Interpreting the Editing Style of Confessions >

4+1W, which is 5W.

5W is a term from information science research. It divides the information research process into five parts: research on the information communicator (who, who is communicating the information), research on the information itself (what, what information is being communicated), media research (which, through what channels and methods the information is communicated), research on information users (whom, to whom the information is communicated), and research on information benefits and effects (how, how the information produces utility).

This framework is also the basis of modern news reporting:

who (who) — character

when (when) — time

where (where) — place

what (what) — event

why (why) — reason

A news report has to contain all five of these points to be complete. You don’t need to understand communication studies to see this—just watch one episode of the evening news; because for ordinary people to fully understand a news story, these five points are essential. This is the basic writing ability a journalist must have.

But in film, there is often one W that is not written, or rather is deliberately hidden by the screenwriter.

And not just in film—works that tell stories, such as narrative poetry, drama, and novels, generally (in most scenes/segments) hide this W:

Someone or something — (subject)…character (Who)

Doing something — (event)…action (What)

At a certain time and place — (background)…environment (When/Where)

The W that is hidden is Why, that is, the reason, the motivation.

Take the opening scene of the film Confessions, for example: the teacher keeps chattering away to herself—talking from herself to her family, from her family to the school. In the classroom, a bunch of troubled teens have already turned the place into utter chaos. They laugh and mess around with no order at all, and the teacher completely ignores this chaos…

This scene has all four basic Ws: the teacher (Who) in the daytime (When) in the classroom (Where) giving a moral lecture (What). However…clearly no one is listening. The students ignore the teacher’s existence, and the teacher likewise ignores the students’ existence.

The one missing W here is the teacher’s motivation.

This creates a kind of dramatic conflict — why is the teacher doing this?

The hidden W often becomes a hook that creates suspense to keep the audience watching.

In most cases, of course, this kind of device is clearly something the screenwriter has set up in advance.

The screenwriting of Confessions is itself highly sophisticated. This W (motivation) is two‑way: it completely hides the reason why the teacher acts this way, and at the same time it uses events to indirectly explain why the students behave this way—after all, these students are troubled kids with no sense of discipline.

But what we especially want to discuss is: what is the job of editing?

Editing’s task is to amplify the key ideas among these four Ws, and to lay the groundwork for the eventual reveal of the last W.

Among the four Ws in this scene, time (When) and setting (Where) are not that important for the editing; the oppressive atmosphere has already been created through the arrangement of production design, lighting, and framing during pre‑production.

What the editing needs to highlight is the idea of “a chaotic classroom” and “a teacher who doesn’t care.”

How does Confessions do this? By using sound.

No matter what the students are doing or what the teacher is saying, there is always the chaotic classroom ambience laid under every shot. And the sound editing in Confessions is entirely subjective in terms of editing; it abandons sound editing methods that are based on “realism” as a premise. In some shots, the ambient sound is very loud and the teacher’s voice is very soft; in other shots, the ambient sound is very soft and the teacher’s voice suddenly becomes extremely clear. This depends entirely on whether the editor wants the audience to hear the teacher’s lines clearly. In other words, the editing is manipulating the audience, telling them which lines are important by turning up the volume for them.

Until the teacher drops this line: “I wanted to kill him.”

Only then does the last W surface. At this moment, the audience realizes that the teacher wants revenge, and her previous actions now have a reasonable motivation.

Here, the editing uses a sudden stop in sound and holds on a wide shot to lock in the rhythm. The contrast between sound and silence gives this line an even deeper resonance.

Of course, editing can only embellish what’s already there; the heavy use of music‑video‑style slow motion also gives this “moral lecture” a stronger sense of ritual and a touch of aesthetic beauty.

When cutting a scene, we must always be aware of the “presence” of these 5 Ws. The place where we can really do something interesting is always that hidden W.

I’ve previously done a detailed analysis of the film Confessions: