My Thoughts On Linearity

Thoughts on Linearity

Before non-linear editing started around the 1990’s, there was linear editing.

Linear video editing is defined as a “video editing post-production process of selecting, arranging and modifying images and sound in a predetermined, order sequence. Regardless of whether it was captured by a  video camera, tapeless camcorder, or recorded in a television studio on a video tape recorder the content must be accessed sequentially."

 Non-linear editing (NLE) is defined as “a method that allows you to access any frame in a digital video clip regardless of sequence in the clip. The freedom to access any frame, and use a cut-and-paste method, similar to the ease of cutting and pasting text in a word processor, and allows you to easily include fades, transitions, and other effects that cannot be achieved with linear editing.”

For the most part video editing software has replaced linear editing; software programs such as Avid and Final Cut Pro (FCP).

                Being able to juxtapose and manipulate images (NLE) helps us as editors create stories and develop characters in film. Editors are the true story tellers. Sure we have the director who directs the type of image and motions he/she wants captured on film or the camera crew that captures the image that attracts our eyes, but it’s the editors that sew together the story. With non-linear editing you are able to pick and choose which scenes or moments you want to use in your film. That way you can have multiple takes and choose which one you think fits best. Being able to pick a choose from a plethora of images, rather than taking one shot and trying to match it perfectly to the image you filmed before and hand cutting it perfectly using film, and juxtaposing them makes it easier to edit film. Plus you can create the perfect moment/scene. Say if the actor says one line great and the others not so great in one take and they say the other lines better in the other; the editor can just mesh the two together to create a great scene.

               

In films such as Night and Fog (Resnais, 1955), a documentary, and JFK (Stone, 1991), a drama history thriller, demonstrate the different possibilities linearity can create. In Night and Fog (Resnais) is a short documentary film about “The history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.” By using archived footage and juxtaposing them a certain way the editors created a powerful film. I felt myself looking away from the screen for a brief second when the scenes became too powerful. Images do speak louder than words. Sure they had a commentator for the film, but when you see the piles of dead bodies being pushed around by plows like they were garbage and the other decrepit bodies, it evokes different emotions such as sadness. Rather than a documentary film, JFK (Stone), a feature length film, a film about “a New Orleans District Attorney discovers there's more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story,” Stone created a film by utilizing actors, rather than archived footage, to create scenes that evoke different responses about a historical happening. Stone is able to manipulate time by using flashbacks, going against linearity, to create scenes that are key in the film.