Analysis of Editing Techniques in "The Fog of War" (2004)

This documentary is an extended interview with Robert S. McNamara--secretary of Defense to Kennedy and Johnson. Really a startling film, well done, horrifying at times, but I'll leave that to your viewing. I'm primarily concerned here with how the film-makers have used editing techniques to shape the meaning and theme of the film.

scene 2
In the second scene we are first introduced to McNamara. He's sitting on the right side of the frame and shown from the waist up. The question of editing is taken on directly. McNamara's first words in the film are spoken to someone on the other side of the camera, "Now I remember exactly the sentence that I left off on, I remember how it started and it was cut off in the middle"--and the frame goes black for a split second, the frame returns to McNamara--"but you can fix it up somehow later. I don't want to go back and introduce the sentence, 'cause I know exactly what I wanted to say." At this point someone shouts from behind the camera, "Go ahead!" To which McNamara responds, "Okay."

The film makers want the audience to know when the interview is being edited--they clue the audience in by showing a black frame when they cut and splice. They give the audience this first scene in order to make it clear that McNamara also wants the film-makers to "fix it up somehow later." This is all about establishing credibility with the audience, it is meant to create a sort of editorial transparency that will gain the trust of the audience. We are meant to believe that nothing is being put over on us.

Just a note: even though the film-makers are marking for us the points at which they have edited the interview, they are not telling us what they edited out. Again, that first scene with McNamara is meant to suggest they they are cutting and splicing only for reasons of clarity. I can only wonder at what the raw footage contains.

scene 3: play by play and analysis
Let's move now to scene three, which is meant to give the audience a historical sense of who McNamara was as a public figure. It all starts with a close up of a black & white photo (or detailed sketch?) of a much younger McNamara. Cut to a close up of the banner "Newsweek" with a headline: "Kennedy's Great Task: Picking the Very Best!" Cut to the whole cover of the same edition of Newsweek centered in the frame with the same picture of McNamara under the above headline.

Now a series of color photographs of the young McNamara in rapid succession including one under the banner "The power in the Pentagon." Now close ups of newspaper headlines, and super close ups of individual words embedded in articles that stretch beyond the frame, again in rapid succession: "The McNamara Monarchy," "whiz kid," "self-made," "the best man," "brainy," "The Revolution in the Pentagon," "McNamara's Way," "egotistical," a photo of McNamara in black & white shaking hands with a smiling J.F.K., McNamara's face alone on the cover of Time, a second Time cover featuring McNamara's face in the foreground and in the background a missile and Rodin's "Thinker."

News type again: "Kid McNamara," "computer-like," "cold logic," "precise, studious," "unshakable," "order from chaos," "Effective & Efficient." Cut to black & white film of McNamara walking from a circa 1960 Ford, past the flashes of photographers, and into an office building (the Pentagon? the White House?).

Cut to a color--clearly 'now'--shot of a silver calendar of October 1962 set on a wood base. The camera zooms into the calendar. The voice over is of an old (one can only assume) circa 1960s television interview. The interviewer notes that he has seen silver calendars on several cabinet secretaries' desks--the frame stays with the color/'now' image of the calendar. Cut to archival footage in black & white of McNamara holding the silver calendar and explaining that he received the calendar from J.F.K. as a reminder of the stand-off with Cuba. The frame goes black.

Now that you have the play-by-play of scene three, what does it all add up to? This is montage. Everything is editing. Everything that the audience sees is intentionally chosen by the film-makers. There intent here is to give their audience as detailed a sketch of McNamara as they can as quickly as possible in order to set up the interview--McNamara's status is established through the magazine covers, the photos with Kennedy, the rock star like entrance into the office. The close ups of the individual words from the press are used to paint a picture of how McNamara was viewed by the larger public--as brilliant, calculating, young, egotistical. And the calendar? It puts him in the close company of Kennedy at one of the defining moments of his presidency--this is made somehow more vivid by the shots of the calendar as it looks now.

Having read through the longhand description of scene three, it might interest you to know that the whole thing takes only one minute and ten seconds of screen time.

In closing, I just want to call attention to how this documentary doesn't hide its editing. The film makers allow the audience to see how the pieces are being stitched together, in hopes of gaining the audience's trust. Funny thing to me about the idea that being transparent about when you are cutting images/parts out or privileging one image over another (just by choosing to show it), is that somehow it works--even though the audience doesn't know what it is that the film-makers are choosing not to show them.

Analysis of a Scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1999)

In scene 12 of "Midsummer Night's Dream" we see villagers walk in to a clearing in a lush green forest to practice their play within a play--their version of Pyramus and Thisbe. In this scene they resolve two problems, (1) how they will bring moonlight into the great hall where they will eventually perform, and (2) how they will create the wall that divides the lovers one from the other and through which they talk.

Our focus will be on how the visual images are used by the director, and what messages they communicate.

The first shot is a 'body shot' of the fairy queen (Michelle Pfeiffer) asleep in a bed of flowers. The camera then pans down and away from her 'bed' revealing that she is sleeping in what appears to be a box suspended above the forest floor. An establishing shot shows the bed in the upper left corner of the frame as the villagers come towards the viewer from the middle right of the frame--they are moving into view through the foliage and their voices can be heard singing. The story of this play takes place in at least two worlds: that of the fairies, and that of human beings. Putting the queen's bed above the villagers creates a visual for the separation of these two worlds--creates different space for each of these worlds within the frame.

As the villagers come to the center of the frame, the camera moves to the right passing behind a bush/tree that hides the villagers completely from view for a moment. The camera continues to track until we come clear of the trees and can see the villagers again. Cut to a high angle shot of a dog biting Billy Bottom's (Kevin Kline) shirt sleeve playfully and being lifted off the ground as Bottom tries to get his shirt loose. The way the camera calls attention to the forest by putting it in between the audience and the actors serves to call extra attention to the forest as a kind of 'silent player.' The forest is important because it is the place in which the play/movie will bring the world of the fairies and the world of human beings together. Putting the forest between the audience and the actors also creates a sense that the actors are enclosed, maybe even swallowed up a bit by the forest. And the dog? I don't know, a change of focus for a moment, a bit of character development. These guys are funny, playful, average, and here's their pet dog to prove it.

Throughout the scene, we hear crickets in the background. The scene takes place at night, but I am unsure how they are creating the effect of night. I can't speak very well as to lighting effects. The scene appears dark and there aren't the long shadows of a direct light so the director must be filling in the shadows with a complementary light source.

Cut to a wide angle shot with the face of "the villager leader" close up and in the center of the frame. Bottom is over his right shoulder in the mid/background also with his face toward the camera. Leader is trying to stick the pole of a lantern into the ground and the lantern itself (with candle lit) is in the bottom right corner of the frame casting light up on Leader's face. The leader secures the lantern and turns away from the audience and toward Bottom so that the audience is looking over his shoulder. This is the first sequence in what becomes a pattern in this scene. The audience is shown Bottom set apart from the other player--in the background, over their shoulder. Then he is shown in the frame with them, then again alone in the frame. This begins to set up bottoms role in the larger play. He is transformed into a donkey just after this scene and sleeps with the Fairy queen. The shot choices here begin to suggest that "otherness of Bottom." They also make the fact that he is often somewhere outside of the frame when the others are in the frame into something that the audience will expect. This sets up the surprise when we go away from Bottom for a moment (in the next scene) and come back to him as he is being transformed into a donkey. We have come to expect that we can go away from him and come back to find him unchanged.

Cut to a mid shot of the other four villagers standing together. Cut back to a close up of Bottom, as he comes forward the camera settles into a position that peers just over "Thisbe's" left shoulder--this shot starts with Bottom alone and then moves to introduce his spatial relationship to"Thisbe". Cut to a head shot of the Leader raising his eyebrows and looking doubtful--the idea "Bottom is a bit of a fool" comes out loud and clear. The close up on the Leader is standard for showing internal feelings that other characters may not be aware of. In other words, the audience gets to know what the Leader is thinking, but Bottom doesn't.

Cut back to a head shot of Bottom that pulls back into a wide-angle shot with the lantern in the foreground, Bottom walking toward the camera/lantern from the middle ground, and the rest of the villagers in the background. Camera zooms into Bottom--a midshot--as he passes the lantern and walks to the right to where, as it happens, the Leader is standing. Now the camera is peering over the Leader's right shoulder which is in the bottom left corner of the frame and the midshot of Bottom is preserved. Camera tracks with Bottom and Leader as they walk a few steps--now we can see Bottom and the Leader in the foreground and the rest of the villagers in the background. Two other villagers join them in the frame then all four turn to walk away from the audience, and the camera pans down and to stage left focusing a mid shot on the villager in the black hat who is reading a small book. He stands and shouts to the others who we can see in the background as the camera pans upward. His left hand with the book juts out from the right side of the frame, Bottom's head is in the center of the frame as the whole group of them turn and come back toward Black Hat. Bottom takes the center position, and the rest of the villagers form a half circle around him--filling the frame. Bottom leaves the group, the camera stays where it is--focused on the other villagers. Cut to mid shot of Bottom. Cut back to the rest of the villagers. Cut to midshot of Bottom. This whole sequence reinterates that pattern of Bottom as separate, as Bottom set apart--and yet it's also clear that he's the audience focal point. The camera continues to go away from his face, but always return a few moments later. There's a also a sense created by all of the shots looking over someone's shoulder at Bottom, that the villagers are also an audience for Bottom--he is performing for them and not just for the external audience. This creates a set of layers: Bottom, the other villagers watching Bottom, the forest, the fairy queen over head, and the external audience.

Cut to Puck (Stanley Tucci) on a bicycle riding through the forest. A view is shown of the play practice viewed through the trees--apparently through Puck's eyes. We started the scene with a clear separation of the fairies and humans--represented by the bed in the treetops. Now we have a fairy on the ground using a human made machine. This is the beginning of the sequence in which Bottom is transformed into a donkey and has liaison with the fairy queen.

So goes the scene...

Why we should study media literacy

The current English curriculum in the St. Paul Schools focuses predominantly on traditional literacies: reading, writing--and to a lesser degree--speaking and listening. We're talking about classes in which students read the "classic" American novels, discuss them in class, and pen essays about them. This approach has become traditional because it has been largely successful in preparing generations of students for life in a world full of print media.

The print media are still with us, but--and I know you're aware of this--we have more and more digital media. Up to this point, we've treated the digital media much as we have traditionally treated print media--as static information published by someone else, an expert along with a team of editors, type setters, millions of pages of paper, and a large press--but that is changing. A wide audience is availible to all of us now. Given an internet connection, anyone can comment on anything and reach millions of computer users all across the globe. We don't have to be just consumers of information anymore, we can contribute directly.

This is the new democratic movement--blogs, wikis, podcasts, chat. In seventh century Athens, every citizen could vote on every city government decision. Discussions about city politics took place in the agora, or marketplace and had real effect because, again, everyone had a vote. The Athenians focused their education on what has come to be known as the trivium: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. These are the disciplines that teach how language works on it's most basic level (the sentence), how to effectively use language in debate or discussion, and how to evaluate and create persuasive messages.

The curriculum at Concord focused on five essential questions: Who is sending this message and what is the author’s purpose? What techniques are used to attract and hold attention? What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in this message? How might different people interpret this message differently? What is omitted from this message? The above essential questions were brought to bear on the following key areas of study: All included the formal study: (a) advertising, persuasion, andpropaganda; (b) the analysis and construction of news and nonfiction; (c) approaches to storytelling in dramatic fiction; and (d) the representation of gender, race, and ideology in media messages.

And here is the abstract showing a summary of the results:
Students who participated in a required yearlong Grade 11 English media/communication course that incorporated extensive critical media analysis of print, audio, and visual texts were compared with students from a demographically matched group who received no instruction in critically analyzing media messages. A nonequivalent group’s design examined students’ reading comprehension, writing skills, critical reading, critical listening, and critical viewing skills for nonfiction informational messages. Results suggest that media literacy instruction improves
students’ ability to identify main ideas in written, audio, and visual media. Statistically significant differences were also found for writing quantity and quality. Specific text analysis skills also improved, including the ability to identify the purpose, target audience, point of view, construction techniques used in media messages, and the ability to identify omitted information from a news media broadcast in written, audio, or visual formats (see the quantitative results in the chart provided at Hobbs & Frost 2003 above).

Students who studied media improved more than students who did not--they improved in the target areas of traditional English curricula and were able to apply their skills of analysis to a wider variety of texts.

Isn't this what we want for our students? That they they will be able to communicate effectively and more deeply understand the messages of others? Let's give them practice with the literacies that they will need to participate in the worldwide agora as full citizens with effective voices.