CMPWC: January 2015

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

French New Wave Editing

What is French New Wave Cinema?

French New Wave filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut pushed the limits of editing technique during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s

French New Wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960s used a carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of Hollywood films.

French New Wave editing often drew attention to itself by its lack of continuity, its self-reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they were watching a film), and by the overt use of jump cuts or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative.

Conventions of French New Wave Cinema

¨A rejection of classical montage-style filmmaking

¨Focus on the mise-en-scene

¨A conviction that the best films are a personal artisic expression and should bear the stamp of personal authoship.

¨Low budget.

¨Presented in black and white.

¨Natural lighting

¨Liberation from the tripod (hand-held shots)

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ogaycken/clips/breathless-jump-cuts.mp4/view

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Editing Contextual Study

To achieve P1, M1, D1 of Unit 2 "use appropriate techniques to extract comprehensive information from written sources" you need to use a variety of websites and books to gain information on editing.

Remember write down the website where you got the information, so we can create a reference list at the end of the document, powerpoint or video presentation.

Here are some more helpful websites

Use appropriate techniques to extract comprehensive information from written sources

The past three excellent lessons on the blog! www.cmpwc.blogspot.com

http://video101course.com/editing.html

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/02/video-the-history-of-editing-eisenstein-the-soviet-montage-explained

http://www.infoplease.com/cig/movies-flicks-film/fade-brief-history-editing.html

http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch-vsevolod-pudovkins-5-editing-techniques

http://thescriptlab.com/features/the-lists/800-top-10-best-of-film-montages

This is not a comprehensive list and you can use many more.

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Editing Contextual Study

Editing Contextual Study

Either present the information as;

Word Document
PPT
Audio/Visual Report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si7rdUlkRsc)

You need to cover the following questions

Define: What is editing?
Overview of the history of editing
Different editing styles (montage, in-camera, experimental, parallel, french new wave)
What is classic hollywood editing? Also known as invisible editing
What are the classic hollywood editing traits: 180' rule, eye-line, shot-reverse-shot
What are the different editing transitions?
Why edit - what is the purpose? how does it make meaning?
Distinction: Analyse a specific scene and discuss how the editing makes meaning.

This wikipedia article is helpful as a starting point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_editing)

According to Walter Murch, when it comes to film editing, there are six main criteria for evaluating a cut or deciding where to cut. They are (in order of importance, most important first, with notional percentage values.):

Emotion (51%) — Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment?
Story (23%) — Does the cut advance the story?
Rhythm (10%) — Does the cut occur "at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and 'right'" (Murch, 18)?
Eye-trace (7%) — Does the cut pay respect to "the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame" (Murch, 18)?
Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) — Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule?
Three-dimensional space of action (4%) — Is the cut true to the physical/spatial relationships within the diegesis?