Part One: The History of Editing.

Film editing is the process of assembling clips (rushes) from a film shoot together, and assembling them into a final piece. In 1895, the Lumiére Brothers aired the first public screening of film. They were single, static shots, as the concept of a moving image was enough to amuse and entertain audiences. Films as basic as a train pulling into a station and factory workers leaving the building were shown and marveled by the audiences.

A member of the audience, Georges Méliès, a French magician, was astounded by what he saw and tried to purchase a Cinematographe (an early film camera) from the Lumiére brothers, for 10,000 francs. However, the brothers had received much higher offers from others and refused.

Instead, Méliès bought an English projector (an Animatograph) for just 1000 francs. He then studied the machine and was able to reverse the mechanics- therefore creating his own camera.

Méliès discovered what could be described as the first edit in history by pure accident. He was shooting a bus pulling out of a tunnel when his camera jammed. When he got the camera working again, the bus had gone and was replaced by a car. After developing the film, Méliès saw the startling film of the bus suddenly vanishing on screen and being replaced by a car. This was the first jump cut.

Méliès introduced the jump cut to the mass audience in his film The Haunted Castle, by having objects appear suddenly in the castle. Over the next few years, Méliès successfully experimented with film “special effects”, discovering fades in and fades out, cross dissolves and reverse shots. However, of the many films he released, the camera angle of Méliès’ films was always the same. It never moved, or revealed close up shots.

As film developed, film pioneer Edwin Porter released what is now seen as one of the most significant films for its editing techniques- cross cutting. In his 1903 film Life of An American Fireman, he took footage from the library of the Edison studios- where he was head of production- and spliced it with staged scenes to create a fictional narrative.

In his next film, The Great Train Robbery, it seems Porter discovered how editing could be used creatively, and to compress time, while audiences could still understand the story.

Porter hired a man for his production company by the name of D.W Griffith. After turning Griffith down as a writer, he hired him as an actor, due to his young, good looks. Griffith was then hired by a New York Production company, and after impressing with his 1908 film The Adventures of Dollie, was given a contract. In three years, he made over 400 films for the production company, and is

now credited for creating the “Cut In” effect. First seen in the 1908 film Grease Gauntlet, the shot jumps from a wide shot to a close up on the actors.Griffith is now widely credited as the founder of continuity editing- where shots and angles change but we feel that the time and space are the same- continuous. Continuity editing was established further when Griffith and his fellows began the 180 degree rule out of practice- keeping to one side of the axis of action so not to confuse viewers. He is also credited with the parallel narrative concept- something many said would confuse viewers, but is now hailed as a iconic editing technique. It can be seen in his 1909 film The Lonely Villa, with three different stories happening in the same timeframe, as well as establishing shots, cutting on action and matching eyelines- all key edits to establish continuity.

In 1915, Griffith released what would be the first blockbuster- The Birth of a nation. It used all the techniques Griffith had invented, including colour tinting certain scenes to add emphasis to the emotion of the film such as a deep red for the fire scene. Despite being an iconic masterpiece, Birth of a Nation’s pro-Ku Klux Klan message and it’s negative depiction of coloured people led to it being banned from many states, and prompted Griffith to releaser a sequel the following year- intolerance.

It was around now that Soviet film theorists and theories began to emerge, most famously montage theory. It is most incoming in the 1918 film “The Kuleshov Experiment”, when Russian Lev Kuleshov filmed a man staring at three different objects with a different emotion on his face (hunger when looking at soup, grief at a coffin etc.) However what the audience did not realise was the shot of the man was exactly the same, and the audience was interpreting his facial expression as a different emotion, corresponding to what object they saw on the screen. Kuleshov discovered that the sequence and order of shots will affect the audience’s interpretation, and dismantled the whole idea of continuity editing, allowing his film’s to be subjective to the audience’s imagination.

Following the explosion of cinema blockbusters in the mid 20th century, film editing was suddenly recognised as a profession. However, the act of physically stitching film pieces together was seen as a women’s job, so many of the first film editors were women. The editing was done on what was known as a flatbed machine such as a Moviola, or Steenbeck, using a positive copy of the film. By using a positive copy, the editor could make as many experiments as they wished, without ruining the original negative. Once the positive sequence had been put together in a satisfactory state an EDL would be created. The EDL (an edit decision list). This is the guideline followed by whoever cuts the negative version of the film.

Nowadays, editing is done digitally, on a non-linear edit system, such as Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro. Digital editing allows editors the freedom to cut and recut the film as many times as they wish, much quicker and easier.

Part Two: Analysing the editing of a film sequence.

I have looked at the cinematic TV series Emmy award winning “Downton Abbey”. The show tends to follow a continuous editing style, with no cross fades. The show uses many over the shoulder shots during dialogue between two characters, to help establish continuity, as well as establishing shots.

In the three shots above, we see an over the shoulder shot of two characters, while the angle establishes they are driving along a country road. The next shot physically shows this from the side. Then, the action jump cuts to the car arriving in a different location. We know what has happened, but the editing saves the entire car journey being shown- which many viewers would find dull!

In this scene, the shots are jumping between a dialogue scene between two characters. The shots are composed in exactly the same way, and the

director is sticking the 180 degree rule (however on the extremes on the breaking it)

In the scene below the four ladies are having a discussion, with quick, rapid changing dialogue. This is reflected in the edit. The scene- less than one and a half minutes- uses five different camera angles and changes angles 33 times. It begins with two establishing shots- showing the house and the ladies sat in a circle. As the discussion and dialogue gets “faster”, so do the cuts.

The scene below is a discussion between two servants about one’s cancer diagnosis. The scene contains no cuts at all, instead a close up of the women, until another characters disturbs them. This, almost intimate camera shot keeps the viewers entirely focused on the discussion, and the unusually long non-cut and jump slightly startle when there is eventually a cut.