While watching the first half of JFK in class today, I noticed many of the editing techniques that we read about in chapter four of The Film Experience. One of the first, and perhaps most prominent, editing techniques that Oliver Stone used was the crosscutting of many actual videos of JFK and other figures from that time period in the opening sequence. This sequence gave a strong impression of what the movie was going to be about (if the title did not already do that) and the real footage gave a realistic quality to the movie that may not have come across otherwise.
I completely agree with this. I felt JFK really helped get across the editing aspects that we learned about in class. I think this really aided in my understanding the different factors that go into editing film.