How does the seamless edit maintain continuity?
Crouching Tiger Essay Help
Paper details: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Choose ONE topic from below. Papers are required to include a thesis paragraph, specific examples and analysis in body, and a concluding paragraph.
1. Pick ONE action scene. Discuss the editing. How does the seamless edit maintain continuity? (Potential topics covered: matching movement between shots, screen direction, use of proxemics, length of the shot, rhythm and tempo)
2. Identify a minimum of 3 editing structures in the film, discuss in detail.
3. Discuss the role of the hero (s) in the film. There seems to be an interesting triangle, in which all three heroes are connected. (Green Destiny) How are they classic embodiments of the hero, How do they differ? Women play a large part in this film. How are they unconventional? Discuss the gender roles, and how they differ from and defy the traditional male dominated art (Wuxia). How does this introduce modern themes into a traditional culture? Is there a reflection of the Anti-Hero in the film? Discuss the mythic structure of the film. Consider the final image, does this suggest that a woman is a mythic hero? How?
4. This genre of film, referred to as Wuxia, embodies elements of martial arts and chivalry. Discuss one of the many ways in which this film reflects this genre. What ways does it defy it? Are there parallels to other genres? (requires familiarity/research into genre, Wuxia) Consider the traditional lineage of master and disciple. What is different? ANSWER Crouching Tiger Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) is one of the Chinese renowned films that rocked the market in the year 2000-2001, garnering a cumulative amount of over $200 million.
This films extraordinary success and market skyrocket are as a result of perfection in its editing which was structured in Match cut, flash cut, plastic cut, jump cut and intercutting. This work will entail elaborative discussion of these editing structures (Ling, Wang, Schamus, and Jung, p2). To beginners, match cut involves alteration of actions such that when an action is taking place in a given scene, the opposite of that occurs in a different scene. This editing structure has been correctly employed in the film where, as there were killings and fights in one scene, there was nursing of the wounded on the other scene. Direct cut is a structure that majorly involves the viewers direct linking. Lets take a tour, in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the governors daughter Jen-Yu skillfully and successfully manage to make away with the sword.
During her escape, the viewers tend to link her pathways which technically involved walls, rooftops, across buildings and down alleyways that sought to escape tight security to be leading to the right path which she took while coming in (Ling, Wang, and Schamus, and Jung, p7). In plastic cut, the eyes and brain are the primary targets of the editors and this they achieved through movement within the frame. Here, as the viewers eyes are attracted to a particular movement in the scene, a separate action more seamless cuts across and when a separate one is picked, the brain will automatically interpret that as continuous.
Back to the film in question, this kind of editing has been achieved through camera and objects. Flash cut secures the correctly used structure to drive the film to its climax. This kind of editing structure includes very short scenes that succeed each other quickly. During the great escape of Jen Yu, with the sword that she had stolen, the viewers are immediately taken to the other scene where Yu Shu Lien, a female warrior realizes the missing of the sword and seeks a way of retrieving it.
However short the two scenes seem to be, they mark the climax of the film as they directly link to the major theme of the film. That kind of timing is intentionally done by the editors to achieve their aim of creating suspense (Ling, Wang, and Schamus, and Jung, p10). Intercutting editing structure as well preferred in editing action films though it has not been used much in this film.
Usually it involves a creation of narrative to cut between two different scenes. However the use of this kind of structure is narrowly traced in some of the scenes in our film in question. Finally, the newly introduced structure which entails exaggeration at the cuts, Jump cut has as well been incorporated into this film; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon towards the end. The editors psychologically prepare the audience that the film is about to end. Though the work does not prove with enough evidence that it used the device, little traces are noted towards the end (Ling, Wang, Schamus, and Jung, p13).
In conclusion, this film still identifies with the worlds topmost films that have correctly applied several editing structures with several features that stagnates it as the worlds best action movies acted by the Chinese in the 19th century. References: Ling, Wang H, James Schamus, and Tsai K. Jung. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: [screenplay]. , 2000. Print.
