Film Theory: Why Don’t We Notice All Those Editing Cuts?

電影理論：我們?yōu)槭裁醋⒁獠坏剿械募糨孅c(diǎn)？

Edits are cuts in the “reality” of a film or television show, so they should be jarring. So why don’t we really notice them?

剪輯指對(duì)電影或電視節(jié)目中的“真實(shí)”的剪切，因此它們令人震撼。那我們?yōu)槭裁床辉嬲X(jué)察到它們呢？

Bertolt Brecht is a well-known playwright and director of the early twentieth century. The Brechtian approach to theater alienated the audience to remind them that they were watching a production and not something real. This was a far cry from other playwrights at the time, who sought to immerse their audiences in their stories. A few of the techniques Brecht used included breaking the fourth wall, displaying placards that informed the audience of the location or time of the scene, and including song and dance.

貝爾托·布萊希特是二十世紀(jì)初遠(yuǎn)近聞名的劇作家兼導(dǎo)演。布萊希特式的間離效果使觀眾陌生化，提醒他們自己正在觀看的是作品，而非現(xiàn)實(shí)。這與當(dāng)時(shí)那些試圖將觀眾吸引到他們的故事中的劇作家的觀念相去甚遠(yuǎn)。布雷希特使用的技巧包括打破第四堵墻、用標(biāo)語(yǔ)牌提示觀眾場(chǎng)景的地點(diǎn)或時(shí)間，還包括歌舞。

These techniques kept the audience aware that they were an audience. And in film and television today, these techniques are standard practice. However, why is it that, unlike the Brechtian theater, these elements do not pull the audience out of a film? Surely such an intrusive element should have a disruptive effect? So, why don’t we notice edit cuts?

這些技巧使觀眾意識(shí)到自己即是觀眾。在當(dāng)今的影視中，這些技術(shù)是常規(guī)技法。但是，與布式戲劇相反，為什么這些元素不會(huì)將觀眾從電影敘事中抽離呢？這類的介入元素必然會(huì)產(chǎn)生破壞性影響嗎？為什么我們沒(méi)有注意到剪輯點(diǎn)呢？
Of course, there are cuts we do notice — the bad ones. The edits that cut too soon or too often. We lose sight of the fight in action scenes when the filmmakers use quick cuts instead of showcasing a well-choreographed scene in its entirety. However, excellent editing goes unseen. After all, the editor’s job is to be invisible. The American Cinema Editors Association quite literally calls it the invisible art.

誠(chéng)然，我們的確可以注意到——一部分失敗的剪輯點(diǎn)。這樣的剪輯點(diǎn)不是太早就是太過(guò)頻繁了。在動(dòng)作場(chǎng)景中，如果電影制作者使用快速剪輯而不是全面展示精心編排的場(chǎng)景時(shí)，我們就失去了對(duì)于動(dòng)作的視覺(jué)概念。盡管如此，出色的剪輯確實(shí)能夠不被發(fā)現(xiàn)。畢竟，剪輯師的工作就是要做到不留痕跡。美國(guó)電影剪輯協(xié)會(huì)將其書(shū)面用語(yǔ)稱為隱形藝術(shù)。
Still, the fact that we remain locked into the narrative when watching cuts of unrealistic viewpoints, such as a long shot of a tall bell-tower clock to a close-up of the ticking clock hand, is quite remarkable. Each of these actions is entirely alien to the real world. Famed editor and theorist Walter Murch puts it more poignantly: Every theatrical film, except perhaps Hitchcock’s Rope, is made up of many different pieces of film joined together into a mosaic of images. The mysterious part of, though, is that the joining of those pieces – the ‘cut’ in American terminology – actually does seem to work, even though it represents a total and instantaneous displacement of one field of vision with another, a displacement that sometimes also entails a jump forward or backward in time as well as space.

然而，當(dāng)看到不切實(shí)際的視點(diǎn)（如從高大鐘樓的長(zhǎng)鏡頭深入時(shí)鐘指針的特寫(xiě)鏡頭）時(shí)，我們?nèi)匀粫?huì)陷入敘事中不可自拔，這一事實(shí)確實(shí)令人矚目。每一個(gè)這樣的情節(jié)都與現(xiàn)實(shí)世界毫無(wú)關(guān)聯(lián)。著名的剪輯師和理論家沃爾特·默奇更加含蓄地說(shuō)： “除了像是希區(qū)柯克的《奪魂鎖》這樣的作品外，每部院線電影都是由許多不同的片段組成的，它們首尾相連，構(gòu)成一種影像的鑲嵌畫(huà)。不過(guò)，其中一個(gè)神秘的部分是，這些片段的連接，即美國(guó)術(shù)語(yǔ)中的“切”，實(shí)際上是有效的，盡管它表示一個(gè)畫(huà)面與另一個(gè)畫(huà)面的整體或瞬時(shí)的位移，有時(shí)這種位移還會(huì)導(dǎo)致在時(shí)間和空間上向前或向后跳躍?！?/p>

In the same chapter from his book In The Blink of An Eye, Murch goes on to say that it’s almost surprising that we were able to concede to the idea of editing without completely rejecting the disparity between two images conjoined to tell a story. That’s true. From the moment we wake to the moment we sleep, everything we see, even edited films, are in a single stream of continuous information.

在他的《眨眼之間》一書(shū)的同一章中，默奇進(jìn)一步說(shuō)明我們能夠接受剪輯的理念而又不完全拒絕兩個(gè)差異懸殊的畫(huà)面承接而成的故事，著實(shí)令人驚訝。確實(shí)如此，從夢(mèng)醒時(shí)分到酣然入睡，我們所看到的一切，甚至是剪輯過(guò)的電影，都在一個(gè)連續(xù)的信息流中。
Although, is that the case? Well, using a similar exercise to the one that gave Walter Murch the idea of using the blink as an edit point, we can see that we often omit visual information to stop becoming inundated with useless data.

這就是真實(shí)情況嗎？那么，使用與默奇的以眨眼作為剪輯點(diǎn)的想法做類似的練習(xí)，我們可以看到通常情況下被忽略的視覺(jué)信息，以免被無(wú)用的數(shù)據(jù)淹沒(méi)。

First, find an area of the room away from your monitor or phone to focus on. It could be a mirror, a television, a lunch menu — anything. After reading this sentence, look at the object, hold your focus for a few moments, then come back to the article. Unless you’re superhuman, all of the information between looking from the screen to the other area of the room gets omitted. And we’ll blink often while looking at the two points of focus, just like an edit cut.

首先，找到房間的某個(gè)區(qū)域，使其遠(yuǎn)離監(jiān)視器或手機(jī)以進(jìn)行對(duì)焦。它可以是任何東西，比如鏡子、電視、或是午餐菜單等等。讀完這句話之后，看一下被攝對(duì)象，將焦點(diǎn)保持一段時(shí)間，然后將視線轉(zhuǎn)回到這篇文章。除非你是超人，否則從屏幕上到房間其他區(qū)域之間的所有信息都將被忽略。而且，當(dāng)我們關(guān)注視線聚焦的兩個(gè)點(diǎn)時(shí)，我們會(huì)經(jīng)常眨眼，就像剪輯的剪切一樣。
It’s not only the blur between focus points that we systematically edit out. Everyone makes the mundane commute from point A to B, whether it’s for work, school, or traveling to the airport, and these are the elements often “edited” out from our recollection of that day. It’s easy to recall what happened at work, or how great the holiday was, but remembering the drive to the point of interest gets left on the cutting room floor. And of course, it bears pointing out that often in film and television, unless a meaningful conversation is taking place inside a car, these traveling scenes from A to B are very rarely in the script.

不僅僅是視線焦點(diǎn)之間的模糊被有序地剪輯了。無(wú)論是工作、上學(xué)還是去機(jī)場(chǎng)，每個(gè)人都在A點(diǎn)到B點(diǎn)之間進(jìn)行日常通勤，這些都是我們?cè)诨貞浤骋惶鞎r(shí)經(jīng)常被“剪輯”的元素?；貞浧鸸ぷ髦邪l(fā)生了什么或者假期有多么美好是很容易的，但關(guān)于去往興趣點(diǎn)的路程的記憶卻被遺忘在大腦的剪輯室里。當(dāng)然，需要指出的是，在電影和電視中，除非在汽車?yán)镞M(jìn)行了有意義的對(duì)白，否則從A點(diǎn)到B點(diǎn)的行駛場(chǎng)景極少出現(xiàn)在劇本中。
However, our brains are also editing what we see to help us process what comes next.In 2014, Wired published a series of articles exploring the science of cinema and the nature of perception. One report, “Cinematic Cuts Exploit How Your Brain Edits What You See,” by Greg Miller, delves into how we digest visual information, and it includes a section about psychologist and author Jeff Zack‘s work: His research suggests our brains are constantly dividing up the torrent of information streaming in through our senses into more manageable chunks in order to help us make sense of what’s happening around us and predict what’s likely to happen next . . . He thinks this is a manifestation of our brains’ never-ending effort to predict the future. We have a mental model of what’s happening that we use to predict what’s likely to happen next. ‘You do this because it’s super adaptive,’ Zacks said. ‘If you can anticipate what’s coming up in a few seconds you can react adaptively.’ But whenever the action changes — when the stoplight turns from red to green, say, or when your boss suddenly appears at your desk — you have to update your mental model to reflect what’s happening now.

但是，我們的大腦也在剪輯我們所看到的內(nèi)容，以幫助我們處理接下來(lái)發(fā)生的事情。2014年，《連線》（是一份在全美國(guó)發(fā)行的彩色月刊雜志。該雜志于1993年3月開(kāi)始發(fā)行，著重報(bào)道科技對(duì)文化、經(jīng)濟(jì)和政治的影響。）發(fā)表了一系列文章，探討了電影的科學(xué)原理和接受的本質(zhì)。格雷格·米勒撰寫(xiě)的一份名為《電影剪輯如何利用大腦編輯你所見(jiàn)之物》的文章深入研究了我們?nèi)绾蜗曈X(jué)信息，其中包括有關(guān)心理學(xué)家和作家杰夫·扎克的作品的部分內(nèi)容： 他的研究表明，我們的大腦會(huì)不斷將感知中迸發(fā)的信息流劃分為更加易于管理的數(shù)據(jù)塊，以幫助我們了解周圍正在發(fā)生的事情，并預(yù)測(cè)接下來(lái)可能發(fā)生什么……他認(rèn)為這是我們的大腦對(duì)未來(lái)進(jìn)行不懈努力的預(yù)知的表現(xiàn)形式。對(duì)于即將發(fā)生的事情，我們可以通過(guò)心智模式來(lái)預(yù)測(cè)它。扎克斯說(shuō)：“你這么做是因?yàn)樗哂谐瑥?qiáng)的適應(yīng)性。如果你能預(yù)料到幾秒鐘后會(huì)發(fā)生什么，你就可以做出合適的反應(yīng)。”但是只要?jiǎng)幼靼l(fā)生變化——比如當(dāng)信號(hào)燈從紅色變?yōu)榫G色時(shí)，或者是你的老板突然出現(xiàn)在辦公桌旁的時(shí)后——你都必須更新你的心智模式來(lái)應(yīng)對(duì)當(dāng)前的狀況。

Editing is unnoticeable because, to an extent, it’s built on the foundation of how we perceive the world around us. While we don’t cut from location to location, we do neglect the non-important visual cues, and we delegate moments of time into event boundaries, like scenes, which allow for greater memory recall.

剪輯之所以不可忽視，是因?yàn)樗谝欢ǔ潭壬辖⒃谖覀儗?duì)周圍世界的感知基礎(chǔ)之上。 雖然我們不會(huì)在各個(gè)地點(diǎn)之間硬切，但我們的確會(huì)忽略無(wú)足輕重的視覺(jué)提示，轉(zhuǎn)而將時(shí)間分配到事件的銜接點(diǎn)（例如場(chǎng)景）上，以增強(qiáng)記憶喚起。