Elliptical Editing

Elliptical Editing

Elliptical editing is a film technique used when you want to shorten the duration of a story. Irrelevant or long winded shots are taken in order to keep the audience engaged and show a passage of time that isn't as long and tedious as it would be in real time. Therefore a scene that would take hours is shortened down to a few minutes allowing the story to flow continuously and move on swiftly to the next scene. 

The way elliptical editing is accomplished is by cutting to different shots fairly quickly where the character is clear to have moved positions and gotten closer to their desired destination. This type of editing is usually used in journey's whereby a character is on their way to another location. Essentially filmmakers use this technique as a time compressor.

Example of elliptical editing within a journey -