Bitter Little Twist - Editing Research

The director's (Paul Manning) vision for his film 'Bitter Little Twist', is one that falls into the 'experimental' category. By creating a church/religious setting, he wanted to explore the choice the male protagonist had between sticking with his religion, or falling in love with the 'femme fatal' character. His short-film (in my opinion) can be viewed and understood from various angles, and there are many questions raised throughout e.g. 

Which shot is reality and which is not?

Are certain aspects of the film figments of his imagination? (Money in her dress, petals spiralling down onto the floor) etc.

Are the white dress scenes/shots flashbacks of past moments spent with her, or is this what he wishes she was (instead of a femme fatal dressed in black shown towards the end of the piece). 

Taking Paul's rough-cut onboard and watching it through multiple times, it was clear that he wanted to create a piece that highlighted the male's pivotal choice between sticking with his religion or siding with (doomed) love. 

NOTE - Paul created the first rough cut/assembly of 'Bitter Little Twist', because I'd been tasked with editing not one film but two - Jordan Deakin's film 'Leaving'.

"RANDOMNESS & PACING"

After discussing Paul's vision for the short-piece, I thought back to the concept of 'randomness & pacing' (a study written by Ken Dancyger, 2007), but manipulated it and applied it to 'Bitter Little Twist'.

After working on films in the past that feature experimental aspects, I have learned the effectiveness of cutting to 'random' shots whilst a sequence is taking place. It puts the audience on-edge and makes them ask "What's the meaning of this/why are we looking at this... what's going to happen next?". Taking this on-board I applied it to the edit of 'Bitter Little Twist', but instead of including snippets of 'random shots', I included certain shots that contributed to the development of the (short) narrative and ones that raised awareness of things to come. For example during the dance scene, I implemented a shot to break up and fragment the action (shown below) 

The middle shot in the above image is the shot I chose to break up the action of the dance scene

The 'jump-cut' is shown in the timeline displayed

THE POSSIBILITIES OF RANDOMNESS UPON PACE

"One of the remarkable elements of editing is that the juxtaposition of any grouping of shots implies meaning. The pacing of those shots suggests the interpretation of that meaning. The consequence of this is seen in microcosm when a random shot or cutaway is edited into a scene: it introduces a new idea. This principle is elaborated where there are a number of random shots in a scene. If edited for effect, the combination of shots creates a meaning quite distinct from the sum of the individual parts. This shaping is, in effect, pure editing."

DANCYGER, KEN, (2007), The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice. Oxford, USA, Focal Press.

I think the overall meaning of this is that any shot within a film can create meaning. If you were to throw in 'random' shots that can sometimes break up the pacing entirely, it creates a new idea depending upon the context of the scene itself. In the context my edit for 'Bitter Little Twist', the example shown above is a random shot, but as the film develops and draws to a close, the shot plays a key part to the overall mies-en-scene/development of the (experimental) film.

I am still beginning to understand the proper meaning of this technique despite reading the passage shown above. After seeing many films and how they use cutaways, I think the primary use is to adjust the pacing of the piece. Whatever or whenever cutaways are used, I believe the audience link the images to the genre/style of piece they're watching. In our case, the jump-cut ties in with the experimental, fragmented vision Paul and the crew were striving towards.