Abstract

This article investigates the role of perception in film editing, considered as audiovisual design work. The study is an observation of a film editor editing a documentary film sequence, where the perceptual phenomena at stake at edit points are scrutinized, with reference to perception theory. The results show that the film editor’s design goal is to achieve perceptual precision for each edit, either for continuity or for discontinuity, accordingly. The more perceptual phenomena per edit, the more time and the more processing the editor has to spend on the edit until satisfied with the result. This knowledge is of importance to inexperienced film editors in order to make the editing process faster and more precise and thus shorten production time. In the wider design context, other design activities are indicated to find inspiration for future research in this study, regarding perceptual phenomena and gaze framing during design processes.