French film semiotics grandmaster Metz believes that "the film symbol system is essentially similar to the language system", just like learning language, film also has a unique grammatical system.
Through the use of various editing grammars, the editor finally completes a coherent, clear meaning, clear theme and artistic appeal of the film.
Today, use Xiaoyin with a magnifying glass to find the grammar rules in those movies!
1. Suspense's favorite method?
Keyword: cross-cutting
Features: Non-linear narrative, causing suspense
Representative films: "Inception", "Dunkirk"
Nolan, a big director who has always had a complex narrative structure and is good at non-linear narrative techniques, loves to use cross-cutting, from "Interstellar", "Rise of Darkness" to "Inception" and "Dunkirk", you can see the figure of cross-editing.
In filmmaking, cross-editing is a common editing technique, that is, at the same time, the shots selected on people or things in different places are cross-grouped.
In 2019, in the youth film Young You, which won countless awards and a box office of up to 1.5 billion, the student bully Chen Nian fell into the shadow of being bullied by the school, she met Xiao Bei, a small born in the dark, and was protected by him, and the two spent a sweet time together.
The process of Chen Nian and Xiao Bei's getting along is cross-edited together, which not only completes the omission of time and space in the film, but also accelerates the narrative rhythm.
"Dunkirk", which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Editing, also clearly presents the three story lines of sea, land and air with the use of cross-editing, making this one-hour film full of stories of port week, sea day and air hour.
At the same time, under the lens of cross-cutting, it is very easy to cause suspense and strengthen the dramatic conflict.
2. Movie time and space switching, rely on it?
Keyword: Match clip
Features: Lens matching, seamless connection
Representative films: Titanic, Crash
Matching editing embodies the basic skills of editing, and is a kind of editing method that uses the matching of logic, category, scene, angle, action, and movement direction in the shot to transform the scene.
When it comes to "The Graduate," most people are probably more familiar with its two songs, "The Sound of Silence" and "Scarborough Bazaar," which won the 25th Golden Globe Award for Best Picture in the Musical Comedy category.
In fact, this film more deeply shows the growth process of graduates of that era: when they first entered the society, they were confused, timid, and overwhelmed, and finally they ran to the far away for the sake of their beloved girl.
Ben's action of throwing from the water to the air cushion bed has the same momentum as the action of throwing himself on Mrs. Robinson on the bed, and the clever use of matching clips makes the spatial transition more smooth and natural.
Not only spatially, using matching clips, the transitions in time are also more coherent and smooth.
In Titanic, with Ruth's memories, the dilapidated ships in the deep water of reality are seamlessly transformed into luxury cruise ships and boom scenes from decades ago, giving the audience an immersive experience of time travel.
In addition, "Crash", which beat "Brokeback Mountain" to win the Oscar for Best Picture, also used series matching clips, including action matching, movement direction, similar colors, sound matching, etc.
3. Does it manipulate the sound-painting art of cinema?
Keywords: L-cut/J-cut
Special points: Voice first in advance, screen first in
Representative film: "Spring is not a reading day"
J-cut and L-cut are two editing techniques related to sound.
The origin of their names is also interesting, derived from their visual shape on the editing software. As the name suggests, J-cut takes on the shape of J on the editing software, and L-cut is the shape of L.
The figurative translation of J-cut and L-cut into Chinese are "not seen, first heard" and "first seen, then heard", the two techniques are corresponding to each other, and most movies use them to some extent.
With J-cut and L-cut, the dialogue can be split to make the response rhythm more natural and smooth, rather than just a simple switch between two dialogue scenes.
Most movies will use J-cut at the beginning, that is, the picture has not yet appeared, the sound will be preemptive, playing a role in attracting the attention of the audience, the end of the movie, using L-cut, the sound has continued, so that the audience continues to immerse themselves in the mood of the movie, the aftertaste is endless.
The movie "Spring Is Not a Reading Day" records a crazy and interesting day of truancy life, and the youth who skipped class made a special city sightseeing tour, "Life moves fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you are gonna miss it.” It has also encouraged countless young people to stop their hurried walking steps.
Therefore, the use of L-cut is also particularly appropriate, the teacher roll called, but no one answered, the teacher's reputation continued until the next scene.
4. How to construct a super-flammable action movie?
Keyword: action is sequential
Features: transitions, action movies
Representative films: Terminator, Mission Impossible 4
We usually can't resist the super-burning and explosive action blockbusters, and it makes people's blood and excitement when they watch it.
For example, in Schwarzenegger's Terminator series, "every action scene in Terminator 2 is like a symphony of layers", and this film has also had a profound impact on future action movies and science fiction films.
The action and action are also cleverly connected through editing techniques, and the use of action is smooth, making the intersection of character actions more natural.
The editing point can be the fist and foot of the action unfolding, the direction in which the action is unfolded, or a simple turn.
In Mission Impossible 4, the thrilling climb to the Burj Khalifa was done by Tom Cruise himself, without the use of a stand-in. During the climbing process, there is a shot that is completed in the sudden decline of the right hand, and the thrilling degree makes the audience can't help but pinch a cold sweat for Brother Atang.
5. Inner os, special techniques?
Keywords: cut-off clips
Features: insert lens, expression to achieve meaning
Representative Film: "Seven Deadly Sins"
Compared with other editing techniques, away-cut editing is relatively simple and easy to be "seen through". Generally speaking, the picture is cut into the insertion lens first, and then cut back. And this insertion lens, the meaning has become richer.
Generally, the insertion shots are subjective shots, which can show what the protagonist saw and heard at that time, which helps to establish the inner world of the characters and make it easier for the audience to enter the characters and understand the characters.
Nominated for the 68th Academy Award for Best Editing, the classic suspense film Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of a serial murder that takes place in the city.
The city in the film is dark, chaotic, dirty, and the continuous murders make the city a hell on earth, and the people who live in it are full of arrogance, jealousy, anger, laziness, greed, gluttony, and lust, and the murderer punishes these guilty people in the name of God.
It's a desperate film that shows the sin and indifference of the world from beginning to end, and David's love affair with his wife, Tracy, shows one of the few bright sides of the film. Even so, the good and innocent Tracy was beheaded by the murderer.
At the end of the film, David shoots the murderer in the pain of losing his wife. As he listened to the murderer recount his atrocities, his mind flashed with the desperate death of his wife, and he pulled the trigger in anger.
The use of off-cut editing brings out David's painful entanglements to the fullest.
6. The sense of rhythm of the film shot, the original is it?
Keywords: jump cut clip
Features: jumping clip, contrast contrast
Representative films: "Exhausted", "Liege Burning Heart"
Skipping is the most widely used technique in editing.
Through jumping editing, the contrast between the front and back shots is displayed, resulting in a strong contrast effect to enhance the rhythm of the shot.
Unlike traditional Hollywood film storytelling, skipping cuts will make the connection of the picture appear abrupt.
This contrasting front and back shot can be a sudden awakening from a nightmare, or from a fierce fight to a more leisurely and quiet scene.
Released in 1958, "Exhausted" is the originator of the use of jumping cuts.
In "Exhausted", Michelle shoots the policeman, first a close-up of Michelle's head, then a short shot of Michelle's arm, then a local close-up of the pistol, and then a gunshot, the policeman dies, and the jumping screen clip makes the plot develop rapidly and the character image more vivid and three-dimensional.
Later, with the development of the New Wave film movement, jumping cuts were widely used by more filmmakers.
Chinese director Cao Baoping inherited Godard's jumping cutting method, and in the films he directed, such as "Glorious Anger", "Burning Heart of the Sun" and "Dog Thirteen", there were jump cutting methods in the same camera position and the same scene.
7. Montage masters, are they all in use?
Keyword: stacking
Features: Lens overlap, time passes, emotional expression
Representative films: Schindler's List, Modern Times
Stacking is a very old film editing grammar that has been used since the birth of cinema.
Adding one shot to another is a great montage.
Clips in a movie that represent the passage of time often use superimposed.
For example, in "Farewell to the Overlord", the picture of small beans and small stones practicing in the pear garden when they were young, and the reading of "Li Ba Shan Xi Qi Qi Shi ... When the time is unfavorable... The youthful appearance of "Li Bao Shan Xi" is transformed by superimposing two lenses.
Xiao Douzi, who was only 9 years old, was sent to the drama class to learn drama by his mother with a severed finger, and when he sang "I am not a female jiao'e", he became the Cheng Butterfly who did not distinguish between people and was obsessed with "overlord" all his life, "Yu Ji is the real Yu Ji, and the overlord is indeed a false overlord".
Stacking is widely used in movies, but also because of its role in setting off the atmosphere and showing the inner activities and emotions of the characters.
28 years ago, "Schindler's List" won six Oscars for its extraordinary artistic expression and serious ideological power.
At the end of the film, Germany surrenders after defeat, and 1,100 Jews in Schindler's factory successfully escape the fate of life and death.
Schindler sat in the car, watching the faces of the Jewish survivors outside the window slowly withdraw, the camera overlapped for a long time, making the audience sigh and sigh, we seem to be able to see Schindler's inner world, these people survived, can I save one more person...
8. What are the difficult aesthetic principles that the film pursues?
Keyword: Hide clip points
Features: pseudo-one-shot to the end, technical flow
Representative films: "1917", "Soul Lock"
Since Bazin proposed the aesthetic principle of long shots, more and more filmmakers have pursued the "one shot to the end" approach to photography.
Many movies also use this as a gimmick to attract audiences, but due to technical limitations, there are very few real "one-shot to the end" movies, and most of them are "pseudo-one-shot to the end".
In 2019, the movie "1917" became famous for its superb filming technology of "one shot to the end".
There is Hitchcock's "Soul Requiem" in the front, followed by "Birdman", "1917" "A long shot to the end of the long shot of the construction site renders the cruelty and melancholy of the battlefield, and the whole movie is full of immersion and enjoyment".
While the two protagonists are walking and chatting, they meet a team of soldiers transporting supplies, and Shunshi uses the foreground soldiers to complete the masking clip.
Using a black screen to hide the editing point is also a common technique, the two soldiers received orders from their superiors, left the tunnel, and Schofield's backpack covered the light outside the hole between the ups and downs of the upward walk, forming a black screen for a moment, realizing the camera switching.
As a war movie, "1917" is also indispensable to the explosion scene.
At the 28th minute of the film, the rat stepping on the line triggers a tunnel explosion, and then accompanied by thick smoke, the camera forms a brief blur, and the character falls to the side, creating a visual effect of falling down by the impact of the explosion, in fact, the camera here has successfully completed the switch.
It can be seen that in order to achieve the aesthetic effect of "one shot to the end", in addition to the special design of the lens and position when shooting, the editing point also needs to be hidden in the post-editing, and the invisible editing point is indeed visible and wonderful.