Sherlock Holmes Editing Review

Moving on from the film’s movement, editing was a huge part of this film. Director Guy Ritchie’s, go-to editor is James Herbert. James Herbert explains, they “used four Avids, all running off a Unity- three PCs and one Mac, which the visual effects editor used.” (postmagazine.com) He said he prefers working with a 2.8 Avid Media Composer and using Mojo instead of Adrenaline allowed them to rarely need to digitize and it also kept the budget cost low. He explains during the workflow he looked through the rushes while Ritchie was shooting, he would cut and score what he thought it should look like and on most occasions Ritchie would love it. Herbert mentioned that the film was so linear that there wasn’t much they could’ve changed to the story. One very challenging scene, Herbert explains, was the hallucination scene. He made the montages as one and took Blackwood out making the scene more simplified. He used Final Cut Pro for the stylistic look as well. 

Sherlock Holmes Movement Review

Sherlock Holmes Movement Review

In Sherlock Holmes the movie the director Guy Ritchie emphasizes a lot of the action in this film by keeping the camera close in the scene. A lot of this movies movement is stylized when we look at the fighting or running into the streets.

The opening of the movie is a long shot of a bunch of horse carriages and then switches to Sherlock running through the streets. It goes back up close inside the one carriage to reveal Inspector Lestrade and John Watson getting their weapons for something. In this beginning sequence it’s almost as if the carriages are chasing after Sherlock. A couple carriage shots are angled as though we ourselves are riding on top of the carriage or we are running with Sherlock through the alley way. We feel connected to Sherlock with the types of shots he’s in. The camera is at a close and lower angle shot of him but also follows him through the alley way creating a more sped up intense scene.

A scene ahead Sherlock makes it into a building where he approaches a man he must knock out stealthily. He begins by narrating how the fight will go. All of this is done in a slow motion take. In this slow motion sequence this is suppose to give the audience a sense of how the victim really feels as Sherlock makes his swift and clever attacks. The slow-motion shots in Sherlock Holmes were one of my favorite things about this film. Each frame of the slow-mo were close up shots of the action. One example is when Sherlock must silence the man so he can’t scream for help or draw attention. In this demonstration Sherlock hits the man’s throat to paralyze his vocal chords, in this shot it’s an extreme close shot with Sherlock’s hand jabbing at the man’s throat all in slow motion. In these shots it’s as if we are Sherlock the way the camera is angled. This sort of movement with the camera really works well for this film.