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THE IMPORTANCE OF PARALLEL

FILM EDITING
The movie camera, in spite of its complexities as an instrument and the
specialized knowledge needed to operate it, must be for the film maker only a
registering mechanism, such as the pen or the typewriter are to a writer. To
handle a camera, only an efficient crew is needed. Far more important to a film
maker is the ability to handle ideas and concepts.
Once these ideas have materialized on strips of film they must be assembled.
For that he relies heavily on an editing principle: the alternation of two or more
centres of interest. This ‘parallel film editing’ is one of the most frequently used
forms of film language. It serves to present clearly conflicting or related story
lines by moving alternately from one centre of interest to the other. The
technique is so common that audiences take it for granted in every film. A film
which avoids use of the technique irritates the viewer even though if pressed to
supply a reason for his discomfort he would not be able to give the right answer.

Two basic types

To clarify what parallel film editing is, here is an example—a rough description
of the first sequence of a well known film.
1 Elio Petri’s film The Tenth Victim, begins with Ursula Andress being pursued
on a New York street by a hunter (George Wang). The hunter is momentarily
detained by a policeman who checks the validity of his ‘licence to kill’.
2 A man seen in close up, begins to explain what the Great Hunt is. In the not
so distant future citizens exercise ‘licences to kill’ in government sponsored
duels to the death.
3 The film returns to Ursula Andress being chased around the scenic sites of
New York by the hunter, who keeps firing his gun, and misses every time.
4 Again the unknown man is presented in close up, and gives more information
about the Great Hunt.
5 Miss Andress teases the hunter to keep on firing, until he runs out of bullets.
6 Once more the unknown man appears in close up and details the advantages o
f succeeding, in ten consecutive chases, alternating as hunter and victim.
7 Ursula Andress, followed at a short distance by her pursuer, steps on a car’s
hood, jumps over a net fence and runs into the ‘Masoch Club’.
8 Her pursuer arrives and, after a pause, also enters the club. He moves in the
futuristic interior, walking among the seated patrons.
9 A master of ceremonies on the stage (the man we had previously seen in close
up explaining the mechanism of the Great Hunt) introduces a dancer. She
emerges, wearing a mask and a costume of blue and silver sequins, and starts to
dance.
10 The hunter sits down and watches her
11 She moves among the club’s patrons who remove pieces o f her dress, until
only two small garments remain.
12 The hunter watches her.
Two types of parallel film editing are to be found in the sequence described.
Firstly, two different situations are alternately presented to the audience:
the chase on the streets of New York, and
the explanation of what the Great Hunt is.
Each story line develops separately, contributing more information on each
successive appearance. On the external views of the chase (the first story line)
we become aware that something unusual is happening. Then we see how the
victim is controlling the hunter at will. Later we see how she leads him to a site
she has pre-selected (paragraphs 1, 3, 5 and 7). The close ups of the club’s
master of ceremonies (the second story line) explain what the Great Hunt is, then
what its mechanism is, and later what are the advantages of surviving in ten
consecutive chases (paragraphs 2, 4 and 6):
Second, two related situations in a common site are alternated:
the dancer, and
the hunter.
Once inside the club, the parallel film pattern changes, and concentrates on the
relationship between the dancer (as shown in paragraphs 9 and 11), who is really
the victim in disguise, and the confused hunter (shown in paragraphs 8, 10 and
12).
The task of relating two story lines, or two characters, or two different events,
or a larger number of story lines, characters and events, is assigned to parallel
film editing. These types of parallel editing could be defined as follows:
1 The lines of interaction are close together, in the same space.
2 The lines of interaction are far apart, in different places, and only a common
motivation provides the link.
The first type of parallel film editing is exemplified by the confrontation of
the dancer and the hunter. A dialogue between two persons, where both are
separately observed by the camera, falls in the same category.
The chase on the streets of New York alternating with the explanations of the
master of ceremonies, exemplifies the second type of parallel film editing. Their
interrelation can be immediate (as in a race where two opponents are moving
towards a common goal), or delayed to the end, such as in the example quoted,
where the identity of the man who speaks (he is the master of ceremonies) is
carefully hidden from the audience at the beginning of the story. This man is the
link between both story lines.
Interrelating two story lines in a parallel pattern gives them a mutual
dependence, since the average film viewer has been conditioned to expect such a
response from this combination.
Comparative behaviours can be presented on the screen with this method. The
documentary film form is very apt to obtain remarkable image associations by
the conscious editing of several events in parallel patterns, i.e. various athletes in
different sports prepare to compete, the competition begins and some of the
participants fail. By observing the same athletes in the three stages of behaviour
and seeing them alternately at each stage, a space-time relationship unique to the
cinema is obtained.

Action and reaction

When we are told a story we unconsciously want to know two things:
what action is going on, and
how the people involved are reacting to that action.
If the storyteller forgets to keep track of those two things his audience will be
confused or unsufficiently informed. If you were telling the story personally,
your audience would ask you about the missing facts, which you would then
supply.
But telling a story on the screen is an impersonal act because you seldom see
your audience or hear their reactions. The film is already printed, the story
inmutable and if you forget something you cannot stop the film and supply the
missing information. Most film takes contain action and reaction within the
length of the shot. Witness this example where two shots are used:
 Shot 1: a hunter moves his rifle from side to side and fires.
Shot 2: a flying bird is suddenly hit and falls.
Shot 1 shows the hunter aiming (an action) and then he fires (a reaction).Shot
2 shows the bird flying (an action) and its flight is suddenly interrupted (a
reaction).
But if we showed Shots I and 2 without grouping the actions and reactions,
our understanding of what is going on would not be as effective as if we grouped
them as follows:
(Action)
Shot 1: the hunter moves his rifle from side to side, aiming off screen.
Shot 2: a bird is flying in the sky.
(Reaction)
Shot 1: the hunter fires his rifle.
Shot 2: the bird is hit and falls.
In this way we have grouped first the informative parts of the shots, enabling us
to show the outcome more comprehensibly. That alternation of shots: Shot 1-
Shot 2-Shot 1-Shot 2, is known as parallel film editing, and is only one of its
forms. In this example we were dealing with two lines of action, but the number
of lines involved might be increased for a different situation.
This grouping of action and reaction permeates the whole structure of a film:
from the union of two shots, to the juxtaposition of two or more sequences, and
to a greater extent the construction of the whole story itself.

Peak moments and the understanding

The process of manipulating action just described forces a selectivity process in
working out a film story. Only the peak moments of a story are shown on a
screen, and all the events or actions that delay or do not add new, significant
material, are deleted from the narrative.
Selection of peak moments implies the control of time and movement. An
expert film maker is always compressing or expanding time and yet he gives the
illusion of supplying us with the entire real time of the event: movement may be
fragmented and controlled according to a dynamic criterion. Film editing
demolishes the old dramatic unities of place and time. The audience is moved
from here to there, from the present to the past, without warning. And the viewer
accepts all this quite naturally.
This process originates from when man invented his first written language.
Written thoughts force the reader to analyze and assimilate each graphic symbol
individually to obtain meaning, and that developed capacity for instant analysis
and comparison differenciates us from primitive man, who lived in a true unity
with his environment, always conscious of the whole and unable to conceive an
abstraction. T o properly understand the visual language of film, the viewer
needs to have passed through the experience of learning a written language made
of conventional signs particular to his community. With this same ability he can
assimilate a conventional way of linkage between the moving images on a
screen.
As long as a succession of actions and reactions is maintained the
interpretation of that visual language does not demand of the viewer an
understanding of its physical construction. But for the film maker this action-
reaction pattern dictates all the formulas for camera placement and sequence
construction and the needs of editing.

How parallel editing is obtained

Parallel film editing to cover a story point, can be achieved using two
approaches:
single shots of short duration and/or
long master shots.
If short single shots are used, the two or more related actions involved are
covered individually by using diverse and multiple camera set ups.
These shots are edited in such a way that they shift the viewpoint alternately
from one action to the other, thus piecing together the whole event or scene.
Each shot used, each piece of film, is a peak moment in the series of actions and
reactions that all story lines contain.
With this method, the whole event can be appreciated only when all the shots
have been cut together. That is the main difference between the single shot and
the master shot approach. As the name implies, a master shot is a single camera
position from which the event is recorded in its entirety. In practice two or three
camera positions may be used simultaneously to provide several such master
shots. If fragments of those master shots are selected, and edited in parallel, the
total event recorded can be reconstructed using the best or most significant
segments of each master take, presenting a fragmented view similar to the short
single shot process. A good film maker uses either method. Both are quite
dynamic and offer definite pictorial advantages over a single shot recording of a
scene.

A wider perspective
Parallel editing covers greater possibilities in the interaction of two narrative
lines. Where the degree o f knowledge shared between the characters of the
story, or between the film and its audience is variable the alternatives can be
seen as those in which:
1 Both story lines support each other, and the data that both contribute
(alternately) builds up the story.
2 In one line, the movement or intention is kept the same, while on the other the
reactions to that steady repetition are varied.
3 The characters involved in both narrative lines are unaware of what the other
group is doing, and only the audience has all the facts.
4 The information given in both narrative lines is incomplete, so that the
characters have all the facts, but the audience is purposely kept in the dark, to
stimulate its interest.
Which one of these approaches is to be used must be decided by the story writer
and the film maker concerned. But one fact remains, parallel film editing will
always provide the best way of conveying the desired information to the
audience. The two basic elements, action and reaction, will help complete the
presentation.