Historical Development in Editing
Editing has advanced considerably since the start of Film and Television era, The story of editing began with Auguste and Louis Lumière, the Lumière Brothers.
The brothers were both well known for creating the first camera that can capture and play moving images, which can also be projected for an audience. This was titled as the ‘Cinematographe’. This was a big revelation in the film industry, as the only camera that had been made before this, which could capture moving images, was Edison’s ‘Kinetoscope’. The problem with Edison’s was that it was huge, and only one person was able to view the images at once, which made it extremely impractical to use.
During one of the Lumière brother’s viewings a man came to watch one of they creations known as Georges Melies. Fascinated by the cinematographer, he decided to aim for a career in the moving image business. Whilst using a camera originally built by Robert Paul, Melies came across the idea of being able to distort time using film, due to a jamming in his camera. He went on to experiment with creating special effects he could use alongside his footage. Melies was the first man to use special effects with his films, and he was the man who went on to create other effects such as the ‘split screen’.
The only editing technique that was around at the time of Melies was known as Linear Editing; also known as Analog editing. This meant that all of the footage was to be put together in a predetermined order. The footage was stored on videotape, which stretched about 15 inches per second. This was a very long process, as one mistake could cause the whole project to be disrupted. The process involved a lot of people, usually women, to sit down and physically cut the film tape and stick it together with a piece of tape. Women usually did the job as it was viewed as a female job, simply due to the fact that it was seen much like sewing, and knitting. The job was made much more difficult when the audio clips that had to be overlaid onto the projects were introduced. They had to be cut at the same angle and the same accuracy as the video. The main disadvantage of this editing technique was that it was incredibly difficult.
When the film making craze started to die out, directors such as Melies abandoned the industry; this was until a man known as D. W. Griffith came along. He started off writing scripts, but when his script got turned down he was offered the job of an actor. Instantly fascinated, he took the job and became very interested with the motion picture industry.
Griffith was very imaginative and with many fresh and original ideas he started directing films. Some of his biggest successes include the 1915 film ‘The Birth of a Nation’ and the 1920 film ‘Way Down East’.
Way Down East.
The Birth of a Nation.
‘The Birth of a Nation’ became incredibly popular due to new, never before seen editing techniques such as Flashbacks, Crosscutting and the Iris Shot. After this film he struggled greatly to reach the same success with other films, but is still regarded as one of the most important figures in the film industry due to the invention of these editing techniques.
Sergei Eisenstein is famous for his creation of the Rhythmic Montage editing; this technique can be seen in the film ‘Battleship Potemkin".
Sergei enjoyed experimenting with different editing techniques such as Montage, as he was aiming to gain an emotional response from his audience.
The 1903 film ‘The Great Train Robbery’, is one of the most iconic films of the early film years, simply because it was one of the first films to use more than one scene. This was the first narrative film that audiences could see going somewhere and was very successful amongst different audiences. This film became so successful of the traditional editing techniques; it included new techniques such as Parallel Editing, Minor Camera Movement and Crosscutting.
Parallel Editing
Crosscutting
The film ‘Life of an American Fireman’ includes one of the most famous uses of crosscutting, and was a massive step in editing history. Edwin S. Porter, the Editor, was celebrated for his unusual but exciting style of editing. He wanted his audiences to feel worried for people in the film who were stuck in a burning house, unsure of whether the fireman would be able to rescue them; he wanted to build up tension in his audience, and did this by the use of crosscutting. Similar to Sergei Eisenstein, Porter used editing to try and get an emotional response from his audience.
Porter’s techniques were very different from those of D. W. Griffith. A man names Cecil Hepworth wanted to try and bridge the gap between the two styles of editing, and bring all the different styles together. He created a film known as ‘Rescued by Rover’ in 1905, Rescued by the Rover was a British silent film. The film was the most advanced film seen at the time, due to its use of fantastic storytelling, production and editing.
Rescued by Rover.
After a while most editors and directors were making films using the continuity style of editing. A man known as Jean Luc Goddard heavily criticized this type of editing, as he wanted to personally challenge traditional editing techniques by breaking the rules and inventing his own styles of editing. He created a film known as ‘A Bout de Soufflé a film that evolved many techniques such as Jump cuts, and he broke the rule of continuity editing by not correctly using eyeline matching. Goddard focused a lot less on the story of what he was producing than previous editors, and much more so on what techniques of editing he was using; and the stories were usually simple, but difficult to follow due to his style of editing.
As the editing world progressed so did the ways of putting the footage together. A new method was invented originally known as Non-Linear editing. Allowing for the editing to take place on a computer using digital film.
This gave editors more flexibility and the editing process became a lot faster as the footage didn’t have to go in a determined order.
This gave editors more flexibility and the editing process became a lot faster as the footage didn’t have to go in a determined order.
Editing software has been the thing to evolve the most in the film and media industry. The first digital non-linear editor was known as the CMX 600, and was introduced in 1971, which was the size of a washing machine. Since then, editing has been condensed so much that it can be put into a simple computer program and can be used by anyone. Some of the most popular editing software used today includes: Sony Vegas Pro, Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro.
https://www.editorsguild.com/Magazine.cfm?ArticleID=1104
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