Editing
The join between shots: cinema's only invisible code, until it decides to be seen.
- editing
- reference
- technical-code
The selection and joining of shots: cut, dissolve, wipe, fade, and the rhythms they build. Most editing hides itself (Continuity); the interesting moments are when it stops hiding. The constructive extreme — meaning manufactured between shots — has its own note: Montage.
What to look for
Average shot length and where it changes; what a cut joins and what it refuses to show; transitions that comment (dissolve, smash cut) versus transitions that merely continue.
Canonical cases
Psycho — the shower scene and The shower scene is built from 78 setups — editing as violence. The search montage's 41-second compression (Playback ↗). And the single most eloquent cut in early Scorsese: the smash cut out of Alice — the prologue, where 27 years and an entire aesthetic die in one splice — see You'll Never Know, then Mott the Hoople.