The Development of Editing

During the years editing has changed and developed as film technology had evolved.

The origin of cinema are linked to the work of Eadweard Muybridge.


His interest was in how things move. In order to work out how both animals and human beings move, he used a sequence camera to create a series of skills, which when played back at consistent speed, its creates the illusion of movement. So basically, if you play back a series of connected images at a rate of 24 frames per second, the brain then believes that they are all images of a single thing that is moving, rather a series of photographs.

The understanding of the idea of both the frames and the frame rates is important, this is because we still use the idea of frame rates to adjust the speed of of images in production and post-production.

The first film cameras, contained rolls of film, that moved mechanically past the shutter and lens system. They were invented in France by the Lumiere Brothers and in America by Thomas Edison, both at about the same point in history.

                                                  

 

The idea that you could use a variety of shot choices, use a multiple point of views, and that the story could follow the action didn't occur until the concept of editing in camera was invented.

Editing in camera means that the film is created shot by shot, in the camera itself. You have to film the story in the order of the storyline.

People do still use this editing technique when creating films today. There is even a worldwide short film competition, and the rules are that it has to be edited in camera.
The Straight 8 film festival is a competition where filmmakers make an edited in camera movie on a single 8mm film cartridge.
Here are some examples of previous entries from Straight 8.



misty's second movie - a straight 8 film by benjamin scrimgeour from straight eight on Vimeo.



we're different - a straight 8 film by peter mallett from straight eight on Vimeo.

One of the very first examples of editing in camera is from 1902 called Life of an American Firefighter.

Life of an American Fireman is a short, silent film created by Edwin S. Porter, made for the Edison Manufacturing Company in the United States. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903. It is one of the earliest American narrative films, as well as one of the first edited in camera, and the story is about the rescue of a woman and her child from a burning building.

Here are some examples of short films from YouTube that were both edited in camera.

                                           

           

So editing in camera is still used today, and made filmmakers realise that they are able to do more than just show the world from one point of view.

Editing in camera was great, but it was never going to be good enough. I know from experience that it can be difficult to assemble a finish film just in camera; being about to judge where each shot should start and finish is really hard to get perfectly right each time. Therefore the early filmmakers needed a way to trim shoot and to alter the order of a shorter section of film; and these are known as clips.
In the early days of movie production, the idea of cutting up film and taping it back together to edit it had developed. For years this process was done by hand, with and pair of scissors and a strong magnifying glass.

The first mechanical editing desks, that used to cut up and reassemble movies, was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924, and he founded the Movial company.

The Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view the film while editing. During the early years of film, it was the first commercially successful machine used for motion picture editing. Iwan Serrurier invented the Moviola and initially intended the to use it as a home movie projector that would be sold to the general public. This was like the era's version of the DVD player, if compared to modern home movie viewing systems. The Moviola cost about $600 during its release in 1920 (roughly equivalent to about $20,000 today). This mean that it was too expensive for the regular consumer. An editor at Douglas Fairbanks Studios suggested to Iwan that his invention can be more useful if redesigned to service film editors. By 1924, the editing machine called Moviola was born. The Moviola was readily adopted by many film studios such as Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Charles Chaplin Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Buster Keaton Productions, and many other production companies. The Moviola provided editors the luxury to study individual shots in the cutting room through a vertically-oriented machine where the workprints and magnetic sound tapes were run similar to the thread in a sewing machine. At one point, each frame on the print would pass through a lens and the image gets viewed in the machine's viewing screen. Using a special chalk-like pen meant to write over workprints, markings could be placed on specific frames, depending on where the editor would want to cut and splice the print for editing. The Moviola provides a convenient way to determine more precisely where to cut or splice a particular part of a print. This is like the manual counterpart of editing using a computer software where there are tools like razor, extender, and drag-and-drop functionality to cut or splice specific shots in a film being edited.

These machines revolutionised editing and allowed more sophisticated cutting techniques to be developed.
the techniques of cutting film and reassembling the pieces, whether done by hand or with the help of a machine, and this is called 'Linear Editing'. It is called linear editing simply because you are assembling the clips one after the other; the process is purely mechanical.

From 1920, until the end of the Second World War, film editing was done almost exclusively on Moviola decks. Then in 1945, the German company, Steenbeck, introduced their new editing machine. Steenbecks rapidly became the industry standard.

Steenbeck

The process of cutting film continues to this day. Steenbeck still produce and sell film editing decks today.
For more than 60 years, Steenbeck has been setting a mark and has been trend setters for quality and precision in this branch. Many developments were made for all kinds of special applications, film editing, telecine, viewing and checking motion picture film and even x-ray films in hospitals. Many Steenbecks are and will be in use for many years to come in film archives, film restoration facilities, post-production houses, film scan facilities and film schools all over the world. 



Here is a short silent that was created in the past year and was edited using the Steenbeck.





 Invention of Video Editing
The idea of recording to something other than film was invented in 1951 by the Ampex research team. The first video editing machines came into existence a few years later in 1956. 

In 1956 Ampex stepped up with the VR-1000. While not the first Video Tape Recorder (VTR), the VR-1000 was the first, practical, broadcast quality recorder. 
 
The VR-1000 recorded a black and white picture with a mono audio channel on a 2" wide video tape. The tape ran at a familiar and economical 15-inches per second. The picture was recorded across the tape from top to bottom using four heads on a rotating drum (Quadruplex recording). This arrangement gives an effective video recording speed of approximately 1560 inches per second.


Editing film and audio tapes were the accepted norm, and if the VR-1000 recording was to be useful, it to had to lend itself to being edited as well. And indeed it did. It could be spliced in much the same way that audio tape was. It required more care, since you were editing both audio and video, and for the splice to play smoothly on-air (no roll, or breakup on the screen), the splice had to be made at a very precise spot on the tape.



 To make the technically "perfect" splice, you first "developed" the tape. This was done so that, with the aid of a microscope, you could see where to make the cut. The "developer" is a solution containing fine metal particles that are attracted by the magnetised areas of the video tape. You then used the guillotine knife to cut the tape. Finally the splice was completed by using 3M video splicing tape to join the two ends.

The last significant advance in editing came with the computer. The CMX-300 was one of the first computer based editing systems. It allowed the user to control both the VTRs and audio and video switcher. It created a list, provided auto-assembly, and was the first editor to use Time Code for colour framing.

The original video editing systems we're also linear editing systems. However, instead of physically cutting the video tape the data was copied from one ape to another, via a control deck which would control the in and out points of the clip you wanted to copy across.

At this point, both the image quality and the editing techniques were very primitive. They were used primarily for TV usage. Neither the picture quality or the were suitable for cinema use. The first feature film shot on video was Julie and Julia in 1987. The first commercial movie shot in HD was in 2004, Once Upon A Time in Mexico.

Non-linear Editing Systems (NLE)

A non-linear editing system is a system that performs non-destructive editing on source material. The first attempts to create non-linear editing systems were in the 1970's, but no-one was able to bring a commercial system to the market. Lucasfilm started to develop a system in the 1980's with their EditDroid, which is system based on laser disc technology. This however, never turned into a commercial system. However the first commercially successful, professional NLE systems were created in 1989, when AVID launched the Avid 1 Media Composer editing system. The Avid editing system was a hardware and software system based on Apple Computer technology.

This was the first computer based system that turned taped data into files. Files that could then be moved about on a timeline. One of the major developments which allowed this to happen was the creation of digital video cameras. The first professional camera, the Sony D1, coming onto the market in 1986. 

What allowed this change from linear to non-linear was the idea that either film or video could be transformed into digital information, and that information could then be altered without destroying the original file. This is known as non destructive editing.

Once the files became digital, it became possible to alter and manipulate that data in ways that were impossible using linear editing systems.

Purpose

 Whether it is a drama, news or documentary, the purpose of editing is exactly the same; and that is to effectively tell a story.

We do this by controlling the audience’s point of view. The shots that we decide to shoot in production need to be exactly what we need to tell our story in the final edit.

Film Genres

Film genres are referred to the ethod based on the similarities in the narrative elements from which films are constructed. A film genre is a lot like the theme of film.

There are lots of different types of film genres, such as; Action, Romance, Thriller, Horror, Sci-fi, Comedy, Art-house

Different genres of film have different conventions when it comes to editing, different techniques and styles are used to illustrate the genre.

Action

In an action film there is a lot of fast editing, this is to show the fast pace of the movie, in most action films there is a car chase or a fight scene, so fast editing is frequently used. Long shots are also used to establish the scene.

Horror

In Horror films fast editing is also used, this is to scare viewers. The audience are anxious as they do not know what is coming next and are waiting to be scared by the next quick shot. Low shots are also used to create fear, it shows the characters intimidation and authority over the other characters.

Romantic Comedy

In a 'rom-com' the editing makes the audience know its a romantic comedy, the sound is always  upbeat and happy, and the editing is always at a slower pace.

Pace and Rhythm

The different paces of the cuttings is used to control the tension in a scene. The more cuts per minute, the faster the pace of the film is.  

For example the pace and the rhythm of Iron Man 2, which is a modern action film, and Beastly, which is a romance film, is completely opposite.
This clip from Iron Man 2  has lots of shots cuttings, filled with explosions and crashes and bangs making it very energetic and lively.

     

Whereas this clip from the film Beastly, it is a lot slower. In this 1:40 clip here, there is a total of only 14 shots, and in just the first 30 seconds of the Iron Man clip, there is the same amount. This instantly shows that the different genres have different rhythms; action films flow a lot faster, and romance films are slower and have a smoother flow.

Combining shot into sequences to engage the viewers is another skill when editing. Editing shots in a effective way keeps the audience interested and entertained throughout the whole film.

This scene has a combination of shots and varied narrative structure with the flashback. I like how she sees triggers a flashback, of the same thing just years before. Also it doesn't reveal a lot, which makes the story more interesting, because you are wanting the know the relevence between him and her, and the flashback that she had; this means that you'll stay interested so you find out the connection.

Conventions and Techniques

Shot Reverse Shot is used mainly in dialogue sequence, the way the POV (point of view) moves from the face of one person to the reverse view, to the person that they are talking to. Shot reverse shot is a film technique where a character is looking at another character which is off screen and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character  -  Because the characters are shown facing in opposite direction the audience assumes that they are looking directly at each other.This editing technique is very popular is classic Hollywood style continuity editing .

The 180° rule is a guideline that states the two characters in the same scene should always have the same 'left to right' relationship with each other. If the camera breaks the 180 degree rule, it is called crossing the line. The new shot from the opposite side is called reverse angle.

Montage is a technique in film making where a number of short shots are taken and editing into a sequence to condense sections of time and information . It is normally used to suggest the passage of time but can also be used for things such as music videos.

Here are some examples of my own edits. show that i know how to do the editing skills, knowing how to cut a clip by setting in and out points, how to make dissolve and wipe transitions between two clips. how to edit in a cutaway into an interview, and an example of cutting to a sound-track.

How to cut a clip by setting in and out points on Final Cut Pro...

Dissolve and Wipe Transitions between two clips...

To create a cross dissolve in final cut pro is really easy. You simply select the point on the timeline between two clips, where you want to add the transition, then you press command-T.


You can also right-click where you want to dissolve to be, and then select 'Add Transition 'Cross Dissolve'


You can then edit how long or short you want to dissolve to be between two clips.

 Editing a cutaway into an interview...

A cutaway is a clip or image other something else, over the same audio as the previous shot. Usually it cuts back to the first shot, and the cutaway clip is relent to want is happening in the story or interview.

Cutting to Music 

Here is the promotional video for Visual Performing Arts (VPA) at Middlesbrough College. Each section of VPA has been cut the separate section of the backing track; when the music changes, it is the start of a new section. I finished to main edit of this promo video, and matched the rhythm of the cuts between clips to the speed and the rhythm of the song that was chosen for it.