Post Cinema looks at the arguments and investigations into digital cinema, how it has allowed the possibility of non-indexical cinema and an emergence of new ontologies. However, Post cinema also looks at new forms of cinematic techniques & viewing experiences that were already taking place before digital cinema was replaced as the new standard. However, we’ll be focusing on a specific form of new cinematic technique, Post Continuity, also known as intensified continuity.

Post continuity is essentially a set of techniques to create a feeling of shock, anxiousness & rapidness in the audience. This new style of editing can be seen in horror movies but more commonly action movies. “there no longer seems to be any concern for delineating the geography of action, by clearly anchoring it in time and space” (Shaviro, 2016). Basically Shaviro was trying to say that this post continuity did not follow the traditional rules of classical cinema in the sense that the scenes were edited in a way that did not follow time & space. Shots were shown in weird and “unrealistic” angles, the use of “shaky” cameras & CGI , and as Shaviro states “all stitched together with rapid cuts, frequently involving deliberately mismatched shots”.  

This leads us to Chaos cinema, a video essay by Matthias stork. His video essay investigates how editing in action films have changed throughout the decades, how new action films do not regard the rules of old cinema editing whatsoever and as Shaviro summarises “a never-ending crescendo of flair and spectacle”.

In Overlord, I feel that the film is a great example of this evolution. The horror war film revolves around American soldiers going into Nazi controlled village to complete a mission but are met with undead soldiers. The use of fast paced editing creates a greatly intensified feeling of anxiety and confusion, coupled with the use of CGI to create extreme gore. It follows the trend of war films being more action instead of historical but combines it with the fear and queasiness of horror films in a more literal & fictional aspect.

Reading List

Shaviro, S. (2016) “Post Continuity: An introduction,” in Post-cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century film. Falmer: REFRAME Books. 

Aseel Mohamed Waheed Deen

10/11/22