The Cutting Edge

I chose to watch this movie because I was interested in hearing more about editing. Watching the movie I realized some things that I would not notice before, or give them for granted. For example, with a simple cut it is possible to bridge millions of years. A cut can show the audience past present and future in a movie and this only by choosing which scenes will show. I liked the parts when said that editing gave birth to a new art, it allowed a new kind of cinema, a new kind of movies. As the film mentions, when cuts didn’t exists the fill would continue running until the film was over. This way the audience would have to follow every second of what was happening without any changes, any transitions, anything that would surprise.  A cut can slow down time or speed it up, a timing of a cut can causes suspense or amusement and I believe this is why people like movies. I never thought about the editor being an artist, but watching the movie I realized that they don’t get to be where the movie is filmed, they do get to see the actors, or choose the setting or the lighting, all they do is mix and match parts of the movie and the final result are everyday movies that we enjoy watching.  Director Rob Cohen said “Editing is why people like movies, because in the end wouldn’t we like to edit our own lives, take out the bad parts, take out the slow parts and look deeper into the good parts”. This also made me think that an editor can help you identify the characters in the movie, for example a cut of the facial expressions or of the lighting around the character would make the audience understand where the character stands in the movie. Also I liked to hear what I have learnt while making the films for class. 200 hours of film are shot, with the editing it is then brought to a two-hour movie. I would have never said so many more shot were needed, but I learnt it on the field while making my own shot film!