1. Continuity editing is a way of editing shots together to make it look like one smooth
continuous sequence of events which won’t draw the audience’s attention to the edits or
transitions, keeping their focus on the narrative and story of the film. Non-continuity editing
is the opposite of this; it is when shots are mismatched to disrupt the impression of time
and space disturbing the audience’s illusion of reality.
1. Battleship Potemkin Montage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s71vmKc6HkE
This clip from Battleship Potemkin is a montage which is typically used to manipulate time.
This is achieved by speeding up, slowing down, compressing and stretching time to make
things look longer or shorter to potentially exaggerate something or intensify it. An example
of this in Battleship Potemkin is around 13 seconds into this scene when a man slowly falls
down to his knees. This clip is surrounded by fast-paced shots of everyone running down the
stairs. They do things like this multiple times throughout the scene where they occasionally
pick out and focus on a specific person/people to go into more detail to show the intensity
and to manipulate time. If they didn’t do this, the scene would probably only last between
30 seconds and a minute and the audience wouldn’t get much of a sense of violence and
chaos but focusing on different people and showing each character’s problems manipulates
time to make it feel longer. This scene is non-continuous because of the fact that it’s
constantly switching to different shots of different people who aren’t associated with each
other. If it was continuous, there would be some sort of order to the shots.
2. Way Down East Parallel Editing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI2e3pXat54
This clip from Way Down East (1920) uses parallel editing to mislead the audience into
thinking the waterfall is closer than it really is. They used parallel editing to manipulate time
by constantly switching to shots of the waterfall which makes the audience think the
woman is going to reach it very soon, even though the clip lasts over a minute until she
finally gets close to the waterfall and is saved by the man. They used parallel editing here to
make it seem like the man wasn’t going to make it in time which is very effective because it
hooks the audience making them want to keep watching to see if the man will or will not
save her in time. This type of parallel editing is different to what you would see in modern
films because usually it is used to mislead the audience into thinking one thing looks like
something it isn’t, like in The Silence of the Labs (1991) but in Way Down East (1920) they
use it to manipulate time. The music also has a big impact on the editing because it gets
more and more intense as the clip goes on. The editing cuts in time with the music as well,
for example around 38 seconds in as the music gets more intense, it cuts to a shot of the
man tripping over. This is effective because the music correlates to how the audience
should be feeling at the time.
3. The Silence of the Lambs Parallel Editing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1x6uADFtM
This clip from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) uses parallel editing to mislead the audience
into thinking that the cops are outside of Buffalo Bill’s house and he’s going to get caught.
2. They convince the audience by constantly cutting between shots of the cops outside and the
criminal inside. As well as this, when the cop dressed undercover as a delivery man rings the
doorbell, the criminal’s doorbell also rings. This leads the audience to believe the cops are
right outside his house, building up the climax. Eventually, it cuts to a close-up shot of
Buffalo Bill answering the door to the main character Clarice. This is obviously a huge reveal
for the audience as there was a massive build up to this point but it’s not what they
expected. Instead, a different climax is presented where the main character is put into a
dangerous position with this criminal. When the cops break into an empty house, Jack
realises his mistake and realises the danger it leaves Clarice in although there’s no way for
him to warn her, leaving the audience worried for the main character Clarice as it’s now all
down to her. This is effective because the audience still get the climax that has been
building up for minutes, but it’s completely different to what they expected, keeping the
audience on their toes and suspenseful, making them feel excited and scared to see what
happens next.
4. Rocky III Training Montage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4soF2wigKSM
This montage from Rocky III (1982) follows typical codes and conventions for a montage
because it uses editing techniques such as cutting through weeks/months’ worth of training
as well as making some clips slow motion. They do this to manipulate time and show
progression in the character. Slow motion is used when Rocky finally beats Creed in a race
to show the determination and effort put in by both characters. The slow motion
manipulates time to make the audience feel the accomplishment and happiness in the
characters which is effective because it allows the audience to relate to the characters and
feel the emotions for themselves. I feel like this montage is more effective than the
Battleship Potemkin montage because when I watched it I felt more happy for the
characters in Rocky compared to how sad I felt for the characters in Battleship Potemkin.
This is because the montage in Rocky has more of a build-up, starting by showing failure in
the character which eventually, by the end of the montage, turned into success. Therefore I
can tell how much effort Rocky put in which made me feel happier by the end that he
succeeded. Whereas with Battleship Potemkin, even though I did feel bad for the characters
throughout the montage, it felt very chaotic and it took me a while to really get what was
going on.
5. Team America Montage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhWiTORp22k
This montage from Team America (2004) is unique because it actually explains the reason
to use a montage in the song for comedic effect. The song includes the following points:
The montage shows multiple things happening at one time to remind the audience of
everything that’s going on, every shot shows little improvement because showing it all
would take too long, montages are used to show the character go from a beginner to a
pro, and fading out in a montage makes it feel like more time has passed. The song also
mentions the Rocky montage which I mentioned before. While all of these points are very
true as to why they used a montage here, the fact that they’re doing this in a song is
funny and fits the theme of the filmwhile keeping the audience interested, as well as
3. actually being effective towards showing what’s happening in the montage and assuring
the audience knows that everything happening is happening quick, in a short amount of
time, and the character is going from beginner to pro.
