History of Editing: the Development of Editing

Editing is one of the most crucial parts of constructing a film of any kind. The way in which footage is edited can allow the creator of a film to make the audience have the perspective they want. Editing can also allow a creation of pace, introducing an element of time into films. Most films in the contemporary film industry have editing teams that are around 3-5 people strong, which would suggest that editing may not be as important as described, but that is simply not the case.

In 1895, the Lumiere Brothers invented Cinematographe. The Cinematographe was a camera, projector and printer designed and invented by Auguste and Louis Lumiere. The machine recorded, captured and projected a motion picture. It produced one single long roll of film, which was a continuous shot. Edwin S. Porter later joined the picture in 1901 and experimented with this long shot of footage. He stuck different parts of film together, creating a film that was several minutes long, consisting of multiple different shots. Edwin S. Porter managed to use footage to tell a different story which was unrelated to what the footage was initially intended to portray, and he was able to change it all through the means of editing.

Seven years later, in 1908, D. W Griffiths’ introduced his film ‘For the Love of Gold’. This film featured the first ever continuity cut when a scene was cut.

Continuity editing is a system of cutting used to maintain continuous and clear narrative action by following a set of rules. These rules are the Establishing Shot (a long or extreme long shot to establish the location or significant figure/object of a scene), Shot Reverse Shot (two shots edited together that allows the audience to take perspective of a certain character during a conversation), 180 degree rule (the angle between any 2 consecutive shots must not exceed 180 degrees in order to maintain spatial relationships between people and objects in any given sequence of shots), 30 degree rule (the angle between any 2 consecutive shots must not be any less than 30 degrees for the same reason as the 180 degree rule), Crosscutting (editing that alternates between shots occurring simultaneously in 2 or more various locations), Match on Action (a cut between two shots that places 2 different framings of some action beside each other, making it seem to continue uninterrupted), Eyeline Match (a cut between two shots that show what the subject is looking at) and Re-establishing shot (a shot that returns to the view of the setting after a series of close-up shots).

Griffiths then realised that he could also portray emotions through different camera angles and pace of editing. He realised it wasn’t all down to the actors in the films. Griffiths is credited for creating the first narrative of a film, the production of the first American feature film and discovering the close-up shot. His incredibly problematic film, The Birth of a Nation, in 1915 is the first film that used a variety of camera techniques. These include long panoramic shots, iris effect, still shots, cross cutting and planning shots. These techniques are still widely used today to create films. The use of sound in this film allowed it to be more interesting, making the audience feel more involved.

1920 saw the discovery of the Kuleshov Effect. Soviet director and film theorist Lev Kuleshov believed that the montage effect on a film would cause the audience to respond more. Eisenstein demonstrated the potentials of montage with his 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin. Eisenstein said that film montages could create ideas different from the average film.

Prior to the digital editing we have today, a system called analogue editing was in place instead. This system involved cutting down the film negatives and placing them in the desired order. Then, the film would go through a machine called the Moviola or the K.E.M. Moviolas are devices that allow film editors to view the film whilst editing it. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924. Interestingly, the company Moviola is still in existence, located in Hollywood.

Today, digital editing has taken over. This is due to the invention of computers. Editing with a computer is much faster and simpler. It is a lot more efficient in comparison to analogue editing. The first computers and editing software were only capable of basic sound and video editing.

The computers that were first used to make film first arrived onto the scene in the sixties, when the first animated film, Hummingbird, was released. This continued on into the eighties when the first CGI heavy films were released. Examples of this are Tron (1982 - featured the first extensive use of 3D CGI, including the famous light cycle sequence and also includes very early facial animation), Money for Nothing by Dire Straits' music video (1985 - first computer generated music video) and Labyrinth (1986 - featuring the first realistic CGI animal).

Computers and software today are capable of high quality effects and tasks, like motion tracking, CGI, Chroma keying and lots of other effects. There are a variety of programs available for use, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, iMovie, Final Cut Pro and Sony Vegas to name a few. Footage is placed onto the timeline and is then cut and pasted into an order and then the effects are added.

In conclusion, editing has come a long way. It is an industry that has developed at the same pace as other conventions of film. It is a fundamental aspect of any modern film. Like stated previously, without editing, the audience would be left watching one long string of footage.