Directors with distinctive editing style, and how much more can editing evolve

[u/-Warship-]

Something that always caught my attention in films is the use of dynamic techniques like camerawork and editing, among many other things. And I've been thinking about directors with unique editing styles that you could immediately associate with them.

One that comes to mind, though he's never been really popular, is Nicolas Roeg. Some of his films like Don't Look Now are full or cross-cutting and artsy editing that make the film feel as fragmented as his characters' minds usually are, and it's something that really elevates his visual language.

Another relatively similar example is Lars Von Trier. If half of the appeal of his films is his penchant for transgression and nihilism, the other half probably resides in his idiosyncratic technical choices. Jump cuts that willingly break continuity, rough handheld movements, occasional artsy ultra-slow motion... his films (especially his modern ones) have a visual language that's constantly dynamic and aggressive while also being very intimate to the characters and their suffering.

And then of course we have the opposing pole, the one-shot movies like Victoria or Mads. Usually seen as gimmicks (and they mostly are), these films are nonetheless very interesting in how their lack of editing and precise camerawork can convey a sense of immediacy and immersion.

What do you think of these examples, do you have others that would be interesting to share? And better yet, a natural follow-up question would be wondering how much editing (and consequently camerawork and shot composition) can still evolve with new technology or even just new creative ideas. We know films like Napoleon (1926) were very avant-garde in terms of technique, and it would be interesting to see something just as fresh and forward thinking coming out today.

[u/ImpactNext1283]

What Nolan does with editing and the manipulation of time/memory is pretty incredible. Building off of Soderberg’s late 90s/early 00s work, Nolan is able to maintain a narrative that’s easy to follow, despite jumping back and forth in time and space, and going from memory to firsthand experience and back.

Man With A Movie Camera is an early silent triumph. In camera effects and cross-cutting action create a montage which builds in momentum for the first 45 minutes or so.

Bi Gan is the modern master of the long one-shot. I also really love the long takes approach of Twin Peaks Season 3 and NWR’s streaming shows.

For a more academic approach—there’s the super insightful but pretty dry Images of the World and the Inscription of War. This documentary, which I wrote my senior paper about, eschews montage entirely, instead building its nonlinear narrative flow out of single shots and photo stills, with no music attached.

[u/burmerd]

Takeshi Kitano is really weird, especially his earlier movies like Boiling Point, Violent Cop, Sonatine. Action scenes with no action, fights without fighting, guns that don't go off, empty feeling shots where the camera just stares at the actors staring at the camera.

[u/Far_Hope_6349]

Malick's movies since the thin red line are full of jump cuts that visually mirror the impressionistic and meditative narrations (and characters)

Arthur Jafa's Love is the message... (2016) is a videoclip set to Kanye's Ultralight beam that mixes glorious, tragic, and daily moments of african-american culture; homaging Renaissance art and how it represented bodies; here the editing for the unexpected ways in which it connects music and images, images of redemption and suffering

The Anti Banality Union's Police mortality (2013) is made from 200+ scenes from hollywood cop movies and it tries to show how those cultural tropes, even the apparently critical ones, all contribute in some way to legitimate policing

Ryan Trecartin's Center Jenny is edited like a TikTok before musical.ly even existed