History of Video Editing
The first films to be made all look very static and boring to the modern person's eye. However, back in the very early days of filming, these kind of films were all that people knew of, and they were amazed by them! The first films also featured no editing and very little, or no story. The audiences were simply amused by the motion in the pictures, which was very new and exciting to everyone.
George Melies
George was a magician and illusionist and he was fascinated by the work of the Lumiere brothers and the work of the Cinematographe. George had worked in a factory for quite a while and was fairly mechanically competent.
This later developed into having to cut film, as more than just one take were being taken. One of the first films to have more than one take was Robert W. Paul called "Come Along, Do!".
The first film to be really successful for Melies was "A Trip To The Moon", which was made in 1902. It was one of his first films that involved a story-line. The way the shots were cut and edited was by physically cutting and pasting the footage together, using a splicer and threading the film on an editing machine. In the modern world we live in today, editing with computers and fancy editing software is taken for granted. However, in the early days of film, this was a very long winded and physical task.
The first editing machine to be used in the industry is the Moviola, which was invented by Iwan Serrurier.
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In 1931 the Steenbeck was invented. This was a flatbed type of editing machine. When sound started to develop and introduced into films, it also had to be edited into the final cut. A machine called the Picynsch would be responsible for finalising the soundtrack on 16mm film.
For a long time the way films were edited stayed the same; physical cutting and pasting of footage.
However, as technology advanced, new inventions were made and one of them was the CMX-600, which is the first non-linear video editing system. The system was introduced in 1971 by CMX Systems and it had a console with two black and white monitors built in, as well as a light pen used to control the system.
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As time was passing and computers where being invented, Quantel developed an effects composing and non-linear editing system. It was released in 1985 and was designed to render special effects in non-real time. The "Harry" was very advanced for its time and was the only machine like it for quite some time.
In 1989, a new way of editing had been released with the Avid/1. This was the first digital editing software, and it would go on to replace Moviolas and Steenbecks. It allowed editors to handle their film creations much easier and by 1995, dozens of production companies had switched to Avid/1. This was the end for physical cutting of film.
As digital editing was developing so were the computers that people had in their homes. This meant that editing software could be ran on them and in 1999 Apple released Final Cut Pro. This software was the best on the market.
It wasn't until late 2007 that Apple had competition, as that was when Adobe released Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, which was a much better, cleaner and professional working than its previous Adobe Premiere ancestors, and these two softwares have stayed up there, being the most used film editing softwares around the world.
-the order that the audience receive the information of a plot
-how much information the audience receive about the narrative
-how the audience is supposed to feel about events or characters at any given moment
-how the audience is supposed to experience the pace of the narrative
Creating pace in an edit consists of choosing the duration of each shot, the longer the duration of each shot the slower the pace of that scene will be. Editors can use the control of pacing to manipulate the audiences attention level depending on the feel of a scene.
This youtube clip shows a short clip from a scene in Avatar. The scene is very fast paced and this has been achieved by mainly having fast cuts throughout. This keeps the viewers attention and the viewer is always looking at something different. Action films are usually the ones to use quick cuts to build pace and I remembered this clip as it is one of my favorites.
On the left is a perfect example of continuity editing. It allows an emotion from the character to be put across to the viewers without needing any dialogue and also the closer the camera is to the subject (her face and the painting), the suspense builds.
It is extremely important to have matching sound from one shot to the next, this also helps to smooth cuts and prevent temporal discontinuity which the audience may experience.
The same concept applies to "match on action", as it would create temporal discontinuity and distract the audience if they pick up on something which is "sloppily" edited.
Jumps Cuts, gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is a manipulation of temporal space and fractures the duration to move the audience ahead in the film.
The 180 Degree Rule is a basic guideline, which regards the spatial relationship between two or more characters or object within a scene. This rule means that the camera can go anywhere on one side of the 180 degree line and the rule is broken if the camera goes over that line, which can cause confusion to the viewers. The rule is demonstrated in an illustration to the left.
This rule is most commonly used in a scene between two characters, which usually involves a dialogue.
The purpose of this rule is to create an imaginary line that the audience can orient themselves with the position and action of the scene.
However, the rule is sometimes broken on purpose as a decision of the director. In this case, it may be because the director wants to cause disorientation to the viewers.
This youtube video is designed for you to understand what breaking the 180 degree rule would look like.
Although dissolves tend to be around one/two seconds, the length of the dissolve depends on the desired pacing of the scene.
Dissolves are nowadays more common in classic cinema, and are being used less due to the absence of linear narrative becoming more common.
As a film maker, I believe that dissolves are still very effective if used at the correct time. For example; a dissolve would be good to use at the end of a film or even at the beginning. This is because it is much softer to the eye than a sharp cut is. I haven't made many films in the short time I have been doing this course. However, I have used dissolves in all of them, because I personally believe they can be very effective and help to tie off the end of a film.
Shot-reverse-shot, is when a character is shown looking at another character, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. This technique is constantly used in interviews and it allows the audience to see reactions of a specific person at one time.
Lumière brothers
Two brothers (Auguste and Louis) from Lyons, France began helping their father, who was an old portrait painter that abandoned his career in painting to work on manufacturing and selling photography equipment.
They were very technically minded from working with their father for such a lot period. By early 1895 the brothers had come up with their own device, which would challenge Edison's Kinetograph. Thus new device had a combination of a printer, projector and camera. They called it the Cinematographe.
One of the Lumiere brother's first films was called "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory".
One of the Lumiere brother's first films was called "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory".
George Melies
George was a magician and illusionist and he was fascinated by the work of the Lumiere brothers and the work of the Cinematographe. George had worked in a factory for quite a while and was fairly mechanically competent.
Melies was present at the screening of an early Lumiere's film, which was simply called, "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory". The film screened in 1895 and the film showed the workers coming out of the factory.
He approached the Lumiere brothers and asked to purchase the Cinematographe. However, the Lumiere brothers knew of his knowledge with cameras and saw him as a potential threat to their filming career so they declined and did not let George buy the camera off them. Melies didn't stop there; he took a journey over to London, where he had spent a lot of his time. When he was there he located a man called Robert Paul, who owned a similar device called an Animatograph or Teatrograph, which included a camera and a projector. Meiles bought the Animatograph and then used his knowledge to reverse engineer the device to discover the workings, before eventually constructing his own.
He approached the Lumiere brothers and asked to purchase the Cinematographe. However, the Lumiere brothers knew of his knowledge with cameras and saw him as a potential threat to their filming career so they declined and did not let George buy the camera off them. Melies didn't stop there; he took a journey over to London, where he had spent a lot of his time. When he was there he located a man called Robert Paul, who owned a similar device called an Animatograph or Teatrograph, which included a camera and a projector. Meiles bought the Animatograph and then used his knowledge to reverse engineer the device to discover the workings, before eventually constructing his own.
Melies began producing and screening his own films as part of his live magic performances, which gained a great response from audiences. Late 1896, George Melies was filming a bus leaving a tunnel, when the film got jammed. Once the camera worked again, Melies found that the Bus had been replaced by a hearse. To this day, this is called a jump cut. He began experimenting with jump cuts and used them to make objects and people disappear and reappear in his films, shocked and amazed his audiences, who had never seen anything like this before. Melies is also often credited with developing other editing techniques we still use to this day, such as fade in and fade out, overlapping dissolves and stop motion photography.
This later developed into having to cut film, as more than just one take were being taken. One of the first films to have more than one take was Robert W. Paul called "Come Along, Do!".
The first film to be really successful for Melies was "A Trip To The Moon", which was made in 1902. It was one of his first films that involved a story-line. The way the shots were cut and edited was by physically cutting and pasting the footage together, using a splicer and threading the film on an editing machine. In the modern world we live in today, editing with computers and fancy editing software is taken for granted. However, in the early days of film, this was a very long winded and physical task.
Editing Machines and Methods of Editing
The first editing machine to be used in the industry is the Moviola, which was invented by Iwan Serrurier.In 1931 the Steenbeck was invented. This was a flatbed type of editing machine. When sound started to develop and introduced into films, it also had to be edited into the final cut. A machine called the Picynsch would be responsible for finalising the soundtrack on 16mm film.
For a long time the way films were edited stayed the same; physical cutting and pasting of footage.
However, as technology advanced, new inventions were made and one of them was the CMX-600, which is the first non-linear video editing system. The system was introduced in 1971 by CMX Systems and it had a console with two black and white monitors built in, as well as a light pen used to control the system.
For over a decade the CMX-600 was the only non-linear editing system, but in 1984 the EditDroid had its debut and was introduced as a less successful concurrent to the CMX-600.
As time was passing and computers where being invented, Quantel developed an effects composing and non-linear editing system. It was released in 1985 and was designed to render special effects in non-real time. The "Harry" was very advanced for its time and was the only machine like it for quite some time.
In 1989, a new way of editing had been released with the Avid/1. This was the first digital editing software, and it would go on to replace Moviolas and Steenbecks. It allowed editors to handle their film creations much easier and by 1995, dozens of production companies had switched to Avid/1. This was the end for physical cutting of film.
As digital editing was developing so were the computers that people had in their homes. This meant that editing software could be ran on them and in 1999 Apple released Final Cut Pro. This software was the best on the market.
It wasn't until late 2007 that Apple had competition, as that was when Adobe released Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, which was a much better, cleaner and professional working than its previous Adobe Premiere ancestors, and these two softwares have stayed up there, being the most used film editing softwares around the world.
The Purpose of Editing
Editing helps to determine primarily four dimensions of film narrative:-the order that the audience receive the information of a plot
-how much information the audience receive about the narrative
-how the audience is supposed to feel about events or characters at any given moment
-how the audience is supposed to experience the pace of the narrative
Creating pace in an edit consists of choosing the duration of each shot, the longer the duration of each shot the slower the pace of that scene will be. Editors can use the control of pacing to manipulate the audiences attention level depending on the feel of a scene.
This youtube clip shows a short clip from a scene in Avatar. The scene is very fast paced and this has been achieved by mainly having fast cuts throughout. This keeps the viewers attention and the viewer is always looking at something different. Action films are usually the ones to use quick cuts to build pace and I remembered this clip as it is one of my favorites.
Conventions of Editing
Continuity Editing
Continuity Editing, is the predominant style of film and video editing. The purpose of continuity editing is to create a smooth and logical transition of time and space. To preserve a continuity edit it is important to avoid an ellipsis. The two main factors to look out for to avoid an ellipsis are "diegetic sound" and "match on action".On the left is a perfect example of continuity editing. It allows an emotion from the character to be put across to the viewers without needing any dialogue and also the closer the camera is to the subject (her face and the painting), the suspense builds.
It is extremely important to have matching sound from one shot to the next, this also helps to smooth cuts and prevent temporal discontinuity which the audience may experience.
The same concept applies to "match on action", as it would create temporal discontinuity and distract the audience if they pick up on something which is "sloppily" edited.
Jumps Cuts, gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is a manipulation of temporal space and fractures the duration to move the audience ahead in the film.
180 Degree Rule
The 180 Degree Rule is a basic guideline, which regards the spatial relationship between two or more characters or object within a scene. This rule means that the camera can go anywhere on one side of the 180 degree line and the rule is broken if the camera goes over that line, which can cause confusion to the viewers. The rule is demonstrated in an illustration to the left.This rule is most commonly used in a scene between two characters, which usually involves a dialogue.
The purpose of this rule is to create an imaginary line that the audience can orient themselves with the position and action of the scene.
However, the rule is sometimes broken on purpose as a decision of the director. In this case, it may be because the director wants to cause disorientation to the viewers.
This youtube video is designed for you to understand what breaking the 180 degree rule would look like.
Dissolves
Dissolves, is a gradual transition from one clip to another. The terms "Fade-in" and "Fade-out" are used to describe the transition from or to another clip.Although dissolves tend to be around one/two seconds, the length of the dissolve depends on the desired pacing of the scene.
Dissolves are nowadays more common in classic cinema, and are being used less due to the absence of linear narrative becoming more common.
As a film maker, I believe that dissolves are still very effective if used at the correct time. For example; a dissolve would be good to use at the end of a film or even at the beginning. This is because it is much softer to the eye than a sharp cut is. I haven't made many films in the short time I have been doing this course. However, I have used dissolves in all of them, because I personally believe they can be very effective and help to tie off the end of a film.
Shot-Reverse-Shot
Cutting to a sound track
Cutting to the sound track can be used in many different scenarios to create certain emotions from the viewers and also it is an extremely good tool that the editor can use to build or slow the pace of a scene.
Cutting to the beat, as it is also known is also very common in music videos. By cutting the clips to the beat, there is a constant rhythm that flows and there is a strong connection between the song and the video.
This abstract piece of video has been created to display how cutting to the beat can change the viewers emotion in a specific way, depending on how you do it. I really like this video so I have linked it so you can see what cutting to the beat looks like.
