Editing technique · used in 3 films
Opening or echoing the film with a staged story inside it, such as a fake opening or a film within a film. The frame sets up a layer of expectation that the film then plays with.
Examples
Alfred Hitchcock · 1942
Fry flees into a theater where a movie is playing. Hitchcock combined gunshots on the screen with the real shooting in the theater, so the two blur together. The audience in the film is caught between the fake shootout and the real one.
Where to see it: The Radio City Music Hall scene. Fry terrorizes the audience at gunpoint while a movie plays on the big screen above them.
Robert Zemeckis · 1984
The film begins inside an adventure from Joan's novels, then reveals it as her fiction. That sets up the idea that she writes better adventures than she lives. When real danger arrives, you wait to see whether she can match her own heroine.
Where to see it: The opening: The film opens with a scene from one of Joan's romance novels and then shows the lonely writer at her desk.
Alfonso Cuarón · 1995
Sara tells the other girls the legend of Prince Rama, and the film acts it out in bright fantasy scenes. Liam Cunningham plays both Rama and Sara's father, and the princess looks like her mother. The story is how Sara keeps her family close.
Where to see it: The midnight story. The girls sneak up to the attic to bring back Sara's locket and listen to her tell the tale of Prince Rama.
Questions