The Dark knight Linear Editing

Linear Editing of The Dark Knight

Now there are two ways in the order to tell your story. In a linear and non linear fashion. 

Linear. This is when the events that are occurring in the scene are happing at the same time in the story. They can be used to increase tension like in the case of the Dark Knight or to unveil a new part to the story or plot. 

Non linear is where the story's events flow out of order or in reverse. A great example of Non linear editing of a story's events flowing in reverse order is Memento, like Dark Knight directed by Christopher Nolan.

This prime example of non linear editing goes for the entire film. The start of the film is intialy the end and the end is the beginning, the whole way through from start to end the film is working backwards in a non linear fashion.


Now for Dark Knight




This scene takes place 44 minutes into the film. In the scene we as an audience are told that the Joker has targeted 3 of the films Characters. Judge Serillo, Commissioner Loeb and Harvey Dent. Now by us as an audience knowing this piece of information it creates suspense and tension. This is where the linear fashion of the scene begins to play. The scene takes place in 3 different locations showing all the targeted characters, the pace of the scene is established between cutting back and forth from each location and character. This quickly establishes the whole purpose of this scene and the reason for the Linear editing, to show to the audience that all of what we are seeing is happening at the same time. This adds more suspense to the story, incidentally adding more of a meaning to the audience of how much that the Joker can do to inflict his insanity to gotham.