Editing In The Outsiders

This clip from the 2009 science fiction disaster film 2012 shows the scene where Kate Curtis (Amanda Peet), the protagonist’s former wife, and her boyfriend Gordon Silberman (Thomas McCarthy) experience a massive, earth-shattering earthquake in a supermarket. The editing in this scene primarily serves to induce suspense in the audience. Suspense is created is using cross-cuts between the settings of outside the supermarket and inside. By cutting between the dialogue of couple inside and brief looks at the cracks in the ground approaching the supermarket outside, of which the couple and other shoppers are unaware, this effect demonstrates parallel action, varies the scene’s tempo, and makes the audience anxious in anticipation of this approaching
First, when Jackson asks the clerk if they have anything for mosquito bites and the clerk asks if it is for “before or after,” or if it is preventative or to ail bites, the camera cuts to the daughter scratching herself, and then cuts back to the clerk, who responds with “I’d get before and after.” Despite not getting a verbal answer from the father, the clerk (and the audience) can determine what the daughter needs due to the camera work. After editing is used for this somewhat comedic purpose, it is then used to provide continuity between the events that were just presented to the audience, the destruction of the supermarket with two of the main characters present and the presence of the others in the drugstore. The T.V. Jackson looks at shows news coverage of the disaster, and the images of the aftermath are consistent with how the audience viewed the disaster; the crack in the ground formed so that it split the supermarket in half vertically. Continuity is also created when the mother calls the son’s phone, signaling that the event had just concluded, as the T.V.