Just to be clear Robin - I asked a couple of film directors, who might
be called practitioners, and someone else who is a film geek, and they
all "privileged" that precise definition. It's a technical term that
is precise as the dolly zoom effect (google Hitchcock) and refers to a
particular film effect. Jeffrey in this instance is perfectly correct,
if practical usage of the term is any guide, and I have some sympathy
with his asking that the term be used accurately.
Narrative discontinuity is quite a different thing. Cutting to create
other kinds of discontinuity - or the kinds of eye-burning
cut-every-two-seconds editing that Baz Luhrman did in Moulin Rouge -
is also something else. That Winter's Tale example has absolutely
nothing to do with jump cuts, and absolutely everything to do with
Shakespeare vamping up the dramatic static: the effect is to convey
the Clown's agitation. Yes, a modern technique, employing a degree of
psychological realism, but using jump cutting to describe it is just
misleading, or at best illuminates nothing about what that speech is
doing.
xA
On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 5:02 AM, Robin Hamilton
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It's not even, as far as I can make out, and regardless of what Jeffrey was
> taught, even the predominant meaning of the term in practical cinematography
> ("film studies" might be a separate issue).
>
> Robin
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