The History of Editing - Assignment

The History of Editing - Assignment

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  Zoe Mack The Historyof Editing There are many editing techniques that have been used throughout history and I will be explaining them in this piece as well as informing you about the history of editing. I will be talking about the very first forms of editing and special effects as well as comparing the works of the Lumiere Brothers and George Melies, explaining Murch's Rule of 6, and much more. One of the very first forms of moving picture was achieved using the Kinetoscope which was invented but Edison in 1888. This was static images shown at a fast frame rate and viewed through a viewing hole. This tricked the eye of the viewer and gave the illusion of movement. A magnifying lense in the peephole enabled the viewer to see the film that was being moved as if it was a conveyor belt to show each individual still image at the fast frame rate required to provide the illusion of movement. This is quite alike to how stop motion works. The Lumiere Brothers used a device called the Cinematograph, a camera and projector in one, which they did not invent but own the patent to, to release the first ever moving picture in 1895. This was a 49 second clip of The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, which is its name. When people watched the clip they panicked because they thought the train was coming out of the screen which really explains how amazing this technology was at the time.Unlike the Kinetoscope, the Cinematograph enabled multiple people to view the clip at the same time so people could enjoy it together. The brothers didn’t figure out how to use stop the camera in the middle for filming which meant that their work was mostly documentation. Le Squelette joyeux (1897) is short clip of a dancing skeleton by the Lumiere Brothers. This clip is 40 seconds long and features a short loop at the end. This loop is an effective way of lengthening the clip but is also not too long so it doesn't bore the audience or make the clip overly repetitive. Personally i think that this is a good thing because the way that the loop is used adds to the video. The camera is static because it would have been fixed on a pedestal which means that there was no way for the Brothers to tell the story in the ways we do in our time using different camera shots and angles. As well as this they didn’t have zoom lenses or use depth of field which means that the only way that they could a story across to the audience was by using the subject and its movement as well as using lighting. There isn’t really a story to this clip however it does show how entertaining simple things can be. I see the video as more of a documentary or demonstration of how something as simple as a skeleton can be entertaining. George Melies was a french magician and film maker. He is credited as the grandfather of special effects because he used elaborate sets, trap doors and smoke as
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  Zoe Mack well asstop tricks to make his work more entertaining. A stop trick is when the camera is stopped and then restarted tocreate a seamless edit. The One Man Band is a 1 minute 41 second short story about a one man band. This clip features one person (Melies himself) as every member of the seven member band which would have been done by filming one person and then stopping the film. After Melies swapped props and sat back in the same place the film would have been rewound and filmed over the top from the beginning again. This created the effect of multiple versions of the same person as different characters. Also the fact that the new version stands up from the chair of the version before it makes it seem as if the new version is a ghost of the one before it. I think that this is an amazing example of the his work and definitely lives up to Melies’ reputation as the Grandfather of Special Effects. However, despite how good Melies was at special effects, he didn’t have zoom lenses and couldn't move his camera just like the Lumiere Brothers. This means that his story really had to be told through use of movement by exaggerating every little thing he did. Personally I think that the way Melies acted his part makes up for the fact that the camera couldn't be moved and really gets across an enjoyable story just like a theatre production. Some more “grandfathers” of the cinematic world are Charlie Chaplin, Fritz Lang and Griffiths. These men are known as the grandfather of comedy, the grandfather of drama and the grandfather of science fiction respectively. They were all makers of silent films and the first users of the splicer. The splicer enabled them to have a more precise and allowed them to use a variety of camera shots. Splicing is when you cut up pieces of film out and stick them back together to replace scenes the went wrong on the original film roll or to add different camera angles and is an early form of the cut. D.W Griffiths, the grandfather of drama, made a film called ‘The Birth of a Nation’ which was released in 1915. It told the story of the KKK in the civil war and was outwardly racist with its portrayal of african-americans. It showed the KKK as a positive role in society to the point where the film caused a of the KKK. This was the first influence media had on the people. The film featured the first use of the establishing shot, which is a shot that shows the setting and sets the scene. Griffiths used lots of cuts but used other edits such as fades to black. As well as the racist portrayal of african-americans, Griffiths used blacked up white people to play the coloured characters because at the time they weren’t allowed to use people of colour in cinema and they weren’t even allowed into the cinema either. As well as this, Griffiths used cross cutting and panning shots along with sound. The use of sound enabled the film to be more interesting and allowed the audience to feel like they were part of what was happening on screen.
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  Zoe Mack Fritz Lang,the grandfather of sci-fi , was the first person to produce a big budget film. The film took many years tocomplete and used a big set and multiple locations. Hundreds of extras were used in the making of the film and Lang made them stand in ice cold water to help them act like they were freezing. The film itself looked at differences of social class and was set in a dystopian time which was representative of post world war one Germany when industrialisation had increased. The set design was very industrial and the acting was choreographed. Lang got his influence for this from showgirls. The strong narrative of the film portrayed women as inferior to men which was the view of the time. Lang was the first to use techniques such as dissolves and painting on film which was when the effect was literally painted onto the film over the top of what was already there. This was extremely impressive for the time because no-one else had even thought about using film in this way. Charlie Chaplin, the grandfather of comedy, was not just an actor but a composer, director and editor. He didn’t use a script which meant he was a pain to work with because everything was improvised. This meant that his films took a long time to complete because he would send his cast away for days on end whilst he thought of new ideas. He is cited being the first ‘amuter’ film maker who took full responcibility for each of his productions. His short film ‘The Kid’ was released in 1921 and featured his trademark vignette, which is a circular fade. His humor didn’t come from bumping into a tree but from apologizing to it and in each of his films you will notice that the same character keeps turning up. Chaplin’s films are not only recognisable by the characters and humor but also by his trademark edit; the vignette. This technique is a circular fade to black which starts at the edges of the screen and travels inwards. The vignette is pretty much the only editing technique that he used but it was very effective in his work. Editing advanced through to the golden age which featured the beginning of Technicolour. Technicolour was used during the 1930’s and 40’s and required enormous cameras because of the different filters used to create the technicolour effect. The cameras feature a beam splitter that split the image so it went through a red filter on one side and a green filter on the other. This exposed two identical frames simultaneously onto a single piece of black and white film. Technicolour was characterised by highly saturated colours and was famously used in The Wizard of Oz. There are many different purposes of editing techniques and Murch explains them in his rule of six. The rule of six is the percentages of each purposes of editing that Murch believes are proportionate to each and every film, or there abouts. These six rules are as follows: Emotion, continuity/story, rhythm, eyetrace, the two dimensional plane if screen/180 degree rule and the three dimensional plane of screen/360 degree rule.
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  Zoe Mack Rhythm isthe third rule and should make up 10% of the edits in a film or video. This is because part of rhythm is speed which shows people how time passes. If you don’t have a rhythm within your film or video the shots and story could seem disjointed or not fit together well. After rhythm comes Eyetrace. This is editing so that the audiences eyes follow the action smoothly which means that, if action is happening on one side of the screen, you make sure that the action in the next shot is starting in the same place. Without eyetrace the footage can seem disjointed and According to Murch emotion should be the reason for 51% of the edits in a film or video. This means edits that show the emotions of the characters are most important. I agree with Murch because if you don’t include the bits that show how the characters are feeling you won’t really understand the reasons behind their actions or the plot in general. Continuity/story edits should be 23% of the edits in a film or video which means that they are the second most important type of edits. This is because to enjoy a film or video you need to be able to understand it. If you don't have the edits that explain the story then the audience will be confused and won’t enjoy it. Rhythm is the third rule and should make up 10% of the edits in a film or video. This is because part of rhythm is speed which shows people how time passes. If you don’t have a rhythm within your film or video the shots and story could seem disjointed or not fit together well. After rhythm comes Eyetrace. This is editing so that the audiences eyes follow the action smoothly which means that, if action is happening on one side of the screen, you make sure that the action in the next shot is starting in the same place. Without eyetrace the footage can seem disjointed and the audience will get confused. Murch believes that the 180 degree rule should make up 5% of the edits and the 360 degree rule should make up 4%. This isn’t too important but Murch has said in his book that you should take time to understand these rules before you think about breaking them to avoid a negative effect on the audience. Transitions are another category that edits come under. They are any technique which moves from one shot to the next such as wipes, fades and dissolves. However cuts are not part of this category because they are the absence of a transition between shots. Cuts are when clips are edited with no transition in-between them to add a fast pace to a scene and you can see examples of these in pretty much every film or program. Jump cuts are cuts in which two clips are edited together without the events in-between the shots being shown. For example the clip at 1:32 in this video shows excellent examples of jump cuts because they show progressions in stories without all the details being shown. A cut-away is where the scene is edited with the main subject of the scene in shot and then it cuts to a different shot to highlight something that is happening behind or next to the subject and then it cuts back to the main subject for the next shot. In this clip of the film Divergent there are lots of cut-aways toshow the reactions of the
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  Zoe Mack other characters.Itstarts with an establishing shot of the kifes impacting on the targets and then shows the iniciates throwing the knives. This is the main subject at the beginning of the scene so when, at 0:08, the scene cuts to a shot of an instructor it would be an example of a cut-away. This is because the instructor is not the main subject of the scene at this moment in time but he is watching the initiates progress. Therefor the cut-away is used to add more detail into the beginning of the scene and, in this example, would fit under the category ‘emotion’ in Murch’s rule of six. Throughout the scene there are multiple other examples of cut-aways and at the end of the scene there is a conversation between Tris and Four which is an amazing example of Shot-reverse-shot. Shot-reverse-shot is where the camera changes between the twosubjects. In this clip at 3:02 the shots cut between Tris and Four during their conversation to show the reactions and feelings of the two characters towards what the other one was saying. This is also used to highlight the fact that they are the only two in the conversation and the only two that it matters to. In relation to Murch’s rule of six this edit would also be under the category of ‘emotion’ because it shows the reactions of the characters to what each of them were saying. POV is a clip or film shot in the point of view of a character. Multiple POV is shooting in the points of view of multiple characters. Chronicle is filmed in POV using a camcorder owned by one of the characters and it switches point of view when different characters hold the camera. This technique can be used to show emotion and story and really add to the audience's understanding of what the characters are feeling and what's going wrong. Parallel editing creates perception of multiple things happening at the same time and is used to show the story of what's happening throughout the scene in multiple places. This scene in Inception is an example of parallel editing as well as cross cutting. Cross Cutting here the shot changes between different settings in order to get to one outcome and ties into parallel editing really well in this scene. This edit is used to show the story and make sure that the audience isn’t confused about what's going on. The opening sequence of Hot Fuzz is an example of a montage and also has an example of seamless editing. This clip is 2 minutes and 19 seconds long and clearly shows how montages are used to show the passing of time in a few minutes. The opening sequence tells the story of how the main character Nicholas Angel got his qualifications, which in real life would have taken years, condensed into just over two minutes. You will see an example of seamless editing at 1:01 where Nicholas Angel shows his police badge to the camera, which is a close up shot, and then it cuts to a shot of his feet walking through the station. This is seamless editing because you can’t tell where the cut it between the two shot as the badge is in front of the camera in the same position and then is moved out of the way for the shot of the feet. The
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  Zoe Mack montage wasused, not only to show the story but to show the progression of time until the start of the main plot without being too long and boring the audience. 180-degree rule is when you have keep the camera within a 180 degree radius of the subject. This is important because the audience needs to understand where everything in the scene is or comes from. Sticking to the 180 degree rule means that there are no objects or people appearing out of nowhere and confusing the audience. A dissolve is when one shot fades into the next and a fade is when the picture slowly disappears. The Wizard of Oz’s opening credits is an excellent example of dissolves and features a fade to black. These edits are used as transitions during the credits. Editing Rhythm is the pace of the edits. In some cases, such as action scenes, the edits are quite fast paced and reflect the pace of the action and story within the scene. However, in some cases, the opposite pace is used to create tension or to convey a story in a clearer way. You can use dissolves and fades to show a slow pace or a slow passing of time whereas cuts and montages are examples of fast paced edits. Youtube Rewind 2015 Contains loads of examples of cuts and wipes which are used as transitions between shots. Wipes are where the previous scene is pushed out of frame to make way for the other shot and are used throughout this video as a transition. There are also lots of examples of seamless editing, such as at 2:46, because you can’t find a cut and therefor it’s hard to tell where the edit actually is which creates the seamless effect. The editing rhythm in this video quite fast paced and cut to the beat such as the section at 0:59 where the peoples clothes change each time there is a noticeable sound in the song, such as a clap or sound effect. Cutting to the beat is a technique that is used a lot in music videos or videos made to music because makes it seem like the video is in sync with the music, which is why it was used in this clip. As well as editing rhythm there is an example of shot-reverse-shot at 3:16 showing two sides of a dance battle and their reactions to each other. Throughout the process of writing this I found that, compared to the days of silent films or the golden era, modern hollywood films use a wider variety of editing techniques but that’s not necessarily a good thing. I think that, in some cases, the uses of editing techniques and special effects have taken away from stories. For example, I believe that Iron Man 3 could have been a lot better if it didn’t include so much mindless violence. I agree that it looks cool, however I feel like it was overdone and took focus away from the story. If you compare Iron Man 3 to The Wizard of Oz then you will find that you remember The Wizard of Oz for the story and use of simple edits as well as the change from black and white to technicolour. When watching Iron Man 3 all I took away from it was that Stark got rid of some shrapnel from his chest and the president almost died. I found that the use of special effects in The Wizard of Oz was much more effective
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  Zoe Mack because itwas done in such a simple manner that it didn’t take away from the story. However, if I compare Les Miserable to The Wizard of Oz, I find it very hard topick a favourite because the special effects used in Les Miserable don’t take away from the story they just make the picture more realistic. In conclusion there are many different editing techniques used by different people throughout the ages but each of them are as important as the others because of the purposes and used they have. I believe that modern directors and filmmakers need to be careful with the amount of special effects they use and make sure they don't take away from the story. As well as this, Murch’s rule of six is an important part of editing and shouldn’t be ignored in modern filmmaking, unless you want to confuse your audience.