Elliptical Editing

Elliptical editing refers to an editing technique in which unnecessary shots are cut from a film. This is so that the sequence shown on screen has a lesser duration than it would do in real-time. This can be particularly useful within scenes, that in reality, would take an extended period of time to achieve, as the screen time can be shortened exponentially.

Elliptical editing is typically accomplished by cutting two shots, both of which show part of the same event, reducing the screen-time of, in particular, repetitive or uninteresting shots.

Within the two films shown below, it can be shown how useful elliptical editing can be. Within the first film, a journey is shown which takes over 1 minute in real time, whereas the second clip, which has been edited, takes less than 30 seconds to display the same information.

This editing technique is also used by many other films, in order to reduce tedium within the movie, an example of this would be in Christopher Nolan's 2005 feature, Batman Begins.

Within this clip, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), is first shown, by a close up, to be looking at something in the distance, revealed to be a group of mountains within the next shot, a long shot. In the shot preceding this, we see that the gradient that the character walks on has changed to more of a vertical incline. From this, the audience can infer that the protagonist has started to ascend the mountain, which was originally shown to be far away; and thus the real-time act of mountain climbing is unnecessary, and therefore cut.