'Breathless' (1960), Jean Luc Godard. Key Moments.

Scene Recreation - Breathless
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- The huge cross fade as we transition to the car.
- The loud car horn as a car flies by.
- The change in music when he shoots the sun.

- When he drives away from the roadworks.
- After he has shot the policeman the music stops but then builds again as he runs away.

Apologies for the video. Its the only one I could embed.

Ingma Bergman 'Wild Strawberries'

Excellent tension building.
Key moments :
- The cut to the wide angle shot after the heartbeat builds.
- The moment the odd looking man drops down dead.
- When the coffin falls from the cart and it cuts to the bodies arm hanging out of the coffin.
- The cut back to him in bed after he has nearly been dragged into the coffin by himself.

"Chance and its functions"

- Zero point cinematic style, trying to cover everything without trying.
- Editing has a key role in writing film.
- The accidental sometimes creates better shots than planning.
- Classic Hollywood continuity.
- Sound film creates stars and becomes 'star-driven'.
- Sound film removes the 'accidental' defect.
- Describes 'rebellion' against many film movements including Cinema Verite and Dogme 95.
- Says all these wanted to take film away from the Hollywood sound and studio films and get films back into the real world, on location.

- 'Nightmail' (1936) was controlled. It was a fully promotional 'documentary'. The actors were told to rock back and forth to make it look as though they were on a train but in fact they were in a studio.
- 'Louisiana Story' (1948) consisted of beautiful, flowing external shots with music, but when inside dealing with dialogue the everything is wooden and static.
- 'Jazz Dance' (1954) used sounds to make it look like it was all synch-sound but was in fact non-synch. This allowed the cameraman to be less weighed down by the huge heavy equipment.

'Requiem for a Dream'

I couldn't find the exact scene I wanted but thought this trailer resembles it very well. There is a sequence toward the end of the film which I believe is edited superbly and is purely emotive. There are sharp fast cuts between all the main characters in the film that expresses their downward spiral to toward the low depression of life. I personally think this is one of the greatest films ever made and by a director I really admire, Darren Aronofsky.

Key skills an elements in editing.

- Constructing an edit is a PROCESS not just A-Z, it all needs developing.
- Use an idea or strategy and stick to it so there is a sense of styl and it flows.
- Always remember that we are working toward a whole sequence not just a couple of shots.
- 'Moments' are the 'dramatic tension' around which an editor works.
- Always mark in and mark out, never drag and drop....work to the frame.
- Walter Murch - He completes 1.5 cuts per day. Spend the majority of time looking and thinking.
- We are directing the film for a second time. We are the 'new eye' exclusively dealing with cinematic space.
- Vsevolod Pudovkin used a range of shots thus bringing editing further and developing cinematic space.