The Beginnings of the Continuity System
When editing links a series of shots,
1) narrative clarity will be enhanced if the spectator understands
how the shots relate to each other in space and time.
2)Is time continuing uninterruptedly, or has some time been skipped (creating an ellipsis)?
3)Are we still seeing the same space,
4) or has the scene shifted to a new locale?
5) As Alfred Capus, a scriptwriter for the French firm Film d’Art, put it in 1908,
“If we wish to retain the attention of the public, we have to maintain unbroken connection with
each preceding [shot].”
From about 1906 onward,
1) filmmakers developed techniques for maintaining this “unbroken connection.”
Side Note:
Film Clip on The History of Cutting - The Birth of Cinema and Continuity Editing
Film Clip ( I found this on YouTube and think it just confused me more)
1) Melies used the jump cut to make things disappear.
2) Porter used temporal overlaps - where the action is duplicated from one shot to the
other. (Fireman movie)
3)Porter - the great train robbery 1903 - Although each scene is still one master take, he cuts straight between scenes without using fades or dissolved and most importantly, without letting the scene reach it's logical end.
Example train on track disappears - Porter cuts out of this shot before the train has cleared the frame. This departure shows how filmmakers were beginning to see editing's ability to compress time in favor of impact over reality.
"Meaning came not only in the spatial arrangement of the objects and actors in a frame like a theater and in still photography - but in the way that shots are arranged in time".
4)David Wark Griffith and continuity editing
Griffith worked at Biograph in directing
He changed cinema into a multi-shot medium we would now recognize
1)The cut-in - in The Greaser's Gauntlet 1908
He cut from a medium long shot of a hanging tree to a full shot in the middle
2)Continued to experiment with shot lengths using multiple camera setups
to create a scene through what's called continuity editing.
Continuity Editing: Cutting between shots with the purpose of maintaining
smooth sense of continuous space and time.
With multiple camera setups being used, the 180degree rule evolved out of
practice.
If you kept the camera on one side of the axis of action (that's the imaginary line
where movements and eyeline occur) you can avoid continuity problems of
confusing geography when cutting from one angle to another.
a) Intercutting or cross cutting - bouncing between two different scenes in
parallel action which he first put to use on After Many Years 1908.
Shows a shipwrecked man and the woman he left at home.
Starts with a shot on the island, next a shot of woman fretting at home.
example 2) in a lonely villa 1909 - He intercut between three parallel actions
*a woman held up in a house
*Robbers trying to break in
*A Husband rushing home to rescue
He keeps building up the cuts faster to an ultimate cinematic climax.
b)Through varying the spatial distance with long medium and close up shots
the temporaral length of shots, Griffith began to establish the tenents of
classic Hollywood continuity editing.
b1)Establishing Shots
b2)Reverse Shots
b3)Matching eyelines
b4) Cutting on Action
(Everything we think about in terms of continuity)
"The Birth of a Nation" (condemned as racist pro-kkk, but the culmination of all of Griffith's editing and cinematic techniques) Also filmed Intolerance which bombed.
By 1917,
1) these techniques would come together in the continuity system of editing.
2)This system involved three basic ways of joining shots:
a) crosscutting, (Parallel Editing)YouTube video
Definition: Editing technique in which the camera will cut away from one scene or action to another action. Purpose to establish a relationship between two scenes, and sometimes suggest the actions are happening simultaneously. It can also be used to show suspense or create tension in a story. (Baptism scene in Godfather - in church
and mob hits) Also this YouTube video talks about the Runaway Horse film. The tiny horse is eating the oats - cut to the driver inside the building - outside to horse - inside to laundry driver - each cut of horse, he gets fatter as the bag empties. 4 cuts used.
b) analytical editing, YouTube - Refers to editing that breaks down a single space into separate framings. Cut in closer to the action. The long shot shows the entire space and a closer one s in the middle of scenes to enlarge small objects or facial expressions cuttings were rare before 1905. Cut-ins? Scenes that were notes of photographs that the characters examined - They . were called Inserts and were usually seen from a character's point of view - between 1907 - 1910 small cut ins to seen through the window (good for sci-fi) were commonly used became popular in 1910.
c) contiguity editing. YouTube - In some scenes characters move out of the space of one shot and reappear in a nearby locale. Such movements were crucial to the chase genre. Example in The Runaway Horse (Louis J. Gasnier, 1907)- a group of characters would run through the shot and then out of sight. The film would then cut to an adjacent locale where the process would be repeated as they ran through again a series of such shots made up most of the film. Another example a dog running through all the scenes running enter right - exit left. Not all films of the early period show the characters moving in consistent directions in continuous spaces. By the teens directors realized to keep the direction of movement constant in the same direction , helped the audience keep track of spatial relations.
(x) the idea of keeping screen direction consistent became an implicit rule in Hollywood style editing. Example Harakiri by Kobayashi 1962 two samarai walking towards each other. So important is this rule that The Hollywood system is also termed the 180 degree system - meaning the camera should stay within a semicircle on one side of the action in order to maintain consistent screen direction.
Now I'm really confused. Another YouTube on Continuity System of Editing:
How the shots relate to each other in space and time it's time continuing uninterrupted
1)has some time been skipped creating an ellipsis
2) are we still seeing the same space or
3)has a scene shifted to a new locale.
Before 1906,
1) narrative films did not move back and forth between actions in separate spaces.
2) In most cases, one continuous action formed the whole story.
3) The popular chase genre provides the best example. Here an event triggers the
chase, and the characters keep running through one shot after another until the
culprit is caught.
4)If a narrative involved several actions, the film would concentrate on one in its
entirety and then move on to the next.
Early crosscutting - Godfather/Horse getting fatter
1)(also known as parallel editing and intercutting) could be used for actions other
than rescues.
2) French films, especially Pathé’s, were influential in developing this technique.
3) A clever chase film of 1907,
a)The Runaway Horse, for example,
a1) shows a cart horse eating a bag of oats outside a shop while his driver delivers
laundry inside an apartment building.
a2)In the first shot, the horse is scrawny and the bag full.
a3)In the next shot, we see the driver inside the building.
a4)Four more shots of the horse are interspersed with six of the driver inside.
a5) The filmmakers substituted successively more robust animals, so the cart horse
seems to get fatter as the sack empties. By the end of the scene, the horse is very
lively, and a chase ensues.
The Runaway Horse (Louis J. Gasnier, 1907)
Film Clip
Analytical editing - SCI-FI
1) refers to editing that breaks down a single space into separate areas.
2) One simple way of doing this is to cut in closer to the action.
3) Thus a long shot shows the entire space,
4) and a closer one enlarges small objects or facial expressions.
5) Cut-ins in the period before 1905 were rare.
During the nickelodeon era, filmmakers began inserting closer views into the middles of scenes. Often these were notes, newspapers, or photographs that the characters examined. These were called inserts and were usually seen from a character’s point of view. They helped make the action comprehensible to the viewer.
Contiguity Editing: -DOG
In some scenes, characters move out of the space of one shot and reappear in a nearby locale. Such movements were crucial to the chase genre. Typically, a group of characters would run through the shot and then out of sight; the film would then cut to an adjacent area, where the process would be repeated as they ran through again. A series of such shots made up most of the film. A similar pattern occurs in an early model of clear storytelling, Rescued by Rover (produced in 1905 by Cecil Hepworth in England, and probably directed by Lewin Fitzhamon). After a baby is kidnapped, the family dog races from the house and through the town, finds the baby, runs back to fetch the father, and leads him to the kidnapper’s lair. In all the shots of Rover running toward the lair, the dog moves forward through the space of one shot, exits to the left of the camera, and comes into the space of the next shot, still running forward and exiting left.
Rescued by Rover (Cecil Hepworth & Lewin Fitzhamon, 1905)
Film Clip
Running towards the camera in each scene.
Then running back home in opposite direction.
In Alma’s Champion (1912, Vitagraph),
1)the first shot shows the hero exiting leftward.
2) In the next shot, he moves into a nearby space along the tracks.
3) His continued leftward movement,
4) plus the presence of the train in the background,
5)helps the spectator understand where the actions are taking place.
Alma’s Champion (Vitagraph, 1912)
Film Clip
During the mid-1910s the idea of keeping screen direction consistent became an implicit rule in Hollywood-style editing. So important is this rule that the Hollywood approach to editing is also termed the 180-degree system, meaning that the camera should stay within a semicircle on one side of the action in order to maintain consistent screen direction.
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