Dialogue Editing

Perspective 179
clean nervously while “listening” to her son’s harpings, the son’s dialogue
was very slightly attenuated and made a tiny bit wetter, as though Mom was
hearing but not listening. When Mom was talking and we lingered on a
cutaway of Son, her voice, too, was made slightly distant.
The fi lm progressed, and after the inevitable row there was some real,
though painful, connection between the two. As they battled and reconciled,
the perspective difference between them vanished. They weren’t exactly
getting along, but they were communicating. The rest of their conversations
in the bedroom were mixed at equal volume, keeping the characters
connected.
Perspective to Achieve Physical Distance
The most recognizable perspective cuts are about physical rather than emotional
or psychological distance. For example, Mom and Dad are arguing in
the kitchen. We cut to the other end of the house where we see a frightened
child listening, along with us, to the muted shouts of the parents. This is a
classic perspective cut that tells us something about the size of the house, the
parents’ ability to keep their problems from the child, and about the way the
child perceives the argument.
Another example from Hamlet, Act 3: In Scene IV Hamlet and Gertrude are
arguing in her chamber; the action might cut from one close-up to another
and be sprinkled with medium and wide shots. More than likely we’d keep
this conversation rather level, to constrain the energy of their argument and
to hold the focus on the fi ght. But when cutting to a behind-the-curtain scene
to see all of this from Polonius’s point of view, it’s his breathing and body
motion that comes to the forefront whereas the fi ght between Hamlet and
Gertrude sounds lower and a bit darker.
This perspective split not only accentuates the spatial separation between the
two sides of the scene but also calls on a fi lm language convention used to
describe eavesdropping. By pushing the main part of the scene (for example,
Hamlet and Gertrude’s brutal argument) to the background, we make Polonius
the focus of the shot. His fear, his anger, and his humanity are what
counts. This sort of perspective cut is a common way to identify the outsider
as well as to give some depth to a scene.
Perspective to Achieve Social Isolation
Sometimes there’s no real physical separation, yet you use perspective to
separate one member of a group from the rest. Imagine a circle of schoolgirls,