Music Video and Editing

Editing Is?...

• Shot 1 + Shot 2= Emotion, Meaning, Advancement in story.

• A language

• Two types:

– Continuity (Classic Hollywood Style)

– Complexity (to show intensity, analyze, etc.)

Industry

Director / Producer choose or contract Offline edit / rough cut “Picture is locked”: label, artist, director Edit Decision List (EDL) Online edit

Vernallis

• Editing “colors” the audience's understanding

• MV editing= balance of story, performance, song

• Momentum

• Editing AS image or part of the image

• Continuity, a “clear path” in story

• MV as complexity editing

• Editing has equal visual role

“Janie's Got a Gun”

• Aerosmith, 1989

• Dir. David Fincher

• Narrative and Continuity

• Groundbreaking for use of dramatized violence, which would become popular in MV after

Vernallis

• MV as disjunctive, discontinuous, gap

• Avoid match on action...on purpose

• Jump cutting and other visually powerful edits

• Disobey compositional rules and frame space

• Interpretative work on audience's behalf

“The Beautiful People”

• Marilyn Manson, 1996

• Dir. Floria Sigismondi

• Fragmented shots and fast cutting

• Force/allow the audience to do interpretive “work” through montage

• Manson reveals a process

“The Unforgiven”

• Metallica, 1991

• Dir. Matt Mahurin

• Connection between performance and narrative, musician and actor

• Uses shots and elements of continuity in disjunctive editing (spatiotemporality.)

Graphic Match

• Graphic match or “match cutting” appears

– Shape or color, sometimes movement

• Visual Rhyme

• 2001

“Come as You Are”

• 1992, Dir. Kevin Kerslake

• “Visual rhymes,” what we know as graphic match

• Brings together disparate images to convey a deeper meaning through the match cut

Montage

• Meaning from juxtaposition

• Song glues these images

• Audience's structure of meaning

• Eisensteinian montage

MontageA + B=C (dialectical)

• Incomplete meanings, requires interpretation

• Graphic Editing: cutting to graphics elements

• Metric/Rhythmic: Cutting to beat, cutting shots the same length, etc. Maintain energy.

• Analytical:

– Sectional: freezes time and explores that moment from multiple perspectives; event progression comes through intensity

– Sequential: imply a series of events in process

Idea Associative Montage

Shot A + Shot B=New meaning C

• Comparison Montage:

– Emphasize similar qualities between images, imbue characteristics upon each image. Reinforce an idea

• Collision Montage

– Different images/different qualities= new way of thinking. Contrast/Opposites

– Cause and Effect

Space / Surroundings

• Disjunction in video resembles how we hear

• MV mimics sonic experience, not normal visual experience

• Song comes from props or objects

• Visual dancing

• Camera hears, follow, and gives a sense of consciousness

Transitions

• Dissolve

• Cut in/Cut away

– shift from a distant framing to a closer view of some portion of the same space (FOV)Wipe

• Fast/Slow Cutting

• Wipe

• Iris

• Fade to/from black

• Superimposition

Continuity

• Smooth flow of shots w/out interruptions to tell a story.

• No jumps in time or space

• Maintains continuity of from shot to shot:

– Place, space, time, subject

– Movement, vectors, story events

– Characters

• Maintains narrative logic

Continuity Characteristics

• 180 Degree System/ZX axis

• Golden Section/Rule of 1/3s

• Establishing Shot/Breakdown/Reastablishing shot

• Converging, Diverging, Continuing Vectors

• Reaction shots

• Enter/Leave the Frame

Types

• Shot/Reverse Shot

– conversations...look/looking back

• Eye-Line Match

– Connection between looker and looked

• Match Action

– Action spans from shot 1 to shot 2

• Graphic Match

– Match Cut /Last scene of Requiem for a Dream

Cont'd

• Ellipsis

– omit parts of an event, causing an ellipses in plot and story duration

• Parallel Editing/Cross Cutting

– 2 different yet related actions linked through editing

– Stresses similarities

• Shaft

• Superfly

• Guinness

• Adaptation, 3:12

• Complexity vs. Continuity

Others...

• Literal editing:

– Cutting to image, sound, word that literally describes that word or image.

• Non-literal editing:

– Matching an image to word that creates a symbol, metaphor or intellectual response. Poetic, etc.

• Requiem: The Anatomy of a Scene

• Heavy Metal Parking Lot: