Citizen Kane

Alexander Vousden
Non Linear Editing
Alex Bordino
26 February 2015

This movie starts with how Charles Kane is on his deathbed, and how a group of reporters are trying to decipher his last word, 'rosebud'. Kane became a millionaire through the newspaper business.  A newspaper reporter is interviewing those in Kane's life hoping to learn the meaning of Kane's last word, ‘rosebud’. Kane was sent to a boarding school at a young age after his mother became insanely rich thanks to a mining claim that was signed over to her in lieu of rent. He came into his claim his bond of fortune at the age of 25 and promptly bought a newspaper and decided to get into yellow journalism. His idea of news was to make it as much as report it and along with his good friend, Leland, had a great time. Unsuccessful in his bid for political office, his relationships with those around him begin to deteriorate and he dies, old and alone. Editing wise, this movie had a lot of dissolves in between each scene. Orson Welles also used fade ins and fade outs. Inserts were also used to draw the audiences’ attention to certain objects. Also just simply that the out of order presentation of Citizen Kane depicts his life in a way that was very unconventional and different for the time.