Graphic Match

This week I will look at the editing techniques we plan to use in our film, and how editors use these techniques to connote meanings.

Graphic match is a technique used in editing where one shot cuts to a shot with a similar image - a famous example being the match of the drain and the Marion Crane's eye in the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho', which was edited by George Tomasini. The shot of the drain and then the eye suggests ideas about the life leaving Crane, like the water down the drain, and her body becoming empty and lifeless.

This is an editing technique we will be using in our short film, so I want to familiarise myself with it's use by editors in film. It uses consecutive shots to covey meanings, taking ideas from Soviet Montage, a type of montage used where one shot being put next to another, often more emotive shot, can give the shots a different meaning altogether.

Another famous example is in Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', which was edited by Ray Lovejoy. An ape throws a bone into the air, which transitions into a shot of a space station, suggesting that man has evolved, and also connoting the change in the time setting.

Like most other editing techniques, graphic match is easy to spot in many films today when you know what you're looking for.

It can be seen clearly in Wes Anderson films, such as the opening of 'Fantastic Mr Fox' (edited by Andrew Weisblum, Ralph Foster and Stephen Perkins), to show that the viewer is 'entering' the storybook.

In our short film, we will graphic match the images of the clock to people in the waiting room's blank and expressionless faces, emphasising the protagonists nervousness as everyone around him seems to be almost machine like, as these graphic matches will juxtapose with the protagonist's face, which will be much more emotive, using ideas from Soviet Montage to create tension in our film.