Blog #3 - Editing analysis (or: How To Succeed in Action Without Really Trying)

In this scene from the action movie El Mariachi, director Robert Rodriguez uses fast-paced editing, precise match cuts, and audience preconceptions of genre to hide his production’s extreme budgetary constraints. The protagonist is in an apartment, trying to escape from gun-toting gangsters. He runs up the steps, throws his guitar case on a higher walkway, and then jumps to grab onto the edge of the wall, narrowly escaping the gunfire as he climbs in. He runs down the hallway, only to find a dead end. But wait—there’s a passing bus...and a cable! He rides the cable like a zipline, and drops down on the front of the bus. A typical action movie stunt, except that El Mariachi is not a typical action movie—it was made for $7,000. Rodriguez could only afford single takes, yet the scene uses what appears to be several cameras and an elaborate stunt. How did he accomplish this?
Well, the frequent cutting creates a sense of intensity and chaos, but pay close attention and the tricks start to become clear. Let’s see when and how many times the camera actually cuts in this sequence. First, he runs up the stairs....

He throws the guitar case....

The guitar case lands....

The gangsters are arriving below...

He jumps up and grabs the ledge....

The gangsters stop running and aim their guns...

He climbs in as they fire...

He lands...

They fire some more....

He ducks into the hallway...

He’s in the hallway on the ground.

That’s eleven shots in ten seconds, and many of those are match cuts. Consider this: What if the guitar case missed? What if the star didn’t climb up the ledge? Notice how many shots are in each action, and how many angles are used.
In the bus stunt, he only rides the zipline halfway before the camera cuts.

When it cuts back to the actor, it cuts again when he hits the bus...

...to a shot of him falling.

Rodriguez isn’t using multiple cameras. He’s using just one, getting as many angles and coverage as he possibly can, and cutting it together. However, the audience isn’t paying attention, because they just want the protagonist to make it out alive. Before the stunt, we get a POV shot of him looking at the bus....

....and another one of the quickly approaching gangsters in the opposite direction.

He finds the cable and gets an idea....

The gangsters are about to reach him!

The audience, aware of what kind of movie this is, knows what’s about to happen next, and, in turn, are impressed that the filmmaker appears to have convinced his actor to zipline onto a moving bus on such a low budget. In reality, Rodriguez has played the audience’s minds to make it look like he spent far more on this film than he actually did. Such is the power of editing.