Planning Editing Styles - Miss Georgiou

Editing in any film is used to create a certain effect and make the audience feel something. In thrillers, if used correctly, editing can be used to tell the audience who the villain/victim is. It can also help the scene to flow and/or build suspense. Planning editing is therefore essential as otherwise, you won't know if the sound and cinematography match, and so cannot film. Editing styles can make a thriller more conventional, and so my group and I decided the styles we wanted to use were;

• Jump cut 
• Fade
• Continuity Editing 
• Montage

Jump Cut - 

A jump cut is when the film suddenly focuses on something. In my opening sequence, we wanted to use jump cuts at the beginning of the clip when the little sister is walking through the forest. This would allow us to vary our editing styles, making the thriller more interesting for viewers. It would also mean the audience could re-focus on the girl after every edit, which should allow them to find things to relate to her by. This will help them to build a relationship with this character from the second the film starts, which will be beneficial later on in the opening as they will be able to sympathise easily with her character. Jump cuts are conventional as they speed up the clip, giving the idea of 'jumping' forward each time,which creates the idea of danger in the clip. It means the audience are not given time to process what they are seeing, which builds tension, making the audience nervous as to what is to come next.  

Fade - 

A fade is a simple, but effective editing style to use, which involves the image fading into the next image or into black, which would suggest an ending to a scene. In my thriller opening, we wanted to use fades frequently as a clear way to show the transitions between normality and the flashbacks, as otherwise the audience wouldn't understand our narrative. This fade would also fit with the title of our thriller opening 'Nostalgia', which means 'longing for the past', and so this would foreshadow that something has happened to make the girl want to remember her past. This makes the audience nervous due to the enigma created of what actually happened, and the suspense made throughout, which makes the narrative conventional.

Continuity Of Editing - 
We wanted to use this style of editing throughout our thriller opening as it would allow the events to flow. It would give the impression that the edits are motivated by the events in the reality on screen. We decided we didn't want to overwhelm the audience with using a different editing style each time, and thought that for some parts of the opening, the narrative, mise-en-scene, cinematography and the sound used was powerful and effective enough, without the need of an edit. We thought our narrative wasn't stereotypical to thrillers, as it didn't focus on the attack and death of the victim. We therefore didn't want to change this by using stereotypical editing styles.


Montage - 

A montage is the speed of the editing, where the shots are quickly juxtaposed together to create excitement. We wanted to use this throughout the underwater scene to increase the pace of the footage, to build tension. The idea was that the montage replicated how the girl was feeling at that point. She would be confused and shocked, and everything would have happened very quickly; we wanted this to be reflected onto the audience so that they would understand the little girls emotions better, and thus feel closer connected to her. It would also allow us to vary the editing style again, making the underwater scene stand out and engage the audience. The build of suspense that will be created through the excitement of the clips put together is conventional as it makes the audience sit on edge and eager to know what will happen next.


I think the different styles of editing we have planned to use will make our thriller opening more interesting, which will help to keep the viewers engaged and interested. The use of the montage and the jump cut, will help to fasten the pace of the clip, which would automatically build tension as the audience don't have time to think about what they have just seen. This makes it conventional as the audience will feel overwhelmed and nervous as to what will happen next etc.

Planning the editing styles has helped me as it has given me and group a very clear idea of how we want to present things, and the response we are trying to get from the audience. The planning of this has been beneficial as it matches the images and sounds we have already planned, meaning the making of our thriller opening should run smoothly. By planning in this much detail, it has meant that I can now clearly visualise how I want our thriller opening to be, and should just be a case of trial and error to see if the effects are as good as we imagined them to be.