Grammar of the Edit, 2nd Edition

Introduction

Every motion picture you see and television drama you watch has been edited. Every commercial, news report, and talk show has been edited. Almost every presentation of motion imagery, whether it is fiction, non-fiction, or a melding of the two, has been edited — cut down, re-ordered, padded out, massaged, sweetened, and tweaked — to derive the final presentation version. That final version may be exactly what the creators set out to make or it may be entirely different in feel, tempo, information, and emotional impact, but no matter what, the editor helps make it so. It is, then, the job of the editor to take the materials created during production and manipulate them to form the best possible final version that will meet the goals ...