A look at the craft of juggling multiple narratives through careful editing.
Every Frame A Painting looks at an effective technique for more engaging storytelling – parallel stories, or “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”:
One Story
As South Park‘s Trey Parker advises for good storytelling, each edit point (or when you cut, and to what) shouldn’t simply say “and then”, but rather “but” or “therefore”:
Two Stories
Editor John Sturges‘s technique for effective storytelling, as derived from Alfred Hitchcock: “you reach the peak of one [story], you go to the other… when it loses interest, drop it.”
Multiple Stories
This technique can scale to include more storylines – but as the complexity grows, so do the number of opportunities to fail. Lessons from the Screenplay examines Christopher Nolan‘s use of cross-cutting – when it works, when it doesn’t, and why:
Speaking of Nolan, This Guy Edits breaks down – literally, on his own editing timeline – two of Nolan’s films: the deceptively complex cross-cutting of the climax Interstellar (2014)…
… and, in a revealing discussion with editor Jennifer Lame, ACE, who won as Oscar for her work on the film, the scenes-within-scenes in Oppenheimer (2023):
Further Viewing
This Guy Edits offers a bunch of tips for how to put these ideas into practice in your edit: