Invisible Editing and 2D Space

Invisible editing is when the technical process of editing is intentionally hidden. This is done in several ways, two of which are: 2D space and eye-line match. Mastery of the 2D space is important for an editor, as he would need to understand screen direction and eye-line. Here an editor needs to know where the audience is going to look and which shots are going to match the character’s eye-line.

The most recent episode of Modern Family, “Connection Lost,” did an excellent job in portraying this mastery of 2D space. A typical episode of Modern Family would have an omniscient narration as we peaked into the daily lives of the family, but in this particular episode everything was restricted to the point of view of one character in particular, Claire Dunphy. In this episode Claire as stuck at an airport trying to get in contact with her oldest daughter will communicating with her family through the use of her computer’s many communication applications. What set this episode aside from the rest was that everything that we were allowed to see were Claire’s interaction with her computer, the mise-en-scène was restricted to the computer screen. With our vision restricted to what Claire was seeing on her computer screen the editing had to be very precise as Claire facetimed with all her family while navigating through her messages, mail and safari.

Following a behind the scenes look, every single shot was taken separately through the use of apple devices only. The editors were then tasks with stitching everything together to make the episode flow perfectly as we would zoom in and out, shift from side to side, and explore everything that was on the computer screen. We would see Claire through a tiny section of the facetime window and were able to easily follow her eye-line. As we would notice her eyes move the camera would shift to a specific location on the screen – we were practically her eyes. The flow of editing can also be seen when Claire is facetiming two people at once and their reactions have to be synched accordingly in order to give the illusion of everything happing in real time. This episode, in my opinion, is a testament to 2D space mastery and invisible editing.