An Overview of The History of Film Editing

Before the popular use of non-linear editing systems, the first initial editing of films were done with a positive copy of the film negative called a workprint. This was done by physically cutting and pasting pieces of film, they used a splicer and threaded the film on a machine with a viewer like the Moviola, or “flatbed” machine such as K-E-M or Steenbeck. Using a film as positive allowed the editor to do as much experimenting as they wanted without the risk of damaging the original copy.

When the workprint had been cut to the wanted state, It was used to make an edit decision list (EDL). The negative cutter referred to the EDL while processing the negative, splitting the shots into rolls which were then printed to produce the final film.

Before Editing

Every basic idea about films including editing as its precursors. Flashbacks had existed in novels; scene changes in plays. The earliest filmmakers were afraid to edit film shots together, they assumed that splicing together shots of different things from different angels would confuse the audience.

Primitive Editing

Filmmakers quickly discovered that editing shots into a sequence not only enhanced the narrative but also let them create more complex stories. Examples include Rescued by Rover (Great Britain, 1904) and Great Train Robbery (1903) Cuts were made in the camera early on so the camerman would only have to stop cranking at the exact moment the end of a shot occurred and started cranking again when it was moved somewhere else. This sort of editing can allow for some early special effects. George Melies stops the camera rolling after discharging a magic puff of smoke in front of the actor, and begins the camera again when the actor’s left stage making it look like the actor vanished.

In editing, sometimes less is more

Some filmmakers chose to minimize editing, comparing it as the “death of 1000 cuts” for realism films. E.g, some documentarists saw editing as a means to make their visions appear more interesting, others saw minimalism as the way to go. Other styles emerged when editorial intervention was minimal however never absent. Even feature film directors chose to avoid the manipulation of reality montage and heavy editing seemed to imply. In the silent era. American comics Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin relied on long takes so they could demonstrate that no special effects had been used and acrobatics were not camera tricks but real events by actors.

Picture Examples.



A workprint from Star Wars





Splicer



Moviola



SteenBeck machine



Edit Decision List



Charlie Chaplin



George Melies




K-E-M Machine



Buster Keaton







Important People in Film Editing History

EDWIN S  PORTER

He was the first to use techniques such as closeups and intercutting for narrative purposes. Porter was a projectionist, inventor and entrepreneur before starting work in 1900 for the Edison company, where he was swiftly promoted to head of film profuction. In 1901, he made multi-short films including “The Execution of Czolgosz”.
He’s best known for “The Great Train Robbery (1903) which is a sophisticated, 12-minute narrative split into separate scenes and uses camera movement and continuity editing to establish the story. His last contribution to film was to give an unknown actor and playright named David Wark Griffith his debut role in the 1907 production, Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest.

VERNA FIELDS

 

March 21, 1918 – November 30, 1982.

Known as Mother Cutter, Film Clip Example

Her film editing carer began in 1960, when Irving Lerner hired her to edit Studs Lonigan; they had worked together before on The Savage Eye. 1963, she worked on An Affair of the Skin, which was directed by Ben Maddow. Over the next 5 years, she edited many other independent films such as The Legend of the Boy and the Eagle.

Starting in mid 1960’s, Fields taught film editing in the University of Southern California. Her students included Matthew Robbins, Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz, John Milius & George Lucas.

Fields left no written lectures from her USC years, but a transcript exists from a 1975 seminar hat she gave at the American Film Institute. She said that “On Jaws, each time I wanted to cut I didn’t, so that it would have an anticipatory feeling – and it worked”.

Fields also edited Steven Spielberg’s first major film, The Sugarland Express (1974) and became widely celebrated for her work as editor on Spielberg’s Jaws. The editing of Jaws  has ben intensely studied over 30 years.

D.W.GRIFFITH

 

January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948, Film Clip Example

In 1907, Griffith was still working as playwright went to New York and attempted to sell a script to Edwin Porte. The script was rejected but Griffith was offered an acting part in Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest.

Griffith was convinced that feature films were commercially viable, he also produced and directed the Biograph film Judith of Bethulia (1914), which was one of the earliest films to be produced in the USA.

Griffith took his stock company of actors and joined the Mutual Film Corporation because Biograph resisted his goals and his cost overran on the film. He built a studio with the Majestic Studio manager Harry Aitken, it was later renamed as the Fine Arts Studio.

Griffith used Close Up shots first and flashbacks as well as classical film editing. He also suggested the invisible cut which keeps action fluid and considered as an “invisible art”. Editor’s were kept a secret for years and were considered as hands of hire, not creative partners.

Griffith’s top editor was Jimmy Edward Smith. They were the only people who worked closely on the entire set, they were considered to be a married couple because of all the time they would spend together.

Principles of Film Editing

Pudovkin

February 16, 1893 – June 20, 1953.

His masterpieces are often contrasted with those of contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of masses. Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals.

After WW1, he gave up his profesion and joined cinema, he began as a screenwriter, actor an art director an also an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov.

After a few attempts of advertising cinema, he directed in 1962 which was considered as one of the masterpieces of silent movies: Mother. He developed several montage theories which would then make him famous.

His first feature was followed by The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm over Asia.

In 1928, due to the advent of sound film, Pudovkin; Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov signed the Manifest of Sound, which debates the possibilities of sound and always understood as a compliment to the image.

After an interruption of health concerns, Pudovkin returned in 1938 with the films Victory (1938); Minin and Pozharsky (1939) and Suvorov (1941).

At the end of WW2, under criticism  he returned to his earlier work. In 1951, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, which is last work was the Return of Vasili Bortnikov.

Film Clip Example

 

Murch

 12 July, 1943.

While he was editing directly on a film, he noticed the crude splicing used for the daily rough-cuts. He invented a modification which concealed the splice by using narrow but strong adhevise strips of special polyester-silicone tape. He named this invention “N-vis-o”

He started editing and mixing sound with Francis For Coppola’s The Rain People (1969).He also mixed the sound for Coppola’s The Godfather Part 2 which was then released in 1974. Film Clip Example

Unlike other film editors, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to “conducting brain surgery, and short order cooking”, since all conductors, surgeons and cook stand when they work. In contrast, when he writes, he writes laying down. His explanation for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creation process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sitting or standing to separate his editing and creative mindset.

In the book he wrote, The Blink of an Eye, he discusses his experiences and gives advise to aspiring editors. H also explains the Rule of Six which lays out the criteria that Murch believes should be he top list of an editor when they are working.  The list is as follows:

1.       Emotion

2.       Story

3.       Rhythm

4.       Eye-Trace

5.       Two-dimensional plane of Screen

6.       Two-dimensional space of action

The Rule of Six Lecture

Murch believes that eye-trace is important because it directs the audience’s attention to what’s important in the scene, it emphasizes what you really want the audience to pay attention to/ Murch refers to planarity in a two-dimensional plane of screen. He emphasizes however with the rule number 6 that you should make obvious the relationship between the objects within the three dimensions of the action.

The last 3 rules focus more on continuity which are important, Murch says “it’s definitely possible to fulfil all 6 rules…if you prioritize continuity, the most important aspects of your cut, emotion and story will be out the window, and you’ll be unsuccessful

Edward Dmytryk

 

Dmytryk was a film director among the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film proffesionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress furing the McCarthy-era “red scare”. He wrote several books on filmmaking such as On Film Editing where Dmytryk stipulates seven “rules of cutting” that any editor who wants to be good should follow1.       Never make a cut without a positive reason

2.       When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short

3.       Whenever possible, cut in “movement”

4.       The “fresh” is preferable to the “stale”

5.       All scenes should begin and end with continuing action

6.       Cut for proper values rather than proper “matches”

7.       Substance first – then form.

 Film Clip Example

Purposes of Editing

Purposes of Editing

The editing form determines meaning in a film. In most Hollywood films, editing helps determine a least 4 dimensions of film narrative. In what order you receive the information about the plot, how much information you are supposed to receive about the narrative, how you are supposed to feel about the events and characters at any given time and how you are supposed to experience the pace of the narrative. Also, as montages suggests, editing can serve an intellectual function, often making aesthetic, political or ideological assertions about the activities you’re viewing as well as including emotional appeals. The latter activity tends to belong more to the world of avant-garde and experimental films.

Determine the speed at which events move along

At the simplest level, editing determines the speed and the mood of a film in 3 different moods.

1. The editor determines the length of the shot. Generally speaking, the longer the shot length, the slower the pace.
2. The editor can decide what goes in or out of a sequence. For example, looking at Lawrence in Arabia, instead of showing T.E. Lawrence travel from his office in Cairo to the desert. We see him extinguish a match in the office, cutting from a close up of the match to the establishing shot of the desert and sun.
   Film Clip Example
3. The type of edit between shots determines speed .Film Clip Example  The slow dissolve keeps the audience lingering on a dissolving image for several seconds. Or the cuts between shots can be very quick. Film Clip Example
   
   

Give or Withhold Information

Sometimes editing shows you information that will be important to future events, sometimes information could be withheld to surprise us. For example, we see a long shot of a man in the street, he looks harmless enough. Then we cut to an insert or detail shot of a hand holding a gun behind the owner’s back. We realize that the man is waiting for someone he is going to shoot. Film Clip Example

Determine your feeling for events and characters

How do we know when we’re supposed to like or character or how characters are supposed to feel about each other. The way characters are edited also says something about who they are. For example, when a man and woman talk to each other they can be shot in a two-shot or a shot reverse shot. The two-shot can imply a level of intimacy between them that crosscutting may not, because characters in a shot reverse shot sequence seem emotionally further apart when they aren’t close.

The illusion of Unity

Editors cut together material from disparate sources to give the illusion of unity and continuity. This editing constitutes the practical Hollywood use of the “creative geography” the Soviet filmmakers theorized about.  

Terminology

Below is a list of commonly used words within the Film Editing Realm.

Academy Leader -  a leader placed a the head of release prints containing information for the projectionist and featuring numbers which are black on a clear background, counting from 11 to 3 at 16 frame intervals.

Big Close Up – a shot taken very close to the subject, which shows revealing extreme detail.

Bridging Shot – a shot used to cover a break in time, or other break in continuity

Clapper – the sticks that are slapped together in the view of the camera for the purpose of synchronizing film sound. These are usually, but not always, attached to the slate and appear at the head or tail of a sync sound take.

Close Up - a shot taken very close to the subject with revealing a detail only.

Coding – once the working and sound stock have been placed in sync, the rolls are coded with matching yellow edge numbers so they can be matched up later once they have been cut up into pieces.

Conforming – the cutting of the OCN to match the final cut of a film

Contact Print – a print made in a contact printer where the original element and duplicate element actually are pressed together at the point of expose. Workprints and “dirty dupes” are made this way

Continuity of Motion – the flow of action from one shot to the next as it’s placed on the screen at the cut point. Placing the significant action at the end of a shot in the same area of the screen where the significant action will begin in the next shot.

Cross-cut - the intercutting of shots from two or more scenes so the fragments of each scene will be presented to the viewers attention alternately. - see parallel action

Cut - in editing, a single unbroken strip of film

Dissolve - a gradual merging of the end of one shot and beginning of another produced by the superimposition of a fade-out onto a fade-in of equal length.

Dolly shot - a shot taken while the camera is in motion on a dolly.

Dupe negative - a negative element printed from a positive print (an inter-positive).
Release prints are printed from a dupe negative.

Establishing shot - a shot used near the beginning of a scene to establish the inter-relationship of details to be shown subsequently in closer shots.

Fade-in - a shot which begins in total darkness and gradually lightens to full brightness or it could mean to gradually bring sound from inaudibility to required volume.

Fade-out - the opposite of a fade-in.

Inter-positive print (IP) - a fine grain print made from the conformed original negative which retains the orange cast of the OCN. The IP is used to produce subsequent dupe negatives.

Jump cut - A cut which breaks the continuity of time by jumping forward from one part of an action to another.

KeyKode - an extension of the latent edge numbers whereby each frame is given a number. These numbers are recorded as a barcode on the negative and can be read by a special reader in the lab or transfer house.

Lab roll - rolls of OCN compiled by the lab for printing which may consist of several camera rolls.

Latent edge numbers - numbers that are printed onto the edge of the negative by the manufacturer. These numbers print through onto the workprint and are used by the negative matchers to match the OCN to the final cut of the picture.

Legal effects - the lengths for fades and dissolves which can be executed by most printers

Library shot - a shot used in a film, but not originally taken for that film.

Long shot  - a shot taken from a considerable distance. Often the LS serves as an establishing shot.

Low-Con print - a print that is made on a print stock which has been flashed evenly white light prior to the image being exposed on it. This yields a lower contrast print which in turn yields a more attractive video transfer.

Mag stock - magnetic sound recording stock which has edge perforations that match those perfs. on the picture stock, thereby allowing it to be pulled along with the picture at the same speed and relative position.

Master shot - a shot which covers an entire piece of dramatic action.

Medium close-up- a shot between a MS and a CU.

Medium shot  - a shot between a LS and a MCU

Married print - a positive print which carries both picture and sound on it.

Mute print - a positive print which carries the picture only.

Montage -  the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated shots or scenes which, when combined, achieve meaning or it could mean a series of related shots which lead the viewer to a desired conclusion

Optical - any device carried out by the optical department of a lab using an optical printer.

Optical printer - used in printing the image from one piece of film onto another by means of a lens.

Original camera negative (OCN) - the negative film originally passed through the camera.

Pan - to rotate the camera about on its vertical axis.

Parallel action - a device of narrative construction in which the development of two pieces of action are presented simultaneously.

Pitch - the spacing between perforations.

Relational editing - editing of shots to suggest association of ideas between them.

Rough cut - first assembly of a film which the editor prepares from selected takes, in script order, leaving the finer points of timing and editing to a later stage.

Rushes - prints made immediately after a day's shooting so they can be viewed the following day

Scene - action that occurs in one location at one time.

Sequence - a series of shots or scenes which has a beginning, middle and end

Slate - a board upon which key information about a shot is displayed. This board is held in view of the camera either at the head or tail of a shot to identify it to the lab and to the editor. If it appears at the tail of a shot, it will be held upside-down.

Shot - a recording of a single take.

Synchronize - to place sound and picture in their proper relationship.

Take - a recording of a single shot.

Tilt - to turn or rotate the camera up or down in shooting.

Timing - the process of adjusting the color balance for the printing of each scene once the negative has been conformed. (also called grading)