Continuity Editing

So I watched the Psycho remake with Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche over the weekend. I didn't watch the whole thing, but from what I saw it follows the original plot to a T, so it was almost nostalgic to watch. For the purposes of this assignment, I did observe some interesting continuity editing that added to the creepy tone of the setting and the dialogue.

The scene in which lila (heche) is speaking with bates (vaughn) over dinner in his parlor contains a couple of interesting edits. While discussing his hobby of stuffing birds, we are given a shot of norman as he describes them and looks up at one. The next shot is lila's point of view of a creepy stuffed owl up on the wall, and the shot that follows is norman's point of view looking at lila to give the audience her reaction. The editing in this scene complements the setting and the dialogue to create that erie feeling, and also serves as a hint towards norman bates' nature. The scene ends as lila exits. She states her name for bates again and he suspicious. A shot of him walking towards the guest log and looking down at it, followed but a close up of his point of view while he reads it is a nice match on action. It also serves the purpose of making sure the audience is up to speed with bate's discovery, (that lila has given him a fake name).

Another famous scene from both the original and thi remake is the one that directly follows that last one mentioned. Bates walks over to the wall that seperates his parlor with lila's room and removes a picture from the wall to reveal a peep hole. We are given a midshot of bates as he leans forward and puts his face to the peep hole. We are given a shot of lila through the peep hole, bates' point of view. Next, we cut back to bates' but this time it is an extreme close up on his cheeck and eye. The editing and camerawork serves to put us in bates' perverted shoes and makes us a voyer of the whole situation ourselves.

The last scene I noticed from the Psycho remake was a bit more simple. Bates walks out of his office in a bit of a daze and stares out into the parking lot. He looks to his right up at his house an starts towards it, the first cut comes here and we are given a long shot of bates running up the stairs to his house. This serves the purpose of shortening the amount of time the audience is subjected to this simple action. The next shot shortens the action even more. It comes from within the house, and it is a shot of the closed front door. Bates comes up to it from the outside, opens it and walks in. Again, this serves the purpose of conveying to the audience that he has traveled all this way up to his house without having to show us every second and every step.