Editing Techniques

Editing Techniques 

- Continuity Editing - The sequencing of shots to imply or suggest an order of events to help tell a story by including important events that can help the audience to come to a conclusion about what events occurred without necessarily having to have seen all of them take place. 

- Accelerating Time - Production time can be condensed to show a sequence of events in a much shorter time than they would take in real life. This can be used to leave some things to the audiences imagination by cutting out irrelevant clips and shots and also shortening shots to let the audience know that they happened without having to watch the entire process.

- Expanding Time - Time can be stretched and dragged out for longer than the actual time represented in the scene. This can be used to create suspense leading up to an event. For example, time can be slowed during the build-up to an explosion to create suspense.

-  Cause, Effect and Motivation - This relates to continuity editing as this technique is used to suggest and explain why things happen. This means that the causes of events need to be shown for them to make sense to the audience. For example, we usually wouldn't see somebody pick up a phone and start a conversation without seeing or hearing it ringing in that scene. Motivation is used to show or imply to the audience why a character did something or why an event occurred, this is useful in the Crime genre as the criminals' side of the story can be shown to the audience to build character development. (This includes base motives such as money, revenge, jealousy and suspicion etc.)

- Insert Shot -  A close up shot of anything (an object or person) in the basic scene, usually in an establishing or wide shot. This is used to provide further detail about any aspect of a shot, this could be what a character is holding or wearing, a particular building in a city, item on a table, car in a traffic jam etc.

- Cutaways - Cut away from the main scene to provide additional information to the audience. An example of this may be an establishing shot after an event takes place, to give the information of where the event took place. 

- Relational Editing - Refers to the cause and effect relationships when sequences of shots are tied together and the editing of shots for the purposes of comparison or for the contrast of content.

 - Thematic Editing - a rapid sequence or montage of images to communicate feelings and ideas that relate to a genre rather than telling a story. It is used in music videos, feature films, TV commercials, and promotional productions to create a mood or feeling rather than communicate specific information. 

- Cross-Cutting  / Parallel Editing -  Parallel editing (also known as cross cutting) is the technique of alternating two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. This can be used effectively to show the environment around action scenes and expand time as we as viewers will see more than one event but they all take place at the same time.