Development of Editing
I will start by talking
about Edward Muybridge. Who practically invented motion
picture. In 1872 Muybridge had a job to take pictures of Leland Stanford’s
horse which was a champion race horse. When planning to do this he wondered if
all 4 hooves of a horse come off the ground when they run, he then set 12
cameras up in line which were triggered by strings when the horse ran over
them.
Once proving that all 4 hooves do come
off the ground he then realized that he could play these pictures one after the
next and then repeat making it look like the horse was running.
Once realizing he could do this with
still images he then began doing it with different animals e.g. birds, lions
and even people.
Thomas Edison was very
influenced by Muybridges work, because of this he created the high speed
opening shutter which introduced more people to start making video.
It is important to
understand the idea of both frames and frame rates as we still use the idea of
frame rate to adjust speed of the image in production and post-production.
The actual very first
cameras were a roll of film which moved past the shutter and lens which then
let light hit the frame on the film one after the next and when played back it
would look like a moving image. These were invented in France by the lumiere
Brothers and in America by Thomas Edison at around the same time.
Linear editing which is
editing in camera was found when people started to use film reels and load them
into a camera and let it record people coming out of factories and even trains
coming into stations until the film had ran out.
People then realised if they
let the film play through and then stopped winding it, moved the camera they
realised they could record more than one thing on one film real. This is there
way of editing. Today we have editing software such as adobe premiere pro and
final cut.
The idea that you could use
a variety of shot choices that use multiple points of view means that the story could follow the action
didn't come about until the concept of editing in camera was invented.
Some movies were edited in
camera which just means recording the shots in sequential order. Such as Life
of an American fireman in 1903. Also any straight 8 film which is shots shot
one after another. Also an 8mm film is edited in camera because 8mm film comes
in cartages and when put in the camera can only be ran one way and not rewound
to do a double exposure.
It is hard to edit in camera
because it is hard to judge where and when each shot should end. So there is no
way it can be perfectly right each time. Therefore the early film makers needed
a way to trim shots in order to make a section of the film shorter this are
called clips.
Originally film was edited
by using scissors and tape by cutting the negatives up and taping the sections
of the film you wanted to be together this was done for many years with only a
magnifying glass. Eventually the first mechanical editing decks that were used
to cut up and reassemble movies were invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.
From 1920 until the end of
the Second World War, film was editing exclusively on moviola decks. Then in
1945 the German company Steenback introduced their machine which rapidly became
the industry standard for editing.
These machines
are still made and sold to this day. Here are some people using them.
Invention of Video Editing
The idea of recording to something other than
film (Video Tape) was invented in 1951 by the Ampex research team. The first
video editing machines came into existence a few years later in 1956.
Examples and information can be found here:
The original editing
systems were also linear editing systems but instead of cutting the pieces of film
and putting them together which tape, the data was recorded on tape and then
put into an editing deck once you did this you would control the in and out
points (start and finish) of the clip you wanted to copy across.
At this point in time the
standard of quality that was produced using this method was only used for TV as
the quality was not at a high enough standard to use in with films in the
cinema.
The first feature film was
actually shot in 1987 on tape, but the first commercial movie shot in HD was
only in 2004 only 10 years ago in Mexico.
Non-Linear Editing
The first attempt to make a
non-linear editing system was in the 1970’s but at this point in time it was
not a commercially available system. Lucas film started to develop a system in
the 1980’s it was called the Edit droid (a system based on a laser disc
technology. However this never turned into a commercial system.
The first commercially
successful professional non-linear editing system was created in 1989 when AVID
launched their avid 1 media composer editing system. This system was hardware
and software system based editing system that started on Apple computers.
This was a computer based
editing system that turned the data on tapes into files that could be put onto
the computer and moved around on a time line. One of
the major developments which allowed this to happen was the creation of digital
video cameras. The first professional editing system was the Sony D1, this came onto
the market in 1986.
The thing that
allowed this change from linear to non-linear editing was the idea that video
from either film or tape, could be transformed into a digital format that could
be altered without being destroying the original footage. This is known as
non-destructive editing.
Story telling
No matter what
the genre is weather is be comedy, drama, horror or documentary it needs to
have effective story telling so that it makes sense to your audience.
We tell the
story by controlling the audience’s point of view. This is showing the audience
only what you want to see in the movie so that they understand what is going
on.
Documentry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqqipytDeuM
Genre – Genre is
how films are defined by either its content or style. There are several
different types of genre such as comedy, horror and thriller. These are just
some of the different types of genres. When creating horror it is all down to
the editing at the end to add your jump scares. This is done by raising the
volume of the sound and also cutting really quickly to the part which is scary.
In comedy it is all about the timing because you have to cut at the right time
because you don’t want to make the suspense for the punch line to short or too
long.
Pace and Rhythm
– Pace and Rhythm is used depending on what type of film it is. If it is a fast
film like Transformers there will be cut after cut this will make it look like
a faster pace. They use this in fight scenes in fast pace movies. For slow pace
movies or movies with suspense. There will be very little cuts and the camera
will follow him instead so it will build up suspense. This particularly used in
horror movies.
Combining shots
into sequences to engage the viewer – example of story of star wars. The
sequence that the movie is played back to has been put in that order for a
reason. The reason for this is so that you can understand the story. If it
wasn’t in order and the middle section was at the end and the end was at the
beginning the story would be able to be followed and the movie would fail. In
some case with some movies they will put the ending at the beginning of the
movie but then it will play the movie in normal order it is just an effect that
some directors use in their movies.
Convention and Techniques
180 rule
Shot reverse
shot 180 degree rule – This rule is mainly used when two actors are in
dialogue. The way the point of view moves is from over someone’s right shoulder
on to the other person’s face that is stood in front of them and then for the
other person the point of view will be over the other persons left shoulder
looking at the first persons face. It can also be shot in reverse with left
shoulder then right shoulder.
Montage –
Example of montage. A montage is a selection of clips put together sometimes in
a certain order and sometimes just in a random order but once all clips have
been put on a timeline one after the other you can add effects and music over
the top of the footage.
This montage I will be showing you will be from a game as this is a very popular game that people make montages on.
