Sliding Doors: Parallel Editing

Sliding Doors- Peter Howitt, 1998

Sliding Doors is a film all about how one moment can change your life completely and make your life go off in completly different tangents. This happens to Helen when she misses the train. She begins to lead two parallel lives, one where she got on the train to catch her boyfriend cheating on her, leaves him and becomes an independant career woman. The other wher she misss then train and never catches him at all. Throughtout the film the two Helens' lives gradually drift further apart, but still connected by things you see in the background such as places and people.

The camera work for this film is very clever as it uses parallel shots to show that the two lives are happenning at the same time, but often they'll have the two Helens' being in the same place, at the same time, and so the audience will see two completely different and seperate shots, set in the same location, with the same things happenening in the background. It lets the audience become more aware of Helens situation, and makes them feel mor in the know

Here is one clip of which they use parallel editing very effectively