History of Editing Essay

The History Of Editing 

1)  The first motion picture ever seen was produced by the pioneers of film- The Lumiere Brothers. The french brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere are thought to be the first people to put a sequence together to make it look like a film. This film was called (in English) 'Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory'  1895. It is only a 46 second long film, however it is one which introduced film to media. The film was shot using the Cinematograph which is a motion film camera, and also a projector and printer. I think that their work is significant in many ways, not only that they pioneered the idea of moving images but also gave light to new ideas for editing to develop and progress, this is exactly what happened about five years later, in the early years of 1900s. Therefore it is important because without their work editing wouldn't have existed today. 

2) Early editing was completely different to what it has become now. When it was first introduced into motion films, people had to work out a way of putting together shots, instead of a really long take of one image. Edwin Porter an employee of Thomas Edison, discovered a way of cutting scenes and placing them in a sequence to create a story. For instance his film 'Life Of an American Fireman' 1903 shows how Porter inter cut two different scenes and put them together to form a story. The scene where the fireman are rushing to the fire and there's a cut to the fire inside the house. This was an effective way of building up urge and making the audience feel to help out the victim, by inter cutting in a parallel way you're helping your audience understand the story better. Therefore if Edwin had just left the shot to continue on the fire , it wouldn't make sense and although the audience would still sympathize with the victim, there isn't that sense of a story line. This idea of an inter cut between two scenes to build emotion, was also used by another film editor some time after, in the same way which I will discuss later in this blog.

Another technique which has developed in modern day editing is by speeding up the pace of cuts to build tension. This is mainly due to the modern day audience who are used to everything happening quickly from TV like the MTV where music videos are cutting like mad, this means they're so expectant of seeing things done faster. Many action films today have a fast paste cut sequence which makes them engaging to an audience because the action is intense and if it was slower it wouldn't be so real. Technology has enabled editing to push itself to limits no one has ever seen before, for example editors now are able to add to a frame and/or cut characters out and put a new character in instead. This has allowed for there to flexibility in editing and manipulation. 

3) The early years of film editing was largely done by women. Many of the films produced were edited by women as they were considered to be a significance in good techniques including knitting and tapestry. This closely related to how editing was done when it first started. Where they took the individual cuts from a film strip and just like fabric put it together and created an understandable sequence , that would help in making the plot engaging to an audience. One of the most noted female editors was Verna Fields, who was a former USC professor who returned to the editing room and was nicknamed ''Mother Cutter'' because of her maternal style in editing. She worked closely with director Steven Spielberg. The most successful film of his she has worked on was the film 'Jaws' for which ultimately she won an award for best film editor. I have found a quote from her, which I think sums up why women were good film editors; "Film making is a collaboration. People have to learn how to deal with their own egos and work as partners. And I think women are probably better at that[Than men]" .  

Men however, slowly brought themselves into the editing rooms as well. 

The introduction  of men came when the introduction of sound in films was also introduced. This was mainly due to the fact that sound was a technicality and featured more mechanical ways of putting together tape, this of course meant that women can no longer find a strong ground to work as editors because they were seen by society to be a more natural 

'Greasers Gauntlet'

'Greasers Gauntlet'

4) D.W Griffiths, was a natural writer , where he worked on scenarios and story telling. He was hired by Edwin Porter to act in his film. The first technique he introduced was the 'cut in' and this editing technique was first seen in his film the 'The Greasers Gauntlet' 1908. The cut in came where he cut from a media long shot of a hanging tree to a close up to the middle of the screen, this emphasized the emotions of the two actors- which was a completely brand new concept to editing.

 He is also, well known for his use of continuity editing, this means cutting between shots and trying to maintain smoothness so that there is a natural sense of space and time. From this he created what we'd know call the 180 degree rule, this is where there is an imaginary line you have to imagine in the middle of a screen and try to keep the camera on one side of the actors so that your audience don't get confused with where the actors are positioned. The next technique he invented was the 'cross - cut' this means cutting between scenes in a parallel action, usually done to show two different events happening at once. This technique is widely used in today's modern films and thanks to Griffiths it works perfectly as an editing technique. The film where he first used a cross- cut was 'After Many Years' 1908,  another is 'The Lonely Villa' 1909, where a women held up in a house by robbers who try to break in,and the parallel action comes in where it cuts to the husband rushing home to rescue his family. He also used another good technique where he speeds up the scene to its climax. Other techniques he developed were ; the establishing shot, reverse shots , eye-line matches, match on action.

5) The Russian Revolution was a major event in which editing history was changed forever. The most notable editor of that time was Sergei Eisenstein, who started his career as a set designer for filming. This gave him a feel for how actors were positioned around the set and from then on wards he went on to change cinema. Eisenstein is well known for his creation of the 'montage' which he divided into five different forms and individual techniques. The film I will look at is one which was his best creation ever, 'Battleship Potemkin' which was shot in 1925. In the film he used the technique of montage to create emotion through is audience, although this film was a propaganda piece, his use of intellectual montage brought new emotions. This is done to combine two 'intellectual' opponents in order to create some sort of relationship between them, an example from 'Battleship Potemkin' was the shot of the priest tapping on a cross, then it cuts to a policeman tapping on his sword. This inter cut between the two characters expresses the unpleasant relationship between  the church in Russia and the Russian police.

Again, another scene where the montage is seen is in the Odessa steps sequence, where there are three shots of different lion statues , each one rising till it sits upright.This is showing and representing the rise of the proletarian. I think this editing technique is really interesting because, although I wouldn't have noticed it from the first time looking at it, I obviously has a greater meaning than what I thought was just three random shots of a statue. Therefore, Eisenstein's editing is a really effective way of portraying propaganda , and it is done in such a way to make it useful for an audience like my generation who perhaps wouldn't know about the revolution.

6) There were ''rules'' to editing after the second world war which directors stuck to and repeatedly used. These were; always use a long shot to establish good mise-en-scene, then have a two shot with the two actors in some sort of communication , then you would have a single shot of each actor.  an over-the- shoulder to show communication , also in order to show two places, transitions were included. This was  seen as a formula to film editors, a way of  showing effective editing. However, directors decided to break these rules in the 50s and 60s, this was the revolutionary 'French New Wave' which changed and broke the rules of film editing. Goddard , director of 'Breathless' 1959,  used jump cuts to make the scene more interesting to the human eye. He used many jump cuts in the chase scene, jumping from one shot to a completely different one. It was different because it changed the way an audience can see the same thing but in a more engaging way