The Process of Editing an Action Sequence

Today I went to the library to find some books on action films that mainly focused on editing and cinematography. Like I said in my previous post, it is quite hard for me to find material such as books or reviews that solely relate to my chosen area of research with it being quite technical and relating to just one film genre. However I did find a book in Northumbria University library called 'The Technique of Film Editing - by Karel Reisz & Gavin Millar'. Reading this book has helped a lot within my research as it talks a lot about chase scenes, relating more to people chasing one another rather than car chases.

From reading this book not only has it taught me how to make an effective chase scene but it has told me in more detail how the process of a scene like this would be planned out, such as knowing exactly what sort of sound effects should be put in and what sort of music should be added to create more of an effect tense sequence. Whilst I was reading this book I came across a paragraph that I felt was quite interesting and useful to me as an editor, it basically described how cross cutting on screen from the man chasing to the man being chased keeps the conflict in front of the audience and the illusion of a continuous scene is preserved.

This is the full paragraph:

'The use of cross-cutting gives the director a unique instrument with which to suggest physical conflict on the screen. By alternately cutting from the an chasing to the man being chased, the conflict is constantly kept in front of the audience, and the illusion of a continuous scene is preserved. Yet this very asset presents problems to the editor which are in some ways more difficult than those faced in passages of straight storytelling where each cut merely continues the action of the previous shot. There is first the elementary difficulty of keeping the spectator clearly informed of what is going on. Since in many cases the pursuer may be a long way behind his victim, it may become necessary to cross-cut between locales which have no obvious visual connection. In such cases it is all the more important not to confuse the audience about the graphical relationship between the two parallel streams of action. There may sometimes be a temptation to cut an action sequence too fast in the attempt to generate greater excitement: if this involves confusing the spectator about the physical details of the scene, then the editor will have defeated his object.' 

Here is a copy of the extract from reel 10 of 'Naked City' showing the planning of music and voice overs that will be edited in at certain parts of the chase scene.

Here is the scene from reel 10

I have learnt quite a lot form reading this book as it has given me more of an insight into what sort of planning goes into a scene like the one above and how it all relates to creating an effective chase scene. Although reading books is not my favourite and most preferred choice of researching, today this has proven to me that researching through books is actually quite a useful method of research and also quite a detailed way of researching. I would definitely use this method again if I found the right book relating to my research.

I would like to finish off this post by showing you one of my favourite chase scenes which works really nicely with what I've been talking about with cross-cutting and with the right type of music over the top etc. I think that this clip from 'The Dark Knight Rises' is so well made and is very clear on how much detail has gone into this scene.