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Theories of Film Editing

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lightbulbAbout this topic
Theories of film editing encompass the principles and methodologies that govern the arrangement and manipulation of film footage to create narrative coherence, emotional impact, and visual rhythm. This field examines the aesthetic, psychological, and technical aspects of editing, exploring how cuts, transitions, and pacing influence audience perception and storytelling.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Theories of film editing encompass the principles and methodologies that govern the arrangement and manipulation of film footage to create narrative coherence, emotional impact, and visual rhythm. This field examines the aesthetic, psychological, and technical aspects of editing, exploring how cuts, transitions, and pacing influence audience perception and storytelling.

Key research themes

1. How do physiological and perceptual mechanisms inform the cognitive impact of film editing styles?

This research theme investigates the link between viewers' physiological responses—specifically eyeblink rate—and different cinematic editing styles, emphasizing how editing influences visual perception and attention mechanisms. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for charting how editing rhythm and style affect audience engagement and cognitive processing during film viewing.

Key finding: This study empirically demonstrates that the MTV/post-classical editing style significantly suppresses spontaneous eyeblink rates compared to traditional Hollywood and one-shot editing styles, indicating heightened visual... Read more
Key finding: The paper identifies that editing decisions extend beyond maintaining spatiotemporal continuity to include rhythmically structured tension and release cycles that affect viewer cognition and emotion. By analyzing editors'... Read more
Key finding: Walter Murch articulates that the human eyeblink acts as a natural indicator for optimal editing junctures, where cuts align with viewers’ moments of visual information loss to minimize disruption. This insight establishes a... Read more

2. What historical and gendered perspectives reshape our understanding of film editing's creative authorship?

This theme explores the historiographical and socio-cultural dimensions of film editing, focusing on the often-overlooked creative contributions of women editors and the necessity to reframe authorship and agency in editing. It challenges traditional narratives of editing innovation, critiques gender biases in film historiography, and re-evaluates influential editing effects attributing them to collective practices rather than individual male auteurs.

Key finding: This research provocatively reclaims women editors’ creative agency by challenging the narrowly attributed 'Kuleshov Effect' and advocating for renaming it 'the Editor’s Effect' to acknowledge collective editing... Read more
Key finding: This editorial synthesizes evidence that women’s editing work has historically been marginalized as merely technical, asserting that editing inherently involves expert cognitive judgment and creative expertise. Through... Read more
Key finding: The interview with veteran editor Roberto Perpignani substantiates editing as a deeply collaborative and co-creative process. Perpignani emphasizes the role of rhythmic structuring, cadences, and director-editor partnership... Read more

3. How have editing techniques evolved through theory and practice to reconceptualize montage and narrative form?

This research area addresses conceptual frameworks and practical methodologies that have redefined montage and editing's role in film and digital media. It covers theoretical clarifications of editing types, technological transitions, and computational approaches to editing that affect narrative possibilities, pacing, and viewer perception—extending to contemporary media environments where traditional editing conventions are challenged and new editorial paradigms emerge.

Key finding: Through critical analysis of Christian Metz's Grand Syntagmatique, the paper clarifies distinctions between editing forms such as crosscutting and parallel editing, situating Metz’s contributions within the broader historical... Read more
Key finding: The article situates Griffith not as the inventor but as a critical systematizer of crosscutting, tracing the device's antecedents and forms before Griffith's work. By rigorously defining crosscutting and distinguishing it... Read more
Key finding: The article theorizes montage as a dialectic between jump cuts and match frames, positioning these as fundamental, opposing editing principles governing temporal and spatial relations between shots. It traces historical... Read more

All papers in Theories of Film Editing

Analyse de séquence tirée de : L’analyse de séquences 5e édition refondue Armand Colin 2015, Coll. Cinéma/Arts visuels, 224 p. ISBN-10 : 2200625162.
For a paper on the possibility of cinema editing pedagogy for a necessary conceptual-turn
These proceedings of the 16th conference of the international society for the study of early cinema Domitor includes 26 studies and numerous rarely seen figures dealing with the often overlooked history of the crafts, trades and... more
The figure of Christ has been the subject of investigation by numerous filmmakers and their audiences for its historical and symbolic value. At the beginning of the 21st century, the controversial film "The Passion of the Christ" (Gibson,... more
Part of the publication, 'A Book for Research that is Art,' with chapters by Dena Bari, Theo Harper, Laura Harrington, Helen McGhie, Georgia Smithson, Crystal Bennes, Ben Evans James. "Indeterminate Distances" was originally written for... more
Une étude comparative du film Cabiria et de ses chutes (prises de vues exclues de son montage définitif) permet de montrer comment la mise en scène de ce film italien, sorti en 1914, est fondée sur une forme de composition spatiale en... more
Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.
Le mieux favorisé des deux vendeurs de journaux aperçoit son camarade qui se désespère, et s'approchant de lui, lut donne partie de ses recettes et sa collation et lui dit: «Vends La Presse demain, et tu ne seras plus dans l'embarras».... more
This article proposes that inquiry into the cognitive complexity of fi lm editing processes could provide insight into how edits affect audiences beyond convincing them of temporal and spatial continuity. Application of two infl uential... more
The virtuoso editing of Dziga Vertov's 1929 masterpiece by Elizaveta Svilova was a vital part of his cinematic experiment. Studying the film shot-by-shot, sometimes individual frames, for previous papers, the author was struck by the... more
Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.
«Monsieur Ouimet peut faire des vues aussi bien que les compagnies étrangères.»
Il s'agira ici d'esquisser un portrait de Pinscription, dans l"histoire récente de la réflexion sur le cinéma, de 1'approche narratologique, tout en tentant de mettre en évidence la fécondité de son héritage aujourd'hui. D'entrée de jeu,... more
Le mieux favorisé des deux vendeurs de journaux aperçoit son camarade qui se désespère, et s'approchant de lui, lut donne partie de ses recettes et sa collation et lui dit: «Vends La Presse demain, et tu ne seras plus dans l'embarras».... more
Eisenstein, de cuyo nacimiento se cumplen cien años, es considerado uno de los más grandes cineastas de la Historia. Comprometido con las ideas bolcheviques y partidario de la Revolución de Octubre, quiso utilizar el cine como un vehículo... more
Kurt Kren was a vital figure in Austrian avant-garde cinema of the post-war period. His structural films, often shot frame-by-frame following elaborately pre-scored charts and diagrams, have influenced filmmakers for decades, even as Kren... more
Les damnés de la terre 1 ». Entre mythe journalistique et représentations cinématographiques «The wretched of the Earth 2 ». Between journalistic myth and film performances Résumé :Dans le registre ciblé de la mine, certains films comme... more
This paper considers a new ‘images-space’ (Bellour): the images-city as a new form of montage, based on analysis of video-installation by D. Aitken, M. Rovner, K. Wodiczko, A. Fleisher and P. Sorin.
The goal of this chapter is to understand the role of Christian Metz's work in the history of theories of film editing, and in particular with respect to alternation devices. The authors discuss how Metz's propositions (with the Grand... more
Cet article est la dernière partie d’un texte dont l’objectif est de comprendre le rôle des travaux de Christian Metz dans l’histoire de la théorie sur le montage, plus précisément en ce qui concerne les figures de l’alternance. Dans la... more
Dans ses premiers travaux sémiologiques, Christian Metz s’est penché sur les divers mécanismes du montage cinématographique, ce dont rend bien compte son fameux tableau de la « grande syntagmatique ». Il s’agit dans cet article d’essayer... more
La circularité et la répétitivité au coeur de l'attraction : les jouets optiques et l'émergence d'une nouvelle série culturelle 1 Le terme « attraction » a connu, depuis près de 150 ans, une multitude de glissements sémantiques et... more
La périodisation est essentielle pour permettre à l’historien de structurer son appréhension du passé et possède une finalité relativement pédagogique. Tout exercice de périodisation est cependant un discours sur l’histoire et procède... more
Les descriptifs que les premiers « fabricants » de vues animées publient dans leurs catalogues sont des textes scripturaux produits sur la base d'un texte iconique préexistant. Ce sont des textes fonctionnels davantage que fictionnels,... more
« paradigme ». Ce mot est maintenant d'un usage commun, et on le sert de plus en plus à toutes sortes de sauces. Il y a longtemps, me semble-t-il, qu'il n'a plus le sens quasi exclusif que d'aucuns semblent vouloir encore lui réserver (en... more
Une étude comparative du film Cabiria et de ses chutes (prises de vues exclues de son montage définitif) permet de montrer comment la mise en scène de ce film italien, sorti en 1914, est fondée sur une forme de composition spatiale en... more
Le bonimenteur, cet « explicateur de vues » en direct, est devenu une figure quasi mythique de l’histoire du cinéma des premiers temps. Il avait, semblait-il, laissé peu de traces. Tant et si bien que, sur le plan international, on ne l’a... more
1908)1 andré gaudreault «But vlrtually the most important and most significant fact from thls point of view is the assumption of an increasingly greater rôle in the twentieth century by the temporal art for which time is almost the... more
Et la questi on chronologique : "Qui a dit le premier 'l" n'est pas essentielle.
7a.1.ContemporaryAmericanwarfilm'sconnectiontoEisenstein'stheoriesandthe canonicalclassiccombatandVietnammodel.Definitionofthenarrativeandstylesystem sharedbySavingPrivateRyan(SPR)andBlackHawkDown(BHD). .
Et la questi on chronologique : "Qui a dit le premier 'l" n'est pas essentielle.
Il y a bientôt vingt ans, Rick Altman soulevait d'importantes questions concernant l'approche historique des technologies de représentation. 1 Selon Altman, l'intérêt croissant pour cet aspect jusqu'alors relativement ignoré par les... more
Los patrones narrativos son fórmulas con las que una trama se moldea para generar una respuesta emocional en el espectador. En el presente trabajo se estudian dos patrones bien definidos que se han encontrado en ciertas estructuras... more
Page to screen H ow did it happen that world directors turned out to be so susceptible to Anna Karenina? First of all, from the standpoint of early Russian producers, this particular novel by Lev Tolstoi was a perfect candidate for a film... more
Partimos das problemáticas quanto à edição audiovisual para obras em realidade virtual (RV). Então nos vimos imersos nas poéticas da montagem tanto em 360° quanto em live performance. Assim, no encontro SOCINE 2022 compartilhamos todo o... more
On peut s’intéresser de plusieurs façons à la question de l’enseignement de la philosophie.  Je le ferai ici du point de vue de la pratique d’enseignement, c.-à-d. d’un point de vue didactique et/ ou pédagogique. Et cela, non pas en... more
This article is an inquiry into the analysis of textual actuality via the possibilities of plot developments represented in actions and events. The topic of possible worlds is extremely important in narrative theories, particularly in... more
El presente artículo parte de un texto publicado en el libro Elementos constitutivos del relato cinematográfico (Prósper, 2004), agotado desde hace varios años. Se parte de este texto porque plantea una metodología para analizar el... more
This paper highlights the relevance of the structural design of Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) in conveying its message, in line with S. M. Eisenstein's theoretical principles. An analysis of its scenes has been carried out,... more
Under the current restrictions of lockdown and quarantine, in which we are being asked not to leave our homes, "hands-on filmmaking" has become virtually impossible, at least in the sense of a group of people coming together on location,... more
Département de littérature, théâtre et cinéma Professeur : Jean-Pierre Sirois-Trahan Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines Session : hiver 2023 LIT-7105 Cinéma et intermédialité II. Rem : Réfractions de Georges Méliès :... more
These de doctorat effectuee en cotutelle au Departement d’histoire de l’art et d’etudes cinematographiques de la Faculte des arts et des sciences de l'Universite de Montreal et a la Section d’histoire et esthetique du cinema de la... more
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