How Editing Can Ruin A Scene

The 1997 film Bean, based on the character Mr Bean, was on television recently, and I had noticed one of the scenes towards the end of the film had been tampered with to where it didn't make sense anymore.

The well known scene.

When the middle finger scene was shown on TV, the cut out the part where the biker gave Mr Bean the finger, and simply shown him driving off straight after Mr Bean takes his photo. Not long after, Mr Bean is shown giving the finger to everyone that him and David drive past. Without seeing the biker give Mr Bean the finger, and confusing it for a greeting, the scene didn't make sense.

The badly edited version for television.

Omitting the one section created a confusing version that simply makes Mr Bean look as though he had a mood swing, as the offensive gesture appears to come out of nowhere, and it then loses the humour that is generated.

Editing Contrast

Films normally have a set rule in which action scenes are quick paced with lots and lots of cuts, whereas a conversational scene would be far sower, with less cuts to accommodate the slower pace.

The Revenant is notoriously slow paced.

The Revenant, despite its overall slow pace, was very well received by critics and audiences; Leonardo DiCaprio even won his first Oscar for his acting in this feature. As mentioned before, the pace of this film is very slow, as a lot of scenes are dialogue based, relaxed, and quiet. The editor reinforces these ideas by using notably long takes compared to other films. This was a standout feature in a lot of scenes, including the famous bear fight scene.

This scene is all one entire take, lasting over 

2 minutes.

What you can take from this is that when you edit a particularly hard hitting or generally action oriented scene in a film, using one long take that gets close to the action can theoretically allow you to focus in on the action a lot better than if the editor chose to make the action sequences out of a lot of takes.

The pace may be affected by the lack of cuts, but the tension of having no cuts is greatly accentuated, and is excellent as this was most probably intended.

Walter Murch's Impact on Post Production

Walter Murch is widely regarded as one of the greatest editors in the modern age of film. Known for his work on the Godfather, Ghost and Apocalypse Now, Walter Murch's editing and sound design techniques distinguished career means that he is looked up to by a lot of budding editors in today's world.

Murch hard at work.

Murch's breakdown of how editing will work in a film involves a lot of areas that have to be covered, ranging from emotion to the story of the film itself.

With regards to emotion, Murch has always asked "Does this cut add or subtract emotion?" Murch believes that no matter what content you put into a film, what it all boils down to is how the audience reacts to it all; how does the audience feel after watching something you have created? 

"If they are feeling what you want them to feel all the way through the film, you’ve done about as much as you can ever do."

Rhythmically, an edit must be especially tight in order to reduce sloppiness and creating an unintended discomfort in the audience. 

“(a cut) occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and ‘right'.”

Eye Trace is also important, as the audience must be able to smoothly follow what the central focal point with ease,

The finger is the focal point here, and must be edited

on the movement in the next shot...

...like so

The 180º Rule is essential to be followed in most circumstances, as the audience's sense of space when watching a film is catered to when following the rule. An imaginary line must be drawn from one character to another, usually in a conversational scene. 

The camera must stay on one side of that line to keep the audience from being disoriented, unless you intend to and the the rule can be broken.

The Rule in action.

Very importantly, the edits you make must propel the story forward effectively. If a scene you are editing does nothing to advance the plot, it shouldn't be included; the audience will not want to see it.

Murch is definitely a figure to research into if one is looking for tips and rules of thumb for editing techniques and reasons for editing film scenes in a certain way.