THE HISTORY OF EDITING

ADAM CROOKS

WHAT IS EDITING?

Film editing is the post production technique of putting footage together.

The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, and many other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate and complete work.

The editing process often begins with the author's idea for the work itself, continuing as a collaboration between the author and the editor as the work is created. As such, editing can involve creative skills, human relations and a precise set of methods

EARLY EDITING

Early films were short films that were one long, static, and locked-down shot. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. There was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera.

The use of film editing to establish continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, is attributed to British film pioneer Robert W. Paul's Come Along, Do!, made in 1898 and one of the first films to feature more than one shot.

THE LUMIERE BROTHERS

Auguste and Louis Lumière were born in France and were the earliest filmmakers in history.

Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.

It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures.

Louis and Auguste design a camera which serves as both a recording device and a projecting device. They call it the Cinématographe.

The Cinématographe uses flexible film cut into 35mm wide strips and used an intermittent mechanism modelled on the sewing machine.

The camera shot films at sixteen frames per second which became the standard film rate for nearly 25 years.

THE LUMIERE BROTHERS

The brothers began to open theatres to show their films (which became known as cinemas). In the first four months of 1896 they had opened Cinématographe theatres in London, Brussels, Belgium and New York.

The first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory.

EDWIN S PORTER

Edwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer.

He was most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company.

Over 250 films were created by Porter, the most important films include Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery.

D.W. GRIFFITHS

David Llewelyn Wark "D. W." Griffith was an American film director, mostly remembered as the director of the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance.

His film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States.

DEVELOPMENT OF CONTINUITY EDITING Seamless editing that was used was also known as invisible editing. This meant that the cuts between the shots were matched to the action, this technique was usually used by DW Griffiths, with the seamless editing it makes you watch something and not even realise that it’s been edited. Continuity editing is a system that focuses on creating a clear continuity for the final piece that you have created. The idea of this style of editing is to create a smooth flow between all of the clips so the narrative of the story will be obvious without interruptions. With community editing you make sure that there isn’t and jump cuts and to make sure that people don’t jump around the room through the different shots that have been used. The main focus of this type of editing is to be seamless and to make sure that the audience stays focused on the story instead of the techniques that are used.

MONTAGE EDITING

Montage editing is the process of cutting up the film and editing it into the screened sequence. Unlike invisible editing, montage editing uses close-ups, relatively frequent cuts, dissolves, superimposition, fades and jump cuts.

SOVIET MONTAGE EDITING

The Kuleshov Experiment

In his experiment, Kuleshov cut an actor with shots of three different subjects: a hot plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, and a pretty woman lying in a couch. The footage of the actor was the same expressionless gaze. Yet the audience raved his performance, saying first he looked hungry, then sad, then lustful.

Sergei Eisenstein- Battleship Potemkin 1925

Battleship Potemkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime.

Battleship Potemkin has been called one of the most influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958.

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD MONTAGE EDITING Battleship Potemkin is very important in Soviet formalism beause it is the best example of it. That film is nothing of which we are used to. We are used to Hollywood aka. classic realism which uses continuity editing.

Hollywood realism which uses continuity editing is easier for the audience to watch.

DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVE EDITING METHODS FRENCH NEW WAVE-The New Wave is a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s. The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long tracking. Also, these movies featured existential themes, such as stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence. Filled with irony and sarcasm, the films also tend to reference other films.

JUMP CUTS- A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is a manipulation of temporal space using the duration of a single shot, and fracturing the duration to move the audience ahead.

DEVELOPMENT OF SOUND EDITING The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film. The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. Directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.

The film is based on The Day of Atonement, a play by Samson Raphaelson.

FILM EDITING TECHNOLOGY

NON LINEAR EDITING SYSTEMS- A non-linear editing system is a video or audio editing digital audio workstation system that performs non-destructive editing on source material. The name is in contrast to 20th century methods of linear video editing and film editing.

MOVIOLA- A Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924

FILMING EDITING TECHNOLOGY FLAT BEDS- A flatbed editor is a type of machine used to edit film for a motion picture. Picture and sound rolls load onto separate motorized disks, called "plates." Each set of plates moves forward or backward separately, or locked together to maintain synchronization between picture and sound. A prism reflects the film image onto a viewing screen, while a magnetic playback head reads the magnetic audio tracks.

MODERN/DIGITAL EDITING- The move from SD to HD video is just one of the major challenges that video editors have faced in the past few years. Audio has gone from two-channel stereo to 5.1 surround, and all kinds of new applications and products have pushed the envelope of editor knowledge.