The
history of Film Editing
To understand the history of editing and why
editing came around you first have to look at the history of film. Films first
began as small clips about 5 seconds long of something happening in real life.
Thomas Edison created a device for seeing the clip called “peephole
Kinetoscope” and was created in the late 1880/early 1890. This was amazing
because it allowed you to see the clip in motion, instead of looking at picture
and moving on to look at the next one. The problem with this was not just that
they were so big and difficult to move around, but also that they only allowed
one person to see it at a time.
This device helped start the world of cinema, and
after seeing this device the Lumiere brothers wanted to create their own
version of it. They later became the first people to project a film onto a flat
surface. The device was called “Cinematograph”, which recorded and projected
films/short clips, a famous example being a train pulling into a station.
Though this seems like nothing to get excited about to us, back then the people
who saw this thought the train was going to hit them and where scared by it
because this was the first time they saw anything like it.
Later Georges Melies an illusionist, made them an
offer for a“Cinematograph” but was refused, after which he decided to create
his own. Later on when filming, the camera jammed and after fixing it they
started filming again. When watching this back he found that the film had a
jump in it, where something had changed in the shot. This was the first jump
cut, he then used this technique to make things appear and disappear in his
film to create a sense of magic. Later on Jean-Luc Godard used this in the
first feature length film to make a long car journey shorter, and with this he
created his own route to the characters' destination. The problem with this is
that they did not change the shot by at least 30 degrees when changing between
the roads and it stands out to the audience. Later in Hollywood the 30 degree
rule was created to make the cut between shots less noticeable. The meaning of
the 30 degree rule is that if you move you camera under 30 degrees from your
last shot of someone, it's called a jump cut because it stands out to the
audience.
George Albert Smith created different shot types
to help tell a story. Before this it was more like being in a theatre because
everything was filmed in a master shot and gave you the feel of watching it
from outside. After he created different shots it gave you the feel of being in
the middle of what was happening. This would also help gain an emotional
response as well as keeping the audience focused on the film, where as if it
was all just one master shot they would be more likely to get bored and lose
interest after an hour. He also created scene transitions, and created the
“Kinemacolor”,the first colour projector. It used two filters, red and green
behind the black and white film to give it colour.
Edwin.S.Porter combined footage of real life
situations with his film making it look and feel more real and like it was
happening. An example of this is“Life of an American Fireman”, where he took
footage of real firemen and fire engines, and added his own scenes from inside
the house as a different point of view. Contrasting the two shots together
created suspense to the film, making it more dramatic, keeping the audience
entwined with the film and it's illusion as it continues to tell its story.
After seeing the audience's reactions, he found a new way of telling stories
through film, by editing between shots and involving real life with the
make-belief of film making, creating an impactive contrast. The following year
he developed his ideas with “The Grate Train Robbery”, one of the most
influential films of that decade. It was the combination of camera work and the
strong storyline, entwined with Porters use of editing to tell a story that
made this film be able to build up the the tension and keep the audience
intrigued till the point of climax.
D.W.Griffith was another early film maker. He
developed narrative in film editing and created effects such as cross cutting
and flash backs which are commonly used today. He also showed the power of film
editing to help tell a story with “The Birth of A Nation”, a film about the
Civil War in America. It placed black people in a bad light, making them look
lazy and like alcoholics. After it was shown the Ku Klux Klan's numbers almost
doubled and caused riots among communities. This shows you how much effect film
and the media had on people those days, and how a brilliantly shot/edited story
can influence people.
In Hollywood they created a group or rules for
editing so that you can keep people in this illusion, the name for all of these
rules is continuity and without it most films would look amateur and all the
cuts would stand out to the audience and you would loose their interest because
you would not be able to sustain the suspension of disbelief you are trying to
create around them. Without editing films would just be plain and would not be
able to hold our attention for a full length film and we could not have the
type of entertainment we have today because it would be like seeing a play at
the theatre only that it won’t be as engaging. It would be just like watching a
moving image on a screen, which would not crate a false reality where anything
could happen or draws you into that reality.
In Russia they a man call Lev Kuleshov found that
if you cross cut between a shot of something (food, family etc) and someone
looking towards the camera with a poker face, your subconscious would link the
two together and you would think that he is hungry. This is away of telling the
audience something more subtle without showing them the character's emotion,
which can have a greater effect on the audience than showing the emotions.
Soviet montage was created in Russia by Sergei
Eisensteim and it went against Hollywood rules of continuity, thus creating
discontinuity. This form of editing was used to draw the attention of the
audience to what was happening in the scene, instead of just focusing on the
central characters. This effect is used to create confusion between shots and
can make the audience feel the sense of panic being expressed in the film
because of the abrupt differing shots cut together. This combined with the
story can give the audience a sense of panic by putting them in the middle of
the situation.
When editing was first used it was done in a
linear sequence, meaning they went from the beginning to the end. This is
because they had to manually cut and piece together bits of 35mm film. This
meant that once it was put together, if they wanted to change something they
would have to re-film the sequence and cut up the film, rearranging and placing
it together again. As time passed film making and editing has become more digital,
and with this editing has become something done in a non-linear sequence
because you no longer need to fiddle around with little bit of film, you can
simply drag and drop clips into the sequence on your computer and edit them in
to your shot. Also if you made a mistake you would not have to start again, you
could just use the commands “Ctrl+Z”, and it would undo your last change to the
edit.
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