Cutting on action or matching on action refers to
film editing
Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film stock, film which increasingly involves the use Digital cinema, of digital ...
and
video editing techniques where the editor
cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action.
A common example is a man walking up to a door and reaching for the knob. Just as his hand touches the knob, the scene cuts to a shot of the door opening from the other side.
Although the two shots may have actually been shot hours apart from each other, cutting on action gives the impression of continuous time when watching the edited film. By having a subject begin an action in one shot and carry it through to completion in the next, the editor creates a visual bridge, which distracts the viewer from noticing the cut or noticing any slight continuity error between the two shots.
A variant of cutting on action is a cut in which the subject exits the frame in the first shot and then enters the frame in the subsequent shot. The entrance in the second shot must match the
screen direction and motive rhythm of the exit in the first shot.
Examples
Japanese filmmaker
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...
had "a tendency to cut from one shot to another on the motion of an actor to hide the cut and avoid calling attention" to it; an example of this is the 1954 film ''
Seven Samurai'', where, when "ShichirÅji kneels down to comfort" Manzo, the film "cuts on the action of kneeling." Kurosawa's approach to "cutting on motion" has since been widely adopted by many
Hollywood blockbuster films, such as
Marvel Studios
Marvel Studios, LLC, formerly known as Marvel Films, is an American film and television production company. Marvel Studios is the creator of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a media franchise and shared universe of films and television ser ...
films.
Some films, like
Alain Resnais's surreal (1963), play with this technique. Cutting on action is used, instead of accentuating the continuity elements of the action, to trick and confuse the viewer. The director also plays with other aspects of continuity editing, such as subverting the
180 degree rule
In filmmaking, the 180-degree rule is a guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. The rule states that the camera should be kept on one side of an imaginary axis be ...
and
shot/reverse shot.
See also
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Continuity editing
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Match cut
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Motion picture terminology
References
Cited sources
Additional sources
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Cinematography
Film editing
Cinematic techniques
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