rohit SAYS,
Mr. X gets a call from his girl friend Ms.Y to come and pick her up at the airport.
Cut
‘X’ is waiting outside the airport on his bike as ‘Y’ joins him and they ride out into the sunset.
This is what you see on screen and from that you infer that ‘X’ rode his bike to the airport. X’s bike ride need not be shown on screen; this is what a cut basically does, save time and create the film’s pattern.
However, like any other invention a ‘cut’ also has been put through a lot of experimentation and every great film moment is created using innovative cuts. In this post I would like to comment on two of the greatest cuts.
Deer Hunter, 1978
Directed by Michael Cimino
Screenplay by Deric Washburn
Mike (played by Robert De Niro) and his friends ride to the mountains to hunt a deer. They come back with a deer on the car’s bonnet and settle down in a bar owned by one of the friends. Celebration liquor is launched into the air. But one of the five goes to the piano and starts playing something beautiful. The rest of them start listening. As the solo ends, the guy who played it looks at his friends who were listening to the melody, transfixed. The camera is at rest on the four listeners..
Cut
Mike is lying face down in Vietnamese soil.
2001 : A Space Odyssey, 1968
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by S.Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke
A film with ‘Space’ in its name is expected to start with space crafts and galactic skies. But, being a film made by one of the most insane minds in history, it starts with two groups of apes fighting over a water puddle.
And then the leader of the winning group throws a bone into the air celebrating victory, the bone is floating in the air, floating in the air and as it comes down..
Cut
A space craft is floating in the dead black of the distant skies.
