Daily Blog 1/1/18- Analyzing Editing Choices

Today, we continued analyzing editing choices in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings. Yesterday we left of identifying, through comments, different cuts and transitions, like jump-cuts, cutaways, dissolve, fade in/out, etc (look at the glossary from earlier for a full list). Today, we analyzed the narrative, thematic, and/or practical purposes of those choices. Mr. Rivers gave each group five cards with different editing choices on them. Each group picked examples of these editing choices from the clip to analyze for purposes on a google slides. Along with a time stamp and a short description of the cut or transition, each group wrote about what effects the editing choice had for the clip. Each of these statements were color coded: red for description of narrative purpose, blue for thematic purpose, and orange for practical purpose. Mr. Rivers emphasized specificity and clarity, like always. No one could simply say "this cut in action increased the tension of the scene" without explaining how or why.

I myself am fascinated by how these different types of cuts and transitions work in music videos. Music videos generally prioritize aesthetic over narrative, and they have more of a budget since the video is shorter, so there are often a lot of cool effects that have more metaphorical meaning than anything else. One effect I see and like a lot in music videos is the cuts on action/match cuts between scenes of the artist and/or dancers dancing with the same motions but with a different color scheme on and/or around them.  It creates a trick with colors that is really cool to look at and suggests a certain omnipresence of the artist in his/her own song. Another common choice is to put a bunch of cuts to and from different places very close together at the end to increase excitement.