Watch: 5 Master Editing Techniques That Appear in Everything From 'Psycho' to 'Hugo'

Many casual cinema-goers can name their favorite actors, actresses or directors, but not many outside of the industry have a favorite editor. I’ve often wondered why editors don’t seem to get as much credit for the success of a film the same way that directors do. They are, after all responsible for putting a film together, perfecting its flow and artfully connecting the different components of the story, even if they are under the director’s instruction.

Vsevolod Pudovkin was a director and actor during the birth of the moving pictures. But according to actor-writer-director Evan Richards, Podovkin’s biggest contributions to the world of cinema are his editing techniques. Pudovkin wrote,”Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the ‘psychological guidance’ of the spectator.”



Take a look at Richards’ video that lays out Pudovkin’s five editing techniques which he used to achieve this psychological guidance and how they’ve been put to use in classic films like “The Godfather,” “Psycho,””The Silence of the Lambs,” “Lawrence of Arabia” and even more modern films like “Hugo.”

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