I’m searching for movie clips to demonstrate some film/video editing concepts for my Digital Storytelling class tomorrow morning (J cuts, L cuts, match cuts, etc.), and in the course of wracking my brain to find an instance where one of these cuts was used for comedic effect, I tried viewing YouTube clips of films I remember thinking were really funny when I watched them the first time.

First, FYI and backing up a bit, a J cut is an editing transition where the sound of the next shot precedes the visual. Usually this is used in scene transitions. Here’s a famous example, from The Wolf of Wall Street, where you hear the thumping sound first and are disoriented, like “what is that sound?” and then you get the visual switch, and you’re in the next scene. Start at around the 1:55 minute mark, and see what I mean.

Second, an L cut is the other way around. The visual changes first, and then the sound trails behind. Like the J cut, this one is also used in transitioning from one scene to another. Here’s a famous example of that type, from the end of No Country for Old Men, where Tommy Lee Jones (as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell) is telling his wife about the dream in which his father was building a fire somewhere out there in the dark and how his father would be there waiting for him when he got there. The horrific events of the villain’s killing spree have just overwhelmed him; the world out there is, indeed, no country for old men. As he finishes describing the dream to his sympathetic wife, he just sits there at his kitchen table, kind of dazed, kind of stunned, even baffled. Slowly, as their dialogue has ceased, we become aware of the ticking of a clock, presumably there in the house, like maybe a kitchen clock. Then the screen cuts abruptly to black, yet we still keep hearing those “ticks” of a clock. And, rather devastatingly (my personal emotion), we understand both Sheriff Bell’s mortality and his readiness for death (my interpretation). You can watch this whole clip, or you can start at around the two-minute mark for just the ticking clock at the very end.

So then, as I said, I was trying to find a movie where the J cut or L cut was used to humorous effect, and I’m just having no luck, even though I’m sure examples abound out there. I’ll just have to keep this in the back of my mind, and then at some point when I’m watching a movie for fun, all of a sudden that task will come off the back burner when I’ll notice and catalog exact such an editing transition for a future teaching moment.

But meanwhile, I decided to try skimming through Hot Fuzz clips, thinking surely there must be an example in there. No luck so far, but I’m laughing out loud at my desk while I’m searching, so I thought I’d take a quick break and share a clip.

If you’ve never seen Hot Fuzz, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it! It has a fabulous cast and a ridiculous and equally fabulous story. Basically a highly skilled police officer in London is resented by all the slackers on the force, so our hero is transferred to a tiny police department in a quaint English village . . . where, he soon realizes, a high number of “accidental” deaths seem to occur. When our hero commences his investigation, hilarious mayhem ensues. There are people in this village who are not what they seem, as revealed in plot twists that cross Agatha Christie with Rosemary’s Baby and maybe a little bit of The Stepford Wives. It’s a classic English-village “cozy” mystery that includes at least one spectacularly gruesome death. Satisfyingly clever but still gruesome.

In this clip, see if you can spot all the allusions to other films and cinematic clichés. We open up with a spaghetti Western homage to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The gunslinger riding into town, the quick cuts from face to face to face reminiscent of the cemetery showdown. (okay, first, here’s a clip of that famous showdown first, as a reference 🙂  There is an incredibly long build-up to the main action, so skip ahead to about the 1:15 minute mark.)

There’s also an allusion to True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn in the bicycle-riding pistolero’s two-handed shooting (and I love that she is taken out when our hero’s small-town police partner “doors” her. So many gags in this film!)

First, I guess I’d better show you Rooster Cogburn’s great shooting (reins in teeth, guns blazing). And that’s Robert Duvall playing the villain Ned Pepper opposite John Wayne.

And FINALLY the Hot Fuzz clip I originally intended to be the only thing I shared during my “quick” break. (Now it’s time to pack up and go home already!)