Clever Editing

Some films especially recently have opted for clever cutting techniques that make something look like it's one take. Take Best Picture winning Birdman for example. Alejandro González Iñárritu decided that he could not shoot his award accolade masterpiece in one take due to the moving parts being just far too adventurous to even try it. This technique of cutting in clever places, like obscuring the camera then cutting, was pioneered by Mr Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock's' Rope' from 1948 was shot on a Technicolor Three-Strip Camera which could only shoot for 10 minutes at a time and so there was no way he could shoot it all in one take as he had planned to do so. Instead he would fill the frame with something, cut then begin filming again. And in Birdman, Iñárritu chose to cut in clever, clever ways. Masking the cut with motion or light. This is when genius- master of light- Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski came in. Chivo as he's known, would use whip pans a lot of the time, and the editor would cut the two shots together to create a fluid camera motion that can see between two different worlds. Recently Damien Chazelle's La La Land used this technique of whip panning, namely in his opening musical number 'Another day of sun'.