Pioneers of Early Editing
The Lumiere brothers were French inventors who created an early motion picture camera and projector- the Cinématographe- which was light and only used a film speed of 16 frames per second. They went on to hold screenings of their films and charged admission prices at Salon Indien du Grande cafe in paris. They went on to open theatres of their own in London, Brussels, Belgium, and New York.
This is a picture of their cinematograph
Georges Melies was a French film maker who developed many technical and narrative effects of the early motion pictures. He tried to buy a cinematograph from the Lumiere brothers but they refused; seeing him as competition. His most famous technique was the jump cut which he came across by accident. Whilst filming a bus moving, his camera jammed, and when it started working again, the bus had been replaced by a hearse. He then tried to use this technique to make things disappear and reappear in his films, such as The Haunted Castle. Melies tried to present things that live theatre could not achieve, and also developed the techniques of Fading In and Fading Out, Overlapping Dissolves, and Stop Motion Photography.
Edwin Porter was an American film pioneer who developed several film editing techniques which included cross cutting and dissolving. He worked as a projectionist and had the job of cutting apart some of Melies's films to combine them into a 15 minute showing. He made the film 'The Great Train Robbery' which cut without using fades or dissolves, and didn't let the scene reach its logical end.
D.W Griffiths was an American actor and playwright in his early life, before becoming a film maker. He began creating 'two reel works' before making the 'four reel' film Judith of Bethulia (meaning the film could play for an hour. Some of the film techniques he used were Cross Cutting, Close Ups, and Dissolves.
As for how techniques of editing have changed, editing has gone from being linear in the past to non linear presently.
Linear Editing
Celluloid film used to be cut up with scissors to remove boring parts, then the interesting parts would be spliced back together. Machines like the Moviola and the Steenbeck Flat Bed were used for this process.
As John Hess says in 'The Journey to Modern Non-Linear Editing (Part 1), Television was "the impetus (thing that makes a process happen more quickly) for computerised editing".(YouTube, 2013)
In the 1950's TV shows were cut live in a studio using a video switcher to use several camera angles.
To record TV for a different part of the country (e.g. west coast America) a Kinescope was used to reproduce the TV program.
The first images recorded onto magnetic tape were in 1951 for Bing Crosby. Five years later, a video tape recorder was commercially available through AMPEX.
Magnetic tape could be cut, but needed to be developed first. This still did not allow you to see what image you were working on and could not link video to audio.
Kinescope film prints had audio cues which could be matched up to video- this was known as the Editors Sync Guide and became the modern Offline Editing.
AMPEX released an Editec which allowed the user to mark in and out points on recorded video in 1963. The SMPTE Timecode created in 1967 used numbers to distinguish frames and therefore allowed editors to locate any frame that they wanted using the format of Hours:Min:Sec:Frames.
With these machines, linear editing became possible. It was an advancement that then became boring and normal.
Non- Linear Editing
This type of editing was non destructive and had no generation loss as it was more natural.
The CMX 600 was the first machine made for non linear editing and cost $250,000 when released in 1971.
EMC2 made the first offline editor, and was followed by the AVID/1.
In non linear editing a work cut was produced first. Lost in Yonkers was the first film produced on an AVID system in 1993.
The Purpose Of Editing
From day one the main purposes of editing
have been to create pace and engage the viewer, and whereas in the beginning of editing we were able to do this with a lot of new techniques, now it depends on the film maker being creative with what is available.
There are two types of editing- continuity editing, and soviet montage editing.
Soviet montage was film which heavily relied on editing and could use images to communicate ideas whilst using music to change the audiences emotions. Soviet montage came into fashion after the russian revolution when the film stock was low and film makers wanted to experiment with found footage. Lev Kuleshov discovered that the same shots were able to create a different story if they were placed in another order. This technique became known as the Kuleshov effect when Lev showed shots of an actor, a bowl of soup, a coffin, and an attractive woman- and the audience believed that the actor had different expressions to each thing, despite the shot of the actor staying the same.
Sergei Eisenstein created propaganda for uneducated people, and wanted to use emotions and conflict ideas. This is shown in his film 'Strike' which showed a cow being slaughtered and then showed workers being killed. He also edited the famous step sequence from 'Battleship Potempkin' which lasted 7 minutes to lengthen the time that people would feel emotions. As well as this technique, he used vertical montage which relates to how the image works with the soundtrack.
Dziga Verton was another film maker that used montage, however he used it to make film making obvious. His film 'Man With A Movie Camera' was a film on how films were made. Dziga used imagery more than explanations in his films.
Continuity Editing (also known as classical
editing) is used ultimately to keep the continuity of time and space, and to not confuse the audience. This editing relates to the 180 degree rule as you cannot cross the line so that you are always on the same side. This is particularly important in the cases of conversation scenes, and when you are filming an object moving.
It could be argued that there is another type of editing, which is chaos editing. Chaos editing is rapid editing which is known as intensified continuity, and is common in action films. With chaos editing, the editors aren't bothered about the audience knowing where they are, as it uses the art of confusion and a good soundtrack to compensate for the sloppy visuals which are used. Chaos editing can often make use of a shaky handheld camera to involve the audience in the action,
The Conventions Of Editing
Continuity Editing is editing which connects
ideas and keeps the continuity of space and
time.
Jump Cuts are used to "create an ellipsis in
time , and violate space."(The Art of the Guillotine, 2016) The Jump Cut first occurred when George Melies' camera jammed whilst he was filming a bus, which was replaced with a hearse once the camera was working again. Presently, the jump cut is typically used in documentaries mostly, but is still used in films.
The 180 Degree Rule is used to keep the
continuity of time and space when filming a
scene such as a conversation between two people or when filming the movement of something. The rule makes sure that things are on the same side of the camera as they always have been which makes it easy to see who they are talking to, or which direction the thing is moving in.
Dissolves are gradual transitions from one image to another in filmmaking. Dissolves may be used in montage sequences but are usually used to show that some time has passed between the last scene and the next scene. Short dissolves can sometimes be used to soften a jump cut.
Shot Reverse Shot is used during a
conversation and can be used to show the
audience who is speaking, or a certain reaction to what has just been said.
Cutting to a soundtrack is when the scene
takes the pace or speed of the song into
consideration when cutting, for example using
slow cuts if the music is slow, and using rapid cuts if the music is fast, in for example a car chase.
I believe that through the research made for this assignment, and the writing up that I have done, I have gained a better understanding of the history of editing and will now consider these elements when editing my own work.
References
The Art of the Guillotine, (2016). Film Editing & Jump Cut | Art of the Guillotine. [online] Available at: http://www.aotg.com/index.php?page=jumpcut [Accessed 17 Jan. 2016].
Vimeo, (2011). Chaos Cinema Part 1. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/28016047 [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016].
Wikipedia, (2016). Dissolve (filmmaking). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolve_(filmmaking) [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016].
YouTube, (2013). The Journey to Modern Non-Linear Editing (Part 1). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIVYeyWHajE [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016].
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