The Cross-Cut and Parallel Action

Remember the Godfather? Well, it is hard to forget, with the horse head in bed and the chill that Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is exuding in this top performance. But, I believe the movie is not as good as it is, just because the actors did their job good. No, the way they cut the scenes and the movement of the camera is extraordinary.

Let’s examine the Baptism scene in the Godfather with a fine tooth-comb

You can not ignore, the cutting from the church to prepare the gun. Back to church then other action is going on and back to church etc. This kind of film editing is called Cross-Cut or Parallel Action.

This sort of film editing is used to give a scene, which would be boring on its own (a Baptism in church), a thrilling and exciting effect. It is used to build up excitement.(GABE MOURA 2014)

To clarify the definition of each term, I found Reisz book Technique of Film Editing, 2nd Edition:

“CROSS-CUT. To intermingle the shots of two or more scenes in the course of editing so that fragments of each scene will be presented to the spectator’s attention alternately.

PARALLEL ACTION. Device of narrative construction in which the development of two pieces of action is represented simultaneously by showing first a fragment of one, then a fragment of the other, and so on alternately.” (Reisz 2009)

The previous Godfather scene is one out of the four basic techniques of the Cross-Cut in Gaudreault’s Journal Article Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting. Cinema Journal.

“Cross-cutting of simultaneous actions: By the sustained intercutting of

two actions, A and B, presented successively but alternately on the

screen, as: A-B-A-B-A-B, etc.” (Gaudreault 1979)

To compare other ways of Cross-cutting, we have a different scene of the Godfather

You see what they did there?

Instead of just talking about, who Sollozzo is and what he is capable of, he is getting introduced visually beforehand and the cross-cutting goes on until they meet face to face. Felt the excitement?

If you’re thinking about making a movie and want to make rather boring scenes more exciting, then this is one out of many ways to do it.

 References

GABE MOURA, 2014. Parallel Editing [viewed 21.02. 2018]. Available from: http://www.elementsofcinema.com/editing/parallel-editing/

GAUDREAULT, A., 1979. Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting. Cinema Journal, 19(1), 39-59

REISZ, K., 2009. Technique of Film Editing, Reissue of 2nd Edition. 2nd ed. Burlington: Taylor & Francis

 

The Importance of Documentary Research

Throughout the last couple weeks, I made myself more familiar with documentaries and found out what are the key components to a successful documentary. What I learned in university is that the research is the heart of the documentary. And I asked myself

Why do we need to research in the first place? Can the research help the final edit of the film? And what is their relation?

Photo by Smart on Unsplash

To start the documentary, you’ll need to find a subject for your film. Once this is done, it is important to do some profound research about your subject. The research isn’t done by only going online and reading about it. Using all resources like libraries, journals, articles, archives, and speaking to experts will give the research more depth. The research process might last the whole production of your movie, but it is crucial that you know your subject area as well as possible. This step of your documentary will take from the overall to the explicit and will help you to set the fundamentals for putting your ideas into a practical documentary film.

There is more than one reason why you should have an in-depth research for your topic.

1. Without much knowledge about your topic, it probably won’t become a good film. Research is a form of preparation that will help to find the focus of your film.
2. The more information you have, the easier it will be to “facilitate engagement and rapport building with your subjects.” (Glynne, 2008)
3. If you want your film to be financially supported, you need to prove that you know your subject well and convince them that you know what you’re going to do. Likely you’ll need to explain your subject in greater detail and the more you know, the more convincing you appear.
4. While researching you’re already getting ideas on how to structure your film and you will know which resources are available. That will help to script your film and which visual medium (interview, pictures, etc.) you’re going to use. (Glynne, 2008)

I have noticed these steps during my research of Evacuees in WW2. While doing research, I had all these ideas in my mind of how to structure the film and what I can include to make the film more visually interesting. As the subject is about past events, the best medium would be an interview with somebody who has been evacuated. Therefore, I needed to plan what the interview is going to include and what questions will get the most information out of him. The editor Steve Audette said in an interview once

“There’s a long period of research, reading, talking and making draft story boxes, where we try to figure out the story and therefore the beats before we go into the edit room, because you’ve read everything, done your journalistic homework to such an extent that you know almost what people are going to say, generally. They may say even cooler stuff in the interview, but you know basically what their position is.”

Photo by Radek Grzybowski on Unsplash

To sum up, research is an ongoing process and crucial to find the focus of your documentary, to make a good film. It can help the final edit by visualizing ideas that can be put in action during the post-production. To be well-informed about your subject, let’s you look more professional and you will know what to expect from your topic. Also, once you know a lot about your topic, you can make other people curious about your documentary and have more viewers and therefore get more feedback from the audience, to better yourself for the future.

Reference

Editing Documentary – Interview with Editor Steve Audette ACE 2017. [viewed Feb 8, 2018]. Available from:https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/editing-documentary-interview-with-editor-steve-audette/

GLYNNE, A., 2008. Documentaries…and how to make them. Harpenden: Kamera Books