Comic book films and action movies tend to use a fast-paced style of editing combined with close framings and jittery camera movement. The editing has been dubbed post-classical or hyper-editing, while the camera movement is referred to with the derogatory term “shaky cam.” I have also heard this obvious, inelegant style called “chaos cinema” or “intensified continuity.”
Hyper-editing is antithetical to the classic continuity editing innovated by D.W. Griffith and cemented by hundreds of directors over nine decades in Hollywood. Continuity editing prides itself on establishing a clarity of space and logic of action, which pulls the audience into the film, making them participants in the narrative. Viewers identify with the characters, bonding with them. Bona fide suspense is created when the characters are in danger, because viewers can see where the danger is in relation to the characters. The performance of the stars, as well as mood and tone, are part of the experience, which is enhanced by continuity. Hyper-editing trades spatial clarity, star turns, and mood for a visceral experience that is forgotten as soon as it is viewed. Small wonder it appeals to adolescent boys whose attentions spans can be measured in nano-seconds.
Though dismissed by some and defended by others, hyper-editing is actually an extension of (or, a debasement of, depending on your point of view) a very old technique. What’s new is that it has been tailored to action-driven genres that traditionally were dependent on the clarity and logic of continuity. Hyper-editing is actually an extension of montage, the approach to editing innovated by Russian silent filmmakers from the 1920s. Sergei Eisenstein steals the spotlight in film history books as the premiere innovator of montage, but my favorite Russian director is Dziga Vertov. His masterwork, Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which is available as part of FilmStruck’s Cinema Passport: U.S.S.R. theme, represents a high point of montage editing. If you want to be a cinephile, at some point, you have to dip your foot in the cold, cold waters of montage. Man with a Movie Camera is a great place to start, and Vertov is an excellent teacher.
The idea behind continuity, or Hollywood-style, editing is the illusion of continuous action. It’s the illusion that one shot picks up where the previous left off in space and time. Old-timers called it invisible editing because scenes were so logical, so fluid, so smooth that viewers did not notice the editing. This is perfect for movies that create sympathetic characters that viewers identify with in gripping or exciting stories that move forward in time. The idea behind montage is juxtaposition; that is, how does one shot impact the shot next to it. A series of similar shots are edited together to create an effect, induce a feeling, or suggest an idea. The editing is noticeable, obvious, and paced much faster.
Man with a Movie Camera is a documentary that chronicles a day in the life of a modern Russian city. The film begins in the morning as the city comes alive; it concludes at the end of the day. It belongs to that genre of nonfiction film called the city symphony, in which major cities were depicted on film during the prosperous 1920s—i.e., modern metropolises captured via the modern medium of cinema. At the very least, Man with a Movie Camera is a historical document that pins down a moment in Russian history after the Revolution. Of course, it was Soviet propaganda; it paints the new Soviet Union as a thriving, modernized, urban world with a highly efficient work force.
Man with a Movie Camera effectively uses montage to get that idea across. A scene in a cigarette factory shows a worker packaging cigarettes. The scene consists of an accumulation of shots of the worker doing her job; they are cut together at a rapid pace to suggest her skill and efficiency. The effect is not only visually exciting, it’s fun to watch. The sensation of speed and the idea of efficiency are products of the montage editing; there isn’t a narrator to spoon-feed viewers with facts and figures, or to tell you the “story” of the factory worker. Viewers get the idea by processing the montage.
Montage requires more cognitive skill from the viewers; you have to pay attention to the juxtaposition of shots. In one scene, a series of shots shows a couple getting a marriage license at city hall. The final few shots in that collection are cut into the next series of shots, which are of a couple getting a divorce. Shots of a woman giving birth are gradually cut together with shots of a funeral. The cycle of life is part of daily life in a city. During the divorce segment, Vertov cuts in shots of two streetcars moving along on tracks that are side by side; the tracks part, moving the streetcars in opposite directions. It’s the perfect metaphor for a marriage that has gone south.
In another scene, the thriving work force of Russia is suggested by a montage of hands working at various jobs—a manicurist, a barber, a woman using a sewing machine, the cinematographer cranking the camera that is shooting the very film we are watching, and the editor who is splicing it together. My favorite part of Man with a Movie Camera is the inclusion of filmmaking into the daily routine of the modern city. By intercutting shooting and editing into montages of people working, the idea is that film is a vital part of Soviet productivity. It is also enlightening to watch how editing is done, and to learn how editing makes meaning. Vertov uses editing to teach us about editing.
By the way, “Dziga Vertov,” which translates as “spinning top,” was a pseudonym for Denis Kaufman. Vertov’s brother, Mikhail Kaufman, is the cameraman we see onscreen as he grabs impossible-looking shots from crazy locales—under trains, on the roofs of factories, in coal mines. In one scene, he shoots a horse and carriage from a moving automobile as the car races alongside the galloping horse. Kaufman is standing on the edge of the open convertible car, cranking his camera, which is on a tripod that is balanced between the front and back seats. At first I thought he was standing on the car’s running board, but he’s not. He is balanced on the thin edge of the car’s frame, just behind the driver. You need to see it to believe it. The resulting shots have the immediacy and fluidity of Steadicam but not the jittery agitation of shaky-cam. Mikhail Kaufman confirms my belief that cinematographers are the cowboys of the film industry, which is why I have secret crushes on all of them.
A great deal of thought, artistry, and purpose went into the construction of Man with a Movie Camera, because each juxtaposition of shot to shot was deliberate. That kind of thoughtful deliberation is necessary for this style of editing to work in story-driven, character-based Hollywood films. A handful of directors understand this, and their interpretation of montage-inspired hyper-editing works well—as in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012). For my money, the only director who consistently used this technique intelligently was Tony Scott [re: Domino (2005); Unstoppable (2010)]. While some scholars and critics try to mount a defense of the editing used in such cinematic train wrecks as the Transformers franchise, you need only go back to the Russians to understand why so much of contemporary hyper-editing is thoughtless, not thoughtful.
Susan Doll