Elliptical editing is a type of editing that cuts unnecessary actions from a sequence. This means the sequence is shorter than real time and so doesn't last as long. This can be a positive because if a scene last (for example) a few hours it would cut it down to only a few minutes. However it does have to be done properly or it would look too much like jump cuts and might start to get confusing for the audience.
Here is an example of elliptical editing in Batman Begins;
In this short clip it starts with an extreme long shot of the man walking along a long empty road, it then cuts to the man walking over the mountain that we have seen in the first shot that was very far away. This means the whole journey from the man walking along the long empty road to the high mountain has been missed out because it is not needed. We automatically know he must have walking that long way to get there and isn't needed to be shown to waste time.
Here is our example of elliptical editing. We have re-edited our Journey video so we miss out any parts that are not needed. The original film lasted 1minute 40 secondes and after editing it shorter it now only lasts 47 seconds.
We conducted our own practice in elliptical editing. We decided to use key features usually displayed in elliptical editing films/clips such as cross-dissolves. Cross-dissolves allowed us to remove vast amounts of time that are not necessary to our plot/film such as an individual travelling across a room which can be seen at 00:30 seconds in our own version. We also simply removed unnecessary footage that still allowed flow of footage but could cut out time, such as Annabelle's journey towards the front door at 00:00-00:04, where were remove at least 10 seconds worth of shots no longer needed and cut it down to a short four seconds. This would be extremely crucial in relation to our short film, in which we only have 5 minutes to get across our plot to the audience, so this practice is essential if we want to use elliptical editing in order to cut down the time of our short film and fit in all the essentials. This practice has helped us understand the restrictions of producing short films and given us a good way to edit our film in order to fit everything in and keep the structure perfect.
