Editing as Punctuation

Editing as Punctuation

• "If [two characters] are in the same shot, I can say that they are united (by being in the same shot) or separated by the space between them..." - David Bordwell, Making Meaning.
• Meaning is subjective, it depends on the context and reinforces it.
• vulture.com/2014/01/best-punctuation-marks-literature-nabokov-eliot-dickens-levi.html
• Punctuation in literature is used to show what the writer is thinking
• Therefore, film 'punctuation' -types of cuts mostly- can be used to create the same effects.
• (acting is also a form of punctuation but comes under theatre more than editing).
• "My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three..."
• In literature this would stop the reader in order to add the casual detail of his mother's death.
• In film, this line could be interpreted as a cutaway for "(" then a flash cut for ",", mirroring how it seems on the page.
• A cut between shots can be used additively: 
• e.g "knife + a heart = 'sorrow'" - Einstein Sergei, Film Form.
• "Montage is an idea that arises from a collision of independent shots" or "a concrete word next to a concrete word yields an abstract image - Einstein Sergei, Film Form.
• Ellipses can be narrative, such as a sudden jump forward in time, or suggestive of something missing, like a scissors insert, or an abrupt ending.
• An 'editing ellipsis' can also be showing a passing of 'pure time' -shown through a abnormally long take, or freeze-frames on points of extreme importance (e.g death).
• Most importantly the insert of a vase between the shots of a happy woman to sad woman in Late Spring.
• "One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea - but why always Dorothea?"
• Freeze-frame for narrative intervention (although a true 'narrator' isn't always necessary)
• A 'reverse' of the film is also defined as a sort of hyphen - Sliding Doors.
• Caesura in literature is used to show discomfort through the break in the line. In film, the insertion of 'wrong' cuts can also be used to create disruption, such as;
• Jump cuts between what should be a constant shot- discomfort.
• Split screen between characters near each other- distant created between characters who should be 'closer'.
• Dissolves when a straight cut should be- monumental.


• “It is that which at this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper, mark it with these volutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one.” - draws attention to the fact that it is a medium.
• Replicated by media through deliberately obvious transitions, e.g fade to red.
• Sans Soleil draw attention to the medium through the used of black screens interjecting clips, suggesting it is part of a thought process. "If they don't see happiness, at least they'll see the black".
• "A shot presents us with the idea, or a sequence of ideas, and the cut is a 'blink' that separates or punctuates those ideas" - blink punctuates thoughts, so cuts guide the 'blink' and so suggest the progression of these ideas, creating abstract thoughts.