Post-production
Editing
I learnt different film shots and how people edit a film.
Editing is the process of taking various camera shots and cutting them together to create your story. How you place shots determines the meaning and audience understanding of what you are trying to portray with your story.
Classical narrative: Many television dramas – particularly soaps like Shortland Street use the classical narrative model for editing. This means they start with a 'wide shot' (WS). This may be an exterior shot followed by an interior shot. These WSs immediately let the audience know where they are.
They then cut to a 'middle shot' (MS), which shows the characters interacting in relation to one another. As the characters chat you may move into 'medium close-ups' (MCU) and 'close-ups' (CU) to show character reactions. If the characters are busy doing something that is important to the story (perhaps they are operating on a patient) then the CU is often used to highlight the characters' actions and/or reactions.
Wide shot (WS) |
Middle shot (MS) |
Medium close-up (MCU) |
Close-up (CU) |
You will also notice that over the last few years television drama is getting very tricky with its editing. For example have you seen the big budget shows like CSI where they have funny little whizzy shots of bullets piercing flesh?
Basic editing tips
It is a good idea to take note of these tips. Remember:
- movement for cutting
- entering/exiting from frame
- eye lines and screen direction
- importance of cut aways
- close-ups
- long interview – change shot size (and do so on questions – zooms are ugly and can cause a headache in editing)
- classical coverage – establishing WS, MS, MCU.