Essay On Editing - Good Will Hunting

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Editing Essay. Discuss in detail how editing styles and techniques (both conventional and unconventional) contribute to the storytelling in a feature film of your choice. The film I have chosen to do this essay on is ‘Good Will Hunting’. This film was directed by Gus Van Sant, starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams and Ben Affleck. The first scene I am going to look at is the scene in which Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon, explains why he does not want to work for the NSA. This scene takes place one hour and 28 minutes into the film. The opening shot of this scene is of a tall building, this is the establishing shot, and we can tell from this shot that this is the location. Something I noticed about this shot was that the audio from the next shot started before we see the image of the next shot, i.e. we hear Will talking before we see him along with the sounds of traffic that go along with the shot of the building. This kind of cut is used to form anticipation for the next shot. It then cuts to a shot of Will Hunting in his interview with the people of the National security agency. It is a master shot of all the people in the room. Will is being interviewed by two men, one beside him and one in front of him behind a desk ( the interviewer). The audio runs smoothly from one shot to the next telling us that it was an overlapping cut, the image was cut but not the audio, this allowed for the audio to run in seamlessly with the incoming shot. The master shot in this scene really focuses on the man behind the desk as we are able to see the front of him and only the back of Will and the other man. The man behind the desk is the primary speaker in the shot so our attention is drawn to him. There is great match on action here as Will motions with his hands as he is speaking, and we can see this continuing in the next shot, which is a mid shot of Will. . This kind of
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