Re: The Magnetic Timeline – What’s The Paradigm? On Clips and Tracks

[Chris Kenny] "I don't agree with this at all. If I arrange shots A, B, and C, what's important about shot C is that it comes after shot B, not that it starts 316 frames into the program, or whatever. Editing is almost entirely about relationships between shots."

This sounds like a reductionist description of what editing is that misses some essentials.

Editing is as much about rhythm - a temporal account of the relationships between events - as it is about Shot C following shot B. Hence it does actually signify that shot C starts 316 frames in, in the sense of the meaning and impact of having shot C occur where it does rather than earlier or later. The flow of time is not accurately perceived by the viewer, it is true, because editing as we know can significantly compress or expand the perception of clock time, but the sense of narrative "chronology" (in the sense of when events are perceived to occur in relationship to each other as measured by time) is fundamental to what editing is about except at the most crude level.

It seems to me that what you are describing is "assembly" rather than "editing" - and it's not being pretentious to suggest there a difference between those two things.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com