Fields also put together one of the most memorable scenes of the film, when Hooper discovers a decaying, severed head of a fisherman. When Spielberg reached this scene when filming, he felt that Hooper discovering the corpse wasn’t deliver the jumps that he had previously imagined. So, he altered the scene with only the fisherman’s head popping out suddenly, with a loud sound edited in to really make the audience jump. The film, being a thriller, was supposed to create a strong, unsettling tension that put the audience on edge. This scene already did that extremely well, and the severed head popping out and scaring Hooper was the icing on the cake.

One of the most iconic scenes of The Big Lebowski is when the protagonist, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is repeatedly having his head dunked into his toilet by a blond Treehorn thug (Mark Pellegrino). This is happening because the thug is confusing the protagonist with another man with the same name, who is a rich and old married man. The thug shouting into the Dude’s ear is intertwined with sounds of his head splashing into the toilet. The editing of this scene, being overly dramatic and very exaggerated makes it funny and attempts to convey the unrealistic personalities of the characters in the scene. Two shots in the scene are edited together, one being a worm’s eye view of the scenario which allows us to understand what it is like to be the Dude, and then a high over the shoulder shot of the thug allows us to see and feel the aggressive attitude the character has. By putting the two shots together, it gives the perspective of both of the characters. In this scene, there is no music, which adds to the unusual atmosphere of the entire scene and enhances the comedic aspect.

Joel & Ethan Coen work together on almost all of their films, where up until 2004 and the release of their film The Ladykillers, Joel always received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They alternate top billing for their screenplays and their shared editing credit under the name Roderick Jaynes, which is an alias. The two brothers are known for combining elements of comedy with drama and their films often tend to focus on eccentric characters and confusing plotlines. As a result of this, they editing style tends to be unique and different from a lot of other films.

One scene in the film depicts the protagonists in the manor from the Shining. The piece of music that plays during the beginning on this scene is very heavy and tense and it also matches the pace that pages are flying off of the table and the entire scene as a result is just very bizarre and almost frightening scene, which is intentional because the entire scene is paying homage to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The matching of the pace of the pages makes the music seem diegetic. To go along with this, the character Aech’s heavy footsteps almost mirror the heavy thumping at the beginning of the scene’s particular track. A large amount of important action shots are intercut with appropriate reactions of various characters and this is done very often as Michael Kahn wants the viewers to feel something, just like the characters are. An example of this is when Aech, the much larger Gunter, pulls over Zhou, a much smaller Gunter and asks them whether or not The Shining is scary. When he responds by saying that he had to watch it through his fingers, it cuts to another shot of Aech turning away from Zhou and looking very worried and distressed. The kind of cuts, where it cuts between dialogue and a reaction from someone within the conversation is really good when done well.