Creating Motivation

Creating Motivation for the editor is where the editor edits the scenes in accordance to what the scene needs. A bit like relationship to genre ( see storytelling post). The editor has to make sure that the audience is not seeing to much at once and is seeing things the way the writer wants. For instance in a thriller the murder of a victim has to be very cleverly edited, as unless the film is to be made into the 18 category they have to be careful what they show. So the editor would show say, the killer sharpening his knife or loading a gun, then you'd start to see the killer stalk the victim; then you might jump cut to the victim as he has heard a sound. You would then get the sound effects start to come in slowly and gradually with maybe the victims breathing getting quicker.  Then a close up of the victims eyes, then a gun shot with a cut to  long shot so, that the audience doesn't see too much gore and then a quick and sharp fade to black to signify the ending/ So you have created the motivation and pace that is needed, so that that tension builds up and it puts the audience on the edge of their seats.

an example of this can be seen in my AS levels final piece of work. Where you see a girl, at first you think she is just a normal girl getting ready to start the day; then you start to suspect that not everything is right when she starts scribbling down notes about her frustrations against her 'crush' we assume at the time, with her stroking his picture that she had framed at the time. We see close ups of her frantically writing and making her cup of tea. The audience is grabbed by what is going on and the tension builds until we find out that she is actually a stalker, and has a 'shrine' in her basement of this boy and then it cuts to black; with everything being jump cuts and showing that she is a little frantic giving hints the whole time as to what is going to happen.