Editing Task
This scene shows how to artfully use dissolve cuts to make an elegant scene. The scene first starts a fade into a seemingly peaceful scene of trees. Slowly the music begins to kick in with the sound of helicopter blades (a helicopter flies in front of the shot to further solidify this assumption) in the background and a green mist growing within the shot. The scenery then begins to change suddenly and begins to fill with explosions, this shows audiences the true chaos of war and how destructive it can be. The camera then begins to slowly pan to the right as the smog and smoke begins to thicken, this increase in smoke helps create a very effective transition for a dissolved transition of a man, presumably apart of the war that is commencing, having flashbacks of what he had seen during battle. After this first dissolve cut, most of the scenes that follow are dissolve cuts that are layered on top of each other, this was mainly used to further provide emphasis on the fact that the man is having flashbacks of what he had seen. The director also has multiple dissolve cuts of a ceiling fan, these cuts provide hints to the audience that the character in the scene may have been a pilot of a helicopter or had been in close contact with a helicopter during his service. There is then continuous destructive imagery shown to the audience to further provide emphasis on the destructive nature of war and the mental effects it can have on soldiers during these wars. Whilst the dissolved cuts of the war continues, the camera pans around the main character's room showing that due to extreme stress he has gone to intoxications like tobacco and alcohol to try and calm him down after coming back from war. He also has a gun lying next to him in bed, this shows how on edge he is after the war. The main character then has dialogue which hints at him suffering from PTSD, the words "every time I wake up I think I'm going to wake up in the jungle" this could be a possible symptom of PTSD. The PTSD is also destroying the main Characters social and personal life as well as he says "I hardly said a word to my wife until I said yes to a divorce", as time progresses there are multiple jump cuts of the main character staring mindlessly into nothing, this editing shows the audience the extreme decent to madness he begins to face. This growing insanity is hinted at when the main character says "each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter". As time passes there are again multiple dissolve cuts of the battlefield showing his constant flashbacks of war, but more interestingly there are many shots of a ceiling fan, the fan in this scene represents the helicopters during the war, the director used this representation to show the audiences that PTSD can result in the seemingly smallest things in day to day life to trigger sanity-destroying flashbacks. Finally, near the end of the scene, the true extent of the effect PTSD can have soldiers is shown, the director again artfully uses dissolve transition cuts to show the passage of time, and to show that the main character had finally lost it, imagining that he is back in the "Jungle" fighting enemy soldiers on the battlefield. After repeated transition dissolve cuts of fire and explosions, there is a shot of the main character performing strange physical actions whilst under the influence of alcohol. After punching a mirror and being completely oblivious to the pain of shattered glass cutting his hands, he performs a small somersault possibly simulating actions he had to perform whilst in the army, after this action he breaks down into tears whilst completely naked showing the audience the amount of mental torture war forces onto him, showing the extent of trauma he has had to endure due to conflict
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