Film Editing 101: Eye-Blinks
We’ve been going through my notes from my Editing 1 class that I took in Film School from Professor Gerstein. Today, I’ll share an extremely practical tip about eye-blinks.
When someone’s eye blinks, the window to his soul is closed. It distances you from the person. Avoid closed eyes and lazy eyes on the cut. It has a subconscious effect on the viewer. Cutting on an eye blink is not wrong but it must only be used intentionally and carefully.
I make it a habit to go back through my edit when I’m finished with a scene and skip from cut to cut checking the actors’ eyes for blinks.
About a month ago, I went to see Scorsese’s Shutter Island. This movie is full of “bad” cuts. But they are in there on purpose. If you’ve seen the movie, you know why. The plot/story drove all the decisions – including the edits. Like the movie or not, that’s pretty cool. You gotta love Scorsese. I’m looking forward to seeing the film again when it comes out on DVD so I can look at the cuts more closely – including the eye blinks.
Can you think of times when it would be good to cut on an eye blink?
never thought of that – then again, I never did a formal editing course.
I guess one good time to cut on a blink is when you cut from a close up of the person to the pov of the person included with an appropriate transition to simulate the eye opening?
that or when you cut to an angle where a shadow sneaks past the ‘blinker’ like it was part of the reason for missing the baddy.
Those are good ones, Phillip. Thanks for sharing. And don’t feel bad, I only took one formal editing course and I’ve posted just about all I learned. Got a few more coming and you’ll have it all.