Short Answer Questions

Question

1. What is distanciation? What common film technique is often used to create this effect?
Distanciation, a principle of disjunctive editing developed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht, describes the critical distance that is created when the viewer is made aware of how a work of art is put together. A specific distanciation technique is the jump cut, which creates gaps in the action and thus draws attention to the act of editing, causing the viewer to not only see what is taking place, but also to analyze how that action is depicted.

Question

2. What is continuity editing style and what functions does it serve?
Continuity editing style refers to a system of techniques that tell stories efficiently by constructing shot patterns and a logic and rhythm that mimic human perception and require minimal mental effort on the part of viewers. In a Hollywood film that has been edited for continuity and clarity—or, analytically edited—the audience is unaware of the techniques employed to create each scene.

Question

3. Describe some of the cultural practices that anticipated the structure of film editing. In what ways did they anticipate film as we know it today?
Cave drawings, Assyrian reliefs, tapestries, and religious triptychs anticipated cinematic editing techniques by telling stories in different ways through image juxtaposition. Most notably, Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey broke down the movement of people and animals by using chronophotography, taking a series of photographic images and printing them in sequence to analyze their movements. Additionally, the connection between images and light—a key component of filmmaking—was anticipated by the seventeenth-century magic lantern, which was used to create supernatural illusions, and the late nineteenth-century invention of photographic slides, which were used to illustrate lectures.

Question

4. What is parallel editing (or crosscutting) and what cinematic function does it serve? Provide an example.
Parallel editing is used to create a film that alternates between two or more strands of simultaneous action or story events. This alternation is often used for chase or rescue sequences. In The Lonely Villa (1909), shots of female family members isolated in a house alternate with shots of villains trying to break in and with shots of the father rushing to rescue his family.

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5. Who is most closely associated with montage editing? What were the intended purposes of this style?
Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein developed the editing style of montage in both theoretical writings and in practice. For Eisenstein, montage referred to a style that emphasized the breaks and contrasts between images joined by a cut. When two images are juxtaposed through the techniques of montage they create a “collision” intended to provoke the viewer emotionally, perceptually, or intellectually.