Historical Development in
Editing
Editing has advanced a lot since the start of the Film and
television era due to certain editing techniques and people. The first two people who 'invented' the film industry were the Lumière brothers although they only created the camera not the actual editing.
The brothers were well known
for creating a camera that could capture and play moving images and project
them on to a wall for people to view. This was titled the Cinematographer and
was patented in 1895. This was a big revelation in the industry as the only
other camera before this that could capture moving images was Edison's
kinetoscope. The problem with this was that only one person could view it at a
time and the actually camera was huge. This made it impractical to use.
During one of the Lumière brother’s viewings a man came to watch called Georges Melies, fascinated by the Cinematographer he decided to peruse a career in the moving image business. Whilst using a camera built by Robert Pau, Melies stumbled across the idea of being able to manipulate and distort time and space due to a jamming in his camera. He then experimented with creating special effects for his footage. He was the first man to be able to place special effects onto footage and he started to create other editing techniques as well such as the split screen.
With the novelty of the film industry dying, directors
and filmmakers such as Georges Melies abandoned the industry. This was until a
man named D W Griffith came along. He started off as a scriptwriter but when
his script got turned down he was offered the job of an actor and became
fascinated with the motion picture business. Griffith was very imaginative and
with a lot of fresh ideas he started directing films with his biggest successes
being the 1915, The Birth of a Nation. The
film became popular due to new, never seen before editing techniques such as
the iris shot, cross cutting and flash backs. After this film he struggled to
get the same success but is well known as an important figure in the film
industry due to the invention of the editing techniques.
One of the most successful films to be created in the early age of the film industry, when including more than one scene in a film became recognised was The Great Train Robbery (1903). This was the first narrative film and was very successful amongst audiences and people realized that film could become commercially viable.
The film contained editing techniques that hadn’t been seen before such as parallel editing. This is as well as using some of the most popular and innovative techniques of the time. It included minor camera movement and cross cutting.
Cross cutting was a big step in editing history and was also famously used in the film Life of an American Fireman (1903). The editor, Porter was celebrated for his unusual but exciting style of editing. He used cross cutting to build up tension in his audience. He wanted them to feel worried for the people stuck in the burning house unsure whether the fire men would get there in time. Porter also used editing to build an emotional response.
Porter’s techniques were very different from any other editors. A man named Cecil Hepworth wanted to bring all of the different styles together and bridge the gap between the two different styles. He created a film called Rescued by Rover (1905). This was a British silent film created in 1905. The film was the most advanced film seen due to its fantastic storytelling, production and editing.
Sergei Eisenstein is famous for his creation of the Rhythmic Montage editing; this is particular well seen in the film Battleship Potemkin (1925) which was created for the purpose of propaganda:
He enjoyed experimenting with editing techniques such as the montage because Eisenstein was trying to get the biggest emotional response from his audience. He wanted his audience to feel remorseful for the sailors. Eisenstein was one of the first directors/ editors who started using editing techniques to make an audience feel a certain way instead of just relying on the plot and the actors. This was an important mark in the history of editing.
After a while most directors and editors were making films in the same style of editing, which was continuity editing. This was heavily criticised by a man called Jean Luc Goddard. He wanted to challenge traditional editing techniques by breaking traditional rules and inventing some of his own editing styles. Goddard created a film showing off his ideas. It was called A Bout de Souffle (1960). He created and evolved techniques such as Jump cuts and character asides whilst breaking the continuity rule by doing things like breaking eye line matching. Goddard concentrated more on the structure of editing rather than the story being understood by the audience. The story lines were often simple but more chaotic and unfocused 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 called Non Linear editing. This meant that the editing could take place on a computer and the film would be digital. This gave editors more flexibility and the editing process became a lot faster. The footage didn’t have to go in a determined order. This process was also known as digital editing. Examples of digital editing software used today are programs such as Final cut or Adobe Premiere. These programs allow footage to be edited virtually to see how it would look like so no permanent cut is ever made. The speed of editing progression has decreased significantly over the past few years and instead companies are focusing more on how to make the process quicker and user friendly.
The first digital editing software that was electronic was the VTR created by Ampex corp. This enabled the editor to watch the original tape whilst the VTR recorded the desired shots. The advantage to this is that less damage is caused to the tape from manual handling and the original tape is preserved for future use. In 1963 Ampex went on to develop the system so it was able to mark the tape electronically. This enabled video animation by using editing to frame by frame shift-editing points. The main break through came in 1970 when the CMX600 was created. It was the first digital disk based editing system. The system worked by using magnetic computer disks that were designed to store analogue video. The down sides to this software were that only 5 minutes could be stored on one disk, it didn't cope well with dissolves and was extremely expensive.
With modern technology now editing has advanced to a level where directing can be done in the editing process. George Lucas is well known for being able to place and take actors out of a scene and even change their eyes so they are looking a certain way. The demand for films now is very high and there is a lot of pressure on editors to meet strict deadlines. Software such as Final cut pro allow people to edit films with speed an precision, this is the main reason why the industry changed from analogue to digital editing.
