Narrative Cutflash back or forward – cross cut -

The narrative cut allows the director to analyze an action into ….

…. its most interesting elements and then

to resynthesize

these elements of the event into a powerful sequential action.

Another kind of narrative cut is the flash back or forward-

a cut that furthers the action by revealing a character's thoughts at a particular moment.

A woman stares dreamily into space;

the director cuts to her husband in a faraway prison;

the director then cuts back to the woman's face.

Yet a third kind of narrative cut is the cross-cut

While the tramp attacks the man with a pistol, the police, aware of the attack, charge to the rescue.

These lessons of cutting had all been learned from Griffith.

Intellectual cutmetaphoric, contrast, or parallel

They found that a cut could generate an intellectual response

Soviet film students realized that a cut could do more than narrate..

One kind of intellectual cut was the metaphorical-cut or associational-cut.

From a group of workers being mowed down by the rifles of soldiers, the director could cut to the slaughter of an ox in a stockyards (as Eisenstein did in Strike).

Image of the slaughtered ox comments on the action of the …..

… slaughtered workers.

The director can cut from a streaming procession of striking workers to a shot of a river thawing in the spring, a mass of ice flowing steadily toward the sea (as Pudovkin did in Mother).

A second intellectual effect could be produced by the contrast-cut

The director cuts from the dinner table of a poor man, who eats only a few pieces of bread, to the table of a rich man laden with meats, candles, and wine.

The contrast of the two tables comments on the injustice of the fact that two such tables can exist at the same time.

The parallel-cut produces a third kind of intellectual response.

From the condemned man sentenced to die at five o'clock, the director cuts to a thief who murders a victim at precisely five o'clock.

The parallel acts of violence at the same time reinforce each other.

the intellectual cut-metaphoric, contrast, or parallel- also has ……

….. an emotional dimension.

The director not only uses the slaughter of the ox but also the sickening, horrifying violence and bloodiness of the murder to make his point.

He not only comments on the injustice of the rich man's dinner but makes us hate the rich man for his gluttony and pity the poor man for his need.

Emotional CutRhythmic – Tonal – Form _ Directional cut

The third kind of cut that the Kuleshov students discovered is

….. a purely emotional one:

the very method of joining the strips of celluloid together,

rather than their content, produces an almost subliminal kinetic response in an audience that the director can unobtrusively control.

First, the director can cut a sequence rhythmically.

He can use shorter and shorter pieces of film, increasing the tempo and tension of the action.

Or he can cut a sequence with long pieces of film, producing a feeling of slowness and languidness.

By stitching together a series of strips of equal length the director can produce the feeling of a regular, measured beat.

The tonal-cut is the director's second method of manipulating ….

…. an audience's emotions without its conscious awareness of manipulation.

He can cut a sequence with steadily darker pictures, producing the impression of oncoming night and growing despair, or with steadily lighter pictures, producing the impression of dawn and rising hope.

A third kind of emotional editing is the form-cut,

…. cutting on a similarity or difference in the form of the object in the frame.

The director can cut from a spinning roulette wheel to a turning wagon wheel, from a plodding ox to an efficient tractor, from a jabbing pencil to a thrusting sword.  

A fourth kind of kinetic editing is the directional-cut, in which

…. the director uses the direction of movement across the frame

either to keep the action flowing or to produce a dynamic collision.

The director can cut from a group of workers streaming from right to

left, to a group of foot soldiers streaming from right

to left, to a group of Cossacks on horseback streaming

from right to left.

Or he 'can cut from a group of workers streaming 'from right to left to a group of Cossacks streaming from left to right.

Whereas the first series of directional cuts would produce the feeling of

…. speed, continuousness, and flow,

the second would produce the sensation of two huge masses smashing into one another.

Single cut can function on all Levels-narrative, intellectual, emotional-at once.

A cut that is intended to have an intellectual effect

from pencil to sword

may also serve as a form-cut, as part of a tonal sequence, as part of the film's increasing rhythm, and as a shift in the film's narrative structure all at

the same time.

To this discovery they gave the name "montage"

In French, the word simply means editing; for the Soviet director,

the word signified the particular way editing could control the film's structure, meaning, and effect.

By 1924, the Kuleshov students had acquired the film, the equipment, and the budgets to turn their lessons into films.