Chapter 2 - Editing Styles and Conventions

Soviet montage is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing. Although Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s disagreed about how exactly to view montage, Sergei Eisenstein marked a note of accord in "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" when he noted that montage is "the nerve of cinema", and that "to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema''

These are the rules of cutting there are seven rules of cutting that they should follow:

Rule 1: Never make a cut without a good reason for it.
Rule 2: If undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut longer rther than shorter.
Rule 3: Try to cut in movement.
Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'
Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continouing action.
Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'
Rule 7: Substance first, then form.

If you follow all these rules then you should get the prefect edit.