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Fast and numerous jump cuts: what's the deal?

One of the trailers before LOTR last night was so full of jump cuts, jiggling camera work, fast-zooms-transitioning-into-slo-mo-pans (there MUST be a technical description for this by now!), that I had to turn away from the screen. It was giving me a head-ache--and, I can't even remember what movie it was pushing.

Fast jump cutting is not necessarily bad--Psycho's shower scene succeeds primarily because of its fast cutting; Peckinpah packed more cuts into the final scene of The Wild Bunch than I care to count--but the trend today is toward so many editing tricks and techniques that I think it often takes away from the movie's impact.

I've seen some discussion of this in relation to the new digital editing stations and how they allow the editor to perform many, many more edits with much less work. I was also thinking that, what plays well on the small screen of an editing station does not necessarily translate to the bigger impact of a full-size theater screen, but then again editing stations have always had small screens. Maybe it's a combination of the digital and the small screen that results in the current (IMHO) dreck of overly (and POORLY!) edited movies.

Other thoughts?

John K.


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Topic - Fast and numerous jump cuts: what's the deal? - thegage 06:17:26 12/20/01 (7)


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