Week 4: Intro to Editing

Lecture/Demo

• Will Ziegler - Editing techniques such as cuts, dissolves, etc.

• Demo: Editing software

Today we were joined by William Ziegler, who is the Editing Coordinator for the animation department. He talked about early Soviet film makers Sergei Eisenstein and Kuleshov, who pioneered new ideas about editing during the 1920s, and showed ' the 'Kuleshov experiment', which is what Hitchcock is referencing to in this interview. Hitchcock calls it 'pure cinematics', the assembly of film.

In this interview, Alfred Hitchcock shows the example of cutting the same reaction shot between two very different shots.  This creates a very different idea, even though the reaction shots are the same. This suggests that audiences bring their own emotional reaction to a sequence of images. This was first discovered by Soviet film maker Kuleshov.

Most directors are influenced by and build upon the work of other film makers.

“One of the biggest effects in Psycho was where the detective enters the house and goes up the stairs. The shots were storyboarded to make sure there was enough contrast of sizes within the cuts. ...." Alfred Hitchcock.


“Here is the shot of the detective, a simple shot going up the stairs.


“He reaches the top stairs, the next cut is the camera as high as it can go, it was on the ceiling. …

“You see the figure run out, raised knife ...

"It comes down …

“Bang! – the biggest head you can put on the screen. ...

"But the big head has no impact unless the previous shot had been so far away. So don’t go putting a close-up where you don’t need it, because later on you will need it.”