Film has been around since the early 1800’s, in the first films that were made there was no editing involved at all and were normally just shot from one angle and would be around a minute long. If we looked back into the first films that were made we would find them very simple. The first type of editing I have came across was essentially in camera editing where the operator would stop the camera for a brief moment so that they could move to a different shot or to move something into the shot, This type of interruption wouldn’t leave a mark or cause any damage to the nitrate film stock, this process was called resumption.
The film L'Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat by the Lumière brothers was one of the first films, which as you can see was shot in one angle. When the film first came out people who went to view it who had no experience of film and knew nothing about it were scared as they thought the train was actually coming towards them.
There is another technique which also involves stopping the camera but also cutting the film strip itself, they would physically cut the footage with a splicer and then connect it back together with very fine thread. This was the first sign of editing.The great Train Robbery by Edwin Porter was one of the first films to use the cutting technique in 1903.
Editing enabled film to take off as people could record the own still shot footage for themselves where as editing was a great skill, in the early 1900’s colour was being introduced into film editing it was called film colorization. This was done by each individual shot was coloured by hand an example of this is the film greed from 1924 where parts of the film are in colour, the link below is only part one of the film you will be able to watch the other parts on youtbe.
The first actual film editor was D.W Griffiths he was the first person to think of and to make specific techniques one of those was adding a narrative to film he also invented the use of various shots including close ups, when these were first brought into film people did not understand the use of these shots as they had came to the cinema to watch full people and open shots so they were not happy that they had paid just to see someone’s face. Below is a link of D.W Griffith’s trailer of the film birth of a nation in this you can see the use of various different shots.
The film makers soon started to realise that the use of different shots could make the audience react in certain ways, they could use flash backs to show previous happenings which would keep the viewer locked in as they would have more of an insight into the film they would also use close ups to show emotion which would make them feel empathy or other emotions for the character, there were various other shots and techniques that where in use at the time. In the link below is a film called the man with a movie camera it is a Russian film from 1929, in this there is use of editing techniques that we would also see in modern day films.
Tarantino a more modern day movie maker made a big decision in his film Reservoir dogs as to use a female editor as he thought that women were more nurturing and would make his film the best it could be. This was different as the larger majority of editors in the film industry are male so this was quite controversial. The video that I have linked is the trailer for Reservoir dogs where you can see the work that Tarantino’s has produced.
Animation has also developed greatly over time and has excelled even further since CGI has been introduced.
Editing is a vital stage of post-production in the process of film/video editing. If there was no editing involved in a film it would have to be shot in perfect sequence and would have to have no mistakes at all, this would make making a film or video very difficult. For this assignment I will be covering the principles and purposes of editing and also how editing has developed over time.
