5 Principles of Editing

5 Principles of Editing

Vsevolod Pudovkin was a film maker who began in the 1920, a few years later he wrote a book called film techniques and film acting. The techniques that appear in the book are still used to this day and was a great influence on the film industry. The five techniques are as follows:


1. Contrast -  This is cutting between scenes of two different scenarios to highlight the contrast between the two. For example if you saw scenes from a really well off family and then show scenes of a very poor family you would see the contrasts between the two families.


2. Parallelism - This links two different unrelated clips together by cutting between them and focusing on parallel features. For example one clip of a farmer picking apples, the cutting scene to some apples in the super market.


3. Symbolism - This would link two different scenes which share the same symbolic message. For example a scene of a group of people getting beaten by the police unfairly then a scene of animals getting slaughtered. The technique links the two together.


4. Simultaneity - This technique builds suspense and is used a lot in Hollywood. the technique involves cutting for two simultaneous event to create mood. E.g. a car chase cutting to the gear stick being changed then cutting to the speedometer then cutting to the tires spinning.


5. Leit Motif - This is using a shot to create a code of give the view a signal of what is going to take place. E.g. in the movie Jaws, Spielberg shows a shot from the sharks point of view looking up at the swimmers on the surface. Each time this happened it gave the viewer a signal that the shark was going to attack. 
Below is an example of principle 5 with the shot looking up to the surface.