The effects of context and order in film editing

THE BASIC EXPERIMENTS A motion picture is composed of thousands of shots. During the process of editing, each of these shots is placed in a specific context and order. Traditionally film theorists have believed that the meaning of a given motion picture shot is determined to some extent by its context and order, but until recently no one could prove it. Now there is sufficient evidence to verify this well traveled theory, and more importantly, there is some evidence suggesting how and why shot meanings change with arrangement. The purpose of this article is to review and analyze these findings and place them in a unified theoretical framework. The discussion is limited to the simple juxtaposition of two silent film shots joined by a cut.