A lot of movies violate the seemless edit rule and jump cut, leading to a mismatch in continuity. A lot movies do this intentionally. There were a few times that I wanted to do it intentionally but everyone said that it didn't look right, or that it looks accidental rather than intentional. Yet Hollywood movies do it all the time, so what do they do different? I assume that there are rules, even when it comes to breaking the rules, therefore.
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Question about breaking the editing rules appropriately.
- Thread starter harmonica44
- Start date
Motivation is the key. In the edit, your goal is to show the audience what they need to be seeing to further the story of the movie. In each shot, is the speaking more important, or is the reaction. Use your decision to guide what you're showing the audience.
There is no magic formula of how you should cut and when. A lot of it comes from experience and a developed feel for cutting. Do what feels right to you. Make your vision. Ask for feedback. Take notes. Try again.
That's the essence of filmmaking.
Sure. I can recut a whole scene like that and post it on here for feedback, in a few months, once I am done other projects. I'll see if it works!
Dialogue has been shot, edited and redone to death in any way possible. There's no real interesting new way to shoot it anymore... and people like things that are interesting.
But to what you said, yes it's a little distracting to never see the person talking and it can somewhat ruin the scene.
Sometimes there is a very good reason to do it like that. For example: You screen a movie and something just didn't fit well with the audience, or something wasn't clear. An easy, cheap fix is to change the dialogue with an ADR session (its normally cheaper than reshooting the scene). The problem is you cannot have the actors saying one thing and the voices saying something completely different, so switching the perspective to all reaction shots, you can throw in whatever dialogue you need. It comes down to: Fix the movie or fix the scene. What's more important?
There are other reasons why it can happen too.
Then again, if it was intentionally done that way... that's another thing all together.
I'm thinking of just doing it deliberately for something different if audiences would find it acceptable. Of course you would still see someone talking in the master shots.