"Just as the photograph was (and in some sense still is) a powerful signifying artifact because it is an image of which one can usually say that it is an image of something, so too the epistemology of the 'realism', of the 'effect of the real' produced by classical continuity editing in film is fundamentally based on the referential surplus value of photochemical indexicality."(Levin, 583)

My question deals with the notion that cinema that "classical continuity editing in film" maintains a type of realism associated with the photograph. It's difficult to understand how any type of editing is not similar to the "photoshop" effect. Unless cinema were to portray a continuous take as the entire work, then any type of editing would ruin the authenticity or "effect of the real". Methods of filming similar to the "Blair Witch" style attempt to depict the real, but fall short of the "effect of the real produced by classical continuity editing..."