History of editing
Primitive editing:
Primitive editing was when producers started to edit their
films, in a simplistic way, as they did not want to confuse the audience too
much with a mass amount of splicing. Before editing, they kept a very
simplistic story, although found that the use of editing ensured that they
could create more complex ideas in their films.
Griffith and Beyond:
D.W. Griffith transformed the classical way of editing into
a new type of editing which was called: Montage. This made montage a regular
practice and a useful propaganda tool.
Much of this new editing technique was created in the Moscow
film school of the 1920’s. One of the most important soviet directors of the
era was: Sergei Eisenstein who made
classical editing into a more consciously intellectualized way of editing which
he called, Montage.
This was when an amount of shots was edited together to get
an idea or moral across to the audience. An example of this is Charlie
Chaplin’s, modern times where a group of men come out of the subway. The clip
then cuts to a herd of sheep being led to
slaughter. There is one black ram in the middle of the herd. We immediately cut
back to Charlie emerging in the midst of the crowd: the one black sheep in the
fold.
Amount of editing:
Many directors, even after these changing movements in
editing, stuck to minimal editing, in order to give a raw, classical feeling to
their films. Genre, style and era played a heavy role in deciding how much
editing was needed. People like: Buster Keaton and Chaplin chose to keep their
cameras rolling over a long time, making longer scenes and clips. This was done
mainly when dangerous stunts were done to ensure that the audience knew they
weren’t editing tricks.
Reference:
Eisenstein:
Much of this new editing technique was created in the Moscow
film school of the 1920’s. One of the most important soviet directors of the
era was: Sergei Eisenstein who took
part in altering classical editing into a more consciously intellectualized way
of editing, called Montage.
This was when an amount of shots was edited together to get
an idea or moral across to the audience. An example of this is Charlie
Chaplin’s, modern times where a group of men come out of the subway. The clip
then cuts to a herd of sheep being led to
slaughter. There is one black ram in the middle of the herd. We immediately cut
back to Charlie emerging in the midst of the crowd: the one black sheep in the
fold.
One of Eisenstein’s
most known films is: Ivan the terrible. 1944, 1958 Many of Eisentein’s films were made to create
films of a unique language by breaking confines and space. This made his films
more conceptual and less realistic, as they were full of ideas and were
developed in more of a conceptual art way.
D.W. Griffith:
Griffith helped
to develop continuity editing through his practice of creating and editing film
in the soviet film school.
Griffith, unlike
Eisenstein, decided to try make film an enhanced theater within confine and
time. One of Griffith’s most famous productions is: the birth of a nation,
released in 1915.
Griffith was
responsible for many editing techniques such as: classical cutting, close-up
editing and parallel editing.
Parallel cutting
was used in The birth of a nation as Griffith used many scenes that were all
representing the same moment in time, but showing different scenarios for
different characters. Due to these editing techniques, Griffith managed to give
a sense of time in film, which made the audiences understand what was going on
much easier, although it was a more technical idea than the original looped
photos that created a very simplistic film.
Lumiere brothers:
The brothers grew
frustrated with the kinetoscope, as only one person could watch a film at a
time, meaning they had to be shorter and couldn’t really be shown on a large
scale.
In 1895 they
produced a more portable cinematograph which combined a printer, projector and
a camera, which played films at a slower speed which made the films run much
smoother and also allowed a bigger audience to watch the films than the
kinetoscope. The first film the Lumiere brothers played was: La sortie des
usines Luminere.
Hitchcock
Hitchcock managed
to create the idea of suspense in film, which progressed the ideas of editing
and film. Hitchcock would use certain editing techniques to withhold
information from the audience which gave the illusion of suspense. The
techniques used were: timed cuts to the film and certain camera angles that
avoided the main scenario, although suggested it. In 1960, the released film:
Psycho used the technique for the shower scene, which was one of the most
influential scenes in the life of film, and is still analysed to this day.
George Méliès:
One of the first forms of editing was used on to create a
“Magic” trick in a scene, where Georges
Méliès kept cranking until the end of a scene, where smoke would come
into the shot, the cameramen would then stop cranking, where the actor would
move out of the shot, making it seem like the actor had disappeared.
Editing technology:
Manipulation of diegetic time and space: This is when the editor alters the pace of
film to condense or expand time. A way of doing this is through the technique
of montage. This is when separate clips of different times are chronologically
arranged to show a path through time. An example of montage is the training
scene in Rocky.
Eisenstein and
D.W Griffith were the main ‘fathers’ of creating montage. Another way of
manipulating time of film is by using parallel editing, who was developed by
Griffith as well.
Film & video: Film and video was developed when Televisions
started to get a larger amount and range of TV channels, which gave the public
a much larger range of genres and shows to watch. Film was then developed from
black and white to colour in 1967. The first time of this happening in Britain
was on BBC2, on the coverage of Wimbledon. Colour came in to different
countries at very different times. Now film has progressed so much, that we
have HD film and also 3D film. We also have developed from having VHS, to
Blu-Ray and now we even have livestreaming online.
Analogue: Analogue editing came prior to digital editing and
was done by having a physical tape of film. This was then spliced (cut up)
precisely to certain scene endings. The separate pieces were then attached with
a cutaway shot. This process took such a long time, making it harder to produce
long films in such a short amount of time. Mistakes could not easily be amended
to a good standard either, meaning that the editors would have to be trained
very well to get the perfect cuts. The final film tape was then put into a
Moviola machine.
Digital: Digital editing only came around approximately 27
years ago and has only been mainstream for about 15 years. This type of editing
is done on a software of a computer program. The footage can be edited very
quickly on a digital program. Using computer programs also gave a much stronger
and larger variety of effects which helped to give a more professional look
through editing. It is also easier to amend any mistakes made whilst editing
and takes up less space than analogue editing, which contained many different
machines.
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