Editing in Crash

Editing is the way the film is cut and put together. It also refers to the transition from shot to shot. In a film like Crash with its multiple storylines, editing is even more essential in conveying the story of the film.

• Remember that there is much meaning at the point of the cut. This is where ideas can be linked between scenes etc.
• Process like fading to black or white as well as dissolves can create a sad mood and give the effect of time passing or of someone's thought processes. It is editing that helps a director to show that a character is remembering the past as in a flashback scene.

Crash won an Oscar for editing. Why?

• the short scenes with segue into each other involve 10 or 11 storylines. It takes real skill to edit these together without confusing the viewer and without a jarring effect
• scenes are matched by common features like the stop sign which is shared at the end of the scene where Cameron tells Antony "You embarrass me, you embarrass yourself" and drops him off at a stop sign. A stop sign is seen in the inpoint of the next scene where Fahrad looks in the rear vision mirror as he waits for Daniel to return home. The visual link is also a symbolic link because stop signs remind us of the central metaphor of the film: the collision of cars and cultures.
  
• Other appropriate links are vehicles. The stolen black navigator is seen driving by when the scene changes from Antony and Peter to another set of characters.
• In the scene where Ryan rings Shaniqua from a cafe, we see in the same location the Thai slave deal being finalised between two Asian men. When Ryan walks outside a white van drives past and obscures him: the van in which we will later see the Thai slaves. Then the film cuts to Antony and Peter in the black SUV which drives fast, turns and skids after which we see a crash scene where Conklin has shot Lewis the black cop and Graham Waters and Ria have been called to investigate. The movement of the black SUV is to the right and the movement of the officer pulling the crash scene ribbon is to the left so the two scenes merge into each other seamlessly and are linked also by the motif of cars which continues through the film. In this short section of the film we see three different scenes but between them and within them are links because they all do with racism in many different forms: Asians against other Asians, resentful black youths stealing from rich whites and a white police officer abusing a black health official. This is an impressive feat of editing.