PRACTICAL DV FILMMAKING

Practical DV FilmMaking

• Overview
• Inside video
• Films and how they work
• Pre-production
• Production tools
• Production aesthetics
• Post-production tools
• Post-production aesthetics
• Careers and distribution
• Mapping the industry
• Glossary of film and video terms

Post-production aesthetics

Editing aesthetics: editing for genre

In the style of editing we are going to take a look at here, it will seem like there are more rules, more restrictions and less room for manoeuvre than in any other kind of editing. But stay with it. It is also the kind of editing that requires more subtle skills and because of its challenges leaves you a better filmmaker than before. In what we can call 'genre editing', we are going to leave no trace at all of our movements. Every trick, device and sleight of hand must quickly be hidden so that the audience have no indication at all of the craft you are practising.

What is genre editing?

This kind of editing is more often called 'continuity editing', and refers to the kind where its sole aim is to get the story (we don't see this style in non-narrative or abstract movies) moving along and get the audience completely immersed in the plot and characters. Hollywood movies have carefully developed this style over the years as the surest way to suspend disbelief in an escape-seeking audience. It draws no attention at all to the fact that you are just watching a movie. It highlights nothing about the

Figure 8.1 In this still from The Dark Hunter (2002) by Jonnie Oddball, the close angle requires a faster pace of editing.

mechanics of movie-making. Most of all, it provides the most seamless way for the world which the movie created in its first act to stay real to the viewer. As you can tell by now, it places the viewer before the director in terms of importance; directors' need to make a personal mark and reveal their hand as author is not as important as the viewers' need to get involved and to identify with the world they see on the screen. Genre editing makes you feel like it's really happening.

Realism

Like much in the craft of filmmaking, realism and naturalness are achieved through completely unreal and unnatural means. In shooting, a natural effect of sunlight streaming in through a window is only achieved through huge extra lamps. Similarly, in editing the realistic effect of someone getting in a car and driving to a destination is achieved through a very unrealistic squashing of time and space through cunning editing. Going even further, filmmakers who decide they want a very real look to their movie and dispense with editing rules and tricks quickly find that their movie looks anything but realistic