The Story of Editing

The variety of steps involved in producing film is amazing to me.  I mean, think about it.  There are so many steps involved that don't get their fair share of credit.  Take editing for example.

Editing has the opportunity to take a film that is good to something great.  Editing allows for manipulation of the film, to switch up timing, scenes, and transitions, to cover up cinematography mishaps or poor acting.  Different camera angles and shots are crucial to the success of a film, but without the talent and work of an editor, they make no difference.

Although I certainly recognized the importance of editing with regard to movie and filmmaking, it wasn't until I learned more about the inside steps of editing that I began to understand just how great an impact it has.

In "The Aesthetics of Editing," an article by Osgood and Hinshaw, the authors describe the vital role editing plays, particularly with regard to television commercials.

Think about it.  Advertising companies get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce very short - even twenty or thirty second long commercials.  

Now let's take this a step further.  What about Super Bowl ads?  What about Olympic sponsor ads?  Those advertisements are worth millions of dollars, and last less than half a minute!  And it's not so much the idea behind the ad, although that is important.  It is about the editing, the put together of footage, that counts in the end.

Take the Best Buy commercial from the 2013 Super Bowl for example:

How many different times did Amy Poehler really say those lines?  How many extra shots were filmed?  Probably a significant amount.

Because the reality of filmmaking is, most of what is shot doesn't get used without being manipulated.  Audio is enhanced, order is switched around, soundtracks are put in, mistakes are eliminated.  Without editing, videos would not look like they do.  They would be much longer, much more heavily laden with mistakes, and much more unprofessional looking.

So my question for discussion is, why is editing so overlooked?  Why aren't the roles of editors more recognized?  Why aren't they more glamorized?  Editors may not be in the spotlight, but their jobs are integral to the success of video footage.

Illusions

Within only a few seconds of beginning Sturken and Cartwright’s article “Viewer Make Meaning,” I had developed a conclusion about what the authors of the article were going to say.

The example that immediately sprang to my mind is the idea of an optical illusion.

Consider the picture below:

What do you see? 

This is a classic, perhaps the most classic, example of an optical illusion.  Some people see two faces looking at each other.  Some people see a wine goblet.  Some people still, see both.

But what did the artist intend to be seen?

This example mirrors precisely what Sturken and Cartwright’s article alludes to: First, that “meanings are produced through the complex negotiations that make up the social process and practices through which we produce and interpret images.”

Wow.  So everything we see as consumers is intentional?

Second, the article indicates that “most, if not all, images have a meaning that is preferred by their producers.”  The article cites advertisers as a great example of this.  To illustrate this point, consider the Dove campaign and ads.  Personally, I am a huge fan of the Dove campaign.  I see it as nothing but a dedicated, honest company’s attempt to show women how to embrace their bodies and themselves as beautiful.

However, my sociology class recently discussed the Dove campaign at length, and one of my classmates brought to my attention that perhaps – just perhaps – Dove was actually using their “Real Beauty” campaign as an effective advertising strategy. 

Now, I don’t necessarily agree with my classmates’ hypothesis (I am after all a huge fan of the company policies, classes, and advertisements after all!)  But the idea did get me thinking about what I see, versus what the company intends for me to see.  The two are very distinctly linked, and it is important that as a consumer of media (and especially of advertising) that I see that and remember it.  How do producers, especially advertisers, so effectively cause consumers to believe in products?  

Blogging Brands

Rettberg’s article, “Blogging Brands” offers insight regarding different forms of advertising utilized by bloggers, and the positive and negative aspects of each.

Until my Digital Communications class, I honestly did not know that some people blogged professionally.  Blogging as a career, with a salary was a completely foreign concept to be.  For someone to “bring home the bacon” just by writing for free online was confusing to me.  If anyone may blog, then how can people possibly make a living off it?  Then of course, it came to me – everything made sense – these bloggers use advertising.

Blogs that get a lot of traffic, naturally, can be supported by advertising.  It is up to the bloggers themselves to determine what types of ads they are comfortable with – some prefer small ads on the sidebar of the blog, some like banner ads, and some, use sponsored ads.

If we’re being completely honest (and I promise to always be honest on my blog!) I am not completely on board with the idea of blogger using advertisements.  Rettberg puts my perspective perfectly in her assertion on page 138:

Blogging is an unregulated area, and this is the sort of question that shows that blogging is not simply a form of journalism.  It is not clear whether blogging should follow the rules of mainstream media about separating editorial content from sponsored content, and even if there were an agreement about this, there would be no way to make bloggers follow it.  J.D. Lasica argues straight out that a blogger who wishes to be thought of as a journalist cannot post sponsored entries.

I am of the feeling that bloggers who post about specific products or companies for payment, are not necessarily being true to themselves, to their blogs, or to their audiences.  It would frustrate me to follow a blog that suddenly gained significant-enough traffic to where the author decided to start posting about random products.  I don’t choose to read blogs to be made to feel like a consumer.  I read blogs because I like what the author posts.  Once the author begins posting sponsored ads, it may not be the blog it used to be, and I may not like it as much as I did before.

I have less of a problem with sponsored ads if the authors completely disclose that they are paid to write reviews of particular products, etc.  After all, “truth and integrity are at the core of both the success stories and the failures of commercial blogging,” so if the author of a blog does not disclose this information to his or her readers and then is later found out, it is extremely likely that the author will have lost all credibility (Rettberg 153).  In fact, they definitely lose credibility for me.

So my questions are, do blog authors lose credibility for you when they start allowing advertisements on their pages?  What about when they participate in sponsored blogging?  At what point would an author lose your interest because of advertising on his or her blog page?