Editing

This movie is everything that a scary movie is not suppose to be hilarious! The film is a sequel from the Scream movie's that were made to be scary. In this film Cindy is still running from a killer that witnessed them accidentally kill a man last Halloween. Every since then Cindy and all of her friends that are still alive have been going through pure hell with the ghost face killer who continues to strike. The group of friends go through a series of hilarious events to escape the killer and his madness. (IMDb.com)

Scary movie took a lot of ideas from a lot of different films and brought them into one. This is a strategy that almost every great film maker uses, because without the past realistically there would not be a lot of actual good future films today. Editing serves as an extremely important part in any film. Editing allows the director to freely make any type of mistakes while filming and easily fix them. Editing isn't only used for that soul purpose editing is also used to create a form of realism throughout the film. An example of editing that I found in this film was the use of a jump cut, although the three young men that are screaming "Wassup" into the phone the camera still allows us to still view the faces of the other people. The primary example of the jump cut would be between Shorty Meeks (Marlon Waynans) and his friend in the hat because they are the primary two that are visible at the same time, although the director does jump cuts which provide as close ups on the person who is speaking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=41RFw9aqIxM&NR=1
Ends at 2:30
Another example of editing that was influenced throughout this film would be continuity editing. In the scene where all of the men are smoking marijuana together and getting high throughout the whole scene demonstrates the theme that is kept continuously from shot to shot when they are discussing how good the weed is. When the men realize that there are no more papers to roll the marijuana in the next shot shows them improvising backing a bong out of the fish tank, this serves as another example of continuous shots. The lighting in the room remains constant throughout the whole scene even when the alleged killer comes to the door and joins then eventually. The director also spends more time on the shots that contain more detail for an example their after effect of smoking is concentrated on longer than the actual smoking that was being done.
Long shots are also apparent when the men are laughing after playing on the phone (1:12-1:37). This scene could be used as a down time in the film believing that everything is okay until the rapping scene arrives (1:42) that is automatically jump cut from the playing on the phone scene. After the fun and games are over the killer strikes again only living Shorty Meeks on his feet. All of these examples give a great example as to how editing really makes a difference on how you use it. Scary movie is an amazing film that uses a lot of different techniques and wouldn't have been as successful without the editing process.

Sources:

youtube. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2011.

Faris, Anna, and Marlon Wayans, perf. Scary Movie. 2000. Buena Vista International. DVD.

IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. <www.imdb.com>.