clear enigma. This will then make the audience want to watch on and know what will happen in the actual film. This is all conventions of any thriller film, as it builds tension and makes the film more enjoyable to watched and allows the audience to grip with the scene and be enticed by what's going on.

Jump Cut: The next editing technique that will be a key feature in our thriller will be the jump cut. This will be used when the camera is focussing on her from behind and the sadistic antagonist grabs her. At this point, the camera focusses on the male character. At this point the camera will suddenly focus on the male character. This is a very well known convention of a thriller film as it reveals a part of the enigma and build the suspense. Once the audience has seen some of the characters identity there own mind will question where and why he is doing what he's doing.