Editing Techniques - Inception [missing gifs]

Editing isn't just throwing the clips together in some sort of order that makes sense. It's half of the entire process of making a film, and as Ryan Connolly of Film Riot says, you write the film three times - Once in writing, once in shooting, and once in editing. As such there are a lot of techniques and decisions that go into a well-edited scene, but to understand them we must first understand what editing is at its core.

Editing is combining a number of shots together to make a sequence.This has been done in many different ways in the past, from actually cutting and sticking film together, to in-camera editing, and using NLE workstations nowadays. Before computers became powerful enough to handle editing high-quality video, it was common to use such devices as film splicers to physically cut film and stick it together.

Compared to what we have today it's a somewhat limited method being only able to make 'cuts', but cuts can go a long way. It also extended the production cost by a significant margin, simply because it took so long to do. So, other techniques arose to cut down cost, such as in-camera editing.

In-camera editing involves shooting every shot in exact order. As in, every shot must be filmed chronologically, so if there was a scene with, say, a phone conversation, one would have to set everything up for one shot of one end of the conversation, and then everything for the next shot. As such, shoots under this technique had to be meticulously planned. Or just very simple films in general.

Nowadays we have NLE workstations like Sony Vegas, Premiere, or Final Cut. These make it incredibly easy to throw footage together, see how it looks, tweak, and instantly view again. Most, if not all films are edited this way nowadays, as it is relatively cheap compared to older methods and very efficient. It has also allowed more people to make films of their own, due to computers' widespread seat in culture.

INCEPTION

For the purposes of my analysis I have chosen to look at an extract from Inception (Nolan, 2010). I'd be lying if I said I didn't mainly choose it because it's probably my favourite film, but if I had to justify it I'd say that this particular extract has a lot of examples of techniques to keep the viewers involved, and continuity techniques.

Unfortunately given various copyright laws and content scanners, I can't embed the clip.

Watch it here.

This sequence stood out to me in particular due to the unique parallel editing due to the various levels of dreams. It's also quite tense and action-packed, and as such has quite a few match-on-actions.

PARALLEL EDITING

[insert inception gif - cut between snow scene and hotel scene]

Parallel editing is used to show what is happening in two different places - while diegetically what is happening here in Inception isn't strictly different places, the parallel editing really helps the viewer understand that these events are happening at the same time, and not sequentially of each other. What it is is basically cutting back and forth between two scenes, shuffling them together like a pack of cards. How they've been implemented is when Cobb mentions the other characters ('Yusuf is 10 seconds from the jump') it will then cut to whatever Yusuf is doing at the time. While keeping the viewer updated, within context (they're discussing how much time they have) it helps maintain tension.

MATCH-ON-ACTION

[insert inception gif - arthur opens door with keycard]

Match-on-actions are integral to keeping basic cuts in scenes seamless. Since they're so crucial, it's easy to take them for granted, and not notice them. They are a technique which involves starting an action in one shot (normally a wide/medium shot) and finishing it in a closer shot to show detail. If they were edited so that no action was in the first, and all of it is in the second, it would be really jarring. The viewer would have little to no idea who it was that opened the door (in this example), and their involvement would be broken.

SHOT-REVERSE-SHOT

[cobb talking to ariadne]

This is the 'bread and butter' of conversation-based sequences, if you will. It basically involves a shot of one character saying something, and then cutting to a shot of the other character saying something in reply. It's different to the reaction shot in the sense that the second shot involves the depicted character actually saying something, and is substantial enough that the conversation can continue from shot to shot for varying amounts of time. A staple of the shot-reverse-shot is that it follows the 180-degree rule: when two characters are talking, an invisible line is drawn between them that mustn't be crossed by the camera. This just serves to allow conversations to make a little more sense, as when they cut between one another you can still easily tell that they are facing each other.

REACTION SHOT

[cobb watching the avalanche]

Reaction shots turn up in film a lot more than one would initially expect. This is, while similar to a shot-reverse-shot, a little more versatile and can be applied to more situations. What it involves is something happening, then cutting away to someone's reaction of what is happening, and then more often than not cutting back to what is going on. This can happen in conversations, too - someone can be talking (maybe they'll be running on about something a little longer than they should) and there'll be a reaction shot of who they're talking to (perhaps with a confused, slightly awkward look on their face), and then a cut back to the person talking so that they can finish their sentence. It just helps makes things a little more interesting, since a 5+ second shot of someone talking would be rather boring.

SCREEN TIME

How much screen time a character has is a direct result of how prominent the character is in the film. It seems obvious that a main character will be on screen more than a minor character, but it's an important thing to take note of as a way of developing characters and making the viewer care about them. In this extract one can ascertain that Cobb is the main character since he not only gets slightly more screen time, but his screen time is mostly comprised of close-ups. Close-ups allow the viewer a much more intimate view of the characters, and given that the viewer can see their emotions that much more it allows more room for viewers to connect with said characters.

EYELINE MATCH

[arthur looks up the elevator]

Eyeline match shots are used almost like a reverse reaction shot - someone will look at something, and then the camera will cut to show whatever it is that they are looking at. This is a quick and easy way of making sure your viewer is involved with what's going on in the scene: if a character has an interesting reaction to something, the viewer is going to want to know what it is. In the same vein, it's quite common to have the shot leading up to the eyeline match, and then not showing what it is they are looking at in order to purposefully withhold information, to keep the viewer curious.

A variation on the eyeline match is the POV or point-of-view shot. It's very similar, except instead of just showing what it is that the character is looking at, it is shown 'through the eyes' of the character, as if the camera was their head. This is typical of horror movies where the camera is shown as the monster approaching its victim.

ESTABLISHING SHOT

[mountain establisher]

These are particularly important in a scene in order to properly establish the geography of a scene so that the viewer has their internal mental map of the set and knows where everything is. Usually it is established through a really wide shot that encompasses most if not all of the scene, and is also an easy way to start the scene.

[hotel establisher]

Similarly to eyeline match, it's a well-known trick for filmmakers to purposefully not establish the space or time of the scene, to leave viewers in the dark. This might be because the character the viewer is empathizing with does not know where they are, or because the setting is not all it appears to be.

SHOT VARIATION

[fischer and eames caught in avalanche]

If a film was comprised of all the same shot distances at the same angle and same height, that film would not be a great film. It would be boring. Thus shot variation is imperative to staying interesting throughout the film. At the same distance it would be just like standing there watching. But cameras have the ability to get much closer and more personal than anyone would regularly feel comfortable doing, and by extension further away as well. It's this that sets film apart from the stage, or just watching something happen in person.

EDITING RHYTHM

[action scene many cuts]

Many things can contribute to the atmosphere of a scene. Some obvious choices would be music and lighting, but the speed of cuts and transitions can also have a huge effect on the atmosphere of the situation, and whether a scene is tense or not. For example, action-packed scenes will have a lot more shots, cut in a lot quicker; whereas a slower, conversation-based scene will have less, more lingering shots.

[conversation gif]

CUTAWAYS

[inception, people rioting outside]

These are finnicky things, cutaways. They regularly come in two forms - One used in more serious films, where the viewer will get a quick shot of a minor detail in the scene somewhere (usually while dialogue continues over the top) to give a sense of the scene or to foreshadow something that's going to happen next, and the other form (popularized by Seth Macfarlane cartoons like Family Guy) where the viewer will get completely taken out of the scene for a couple of seconds to provide background on something that was mentioned.

[family guy cutaway]

Usually, this second kind is used as the punchline to a joke much like how stand-up comedians will expand on a point and add anecdotes during a set, whereas the first kind, like the rioting people in Inception, is used more like an additive to the current scene.

JUMP CUTS

Jump cuts are normally discouraged in Film 101, but they have been known to be used to effect. They are used to give a feeling of unease or something being strange within a scene when used in a film context. I couldn't find any examples in Inception, so here's an example from elsewhere:

[old boy gif]

Meanwhile, jump cuts have thrived in the world of music videos because they somehow look stylish yet condense things into a shorter amount of time:

[consent gif]

MONTAGE

A montage is a sequence typically set to music or a voiceover which sometimes shows a development of something, either someone training or practicing for something or a character or group of characters on a journey. They're useful because they keep the viewer interested in something that would, having not been abridged severely impact the running time of the text in question. They've somewhat fallen out of favour in films recently due to their supposed cliche, but here is an example from Hot Fuzz:


CUTTING TO SOUNDTRACK

A film's synchronicity between what's happening on screen and what the viewer can hear is always a good thing in editing, and is in my humble opinion the difference between good application of a soundtrack and a bad one. Inception was particularly guilty of cutting at appropriate times to the soundtrack, and there is an example towards the end of my included extract at 3:57 where the track goes up a key when it cuts back to the van falling into the water.