Development of the principles of film editing
How editing has developed over time
Editing has many purposes, including telling a story, creating a mood or atmosphere and leading the success of a video/film. The earliest films were all done in camera which means there was no editing involved, and the entire film was filmed in the order that would be seen in theater, just one reel of film played at once.
The first film ever created was by the Lumiere Brothers in 1895 which was called L'Arrivee d'un train, this film had no edits and was a 1 minute, silent, black and white documentary. Film editing evolved from the process of physically cutting and taping together pieces of film. The earliest filmmakers were afraid to edit film shots together because they assumed that splicing together different shots of different things from different positions would just confuse audiences. The first signs of editing are shown in films around 1903, for example Edwin Porter's film, The Great Train Robbery, the edits used were cutting by using a splicing machine. The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 western film produced and directed by Edwin S. Porter. The film is 12 minutes long and considered a milestone in film making. This film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double exposure composite editing, camera movement and on location shooting. Cross cuts were a sophisticated editing technique for the time. This was not only the first narrative film but also introduced new editing techniques. For example, rather than staying on one set, Porter took his crew to ten different locations. Also In 1915 D.W Griffith was the first person to use a range of different shots in a film after he used shots such as close ups in his film Birth of a Nation. D.W Griffith practically invented techniques such as parallel editing, pushing them to higher levels of complexity and depth. The Birth of a Nation was a style of editing that became known as the popuar 'classical Hollywood'. The classical style ensures continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using techniques like the 180 degree rule, establishing shot, and shot reverse shot. In 1924 editing has gone on to colour to certain parts of films, the way they did this is by individually colouring each shot by hand. By this time films were in full colour and film makers started introducing advanced techniques such as flashbacks and parallel editing.
In-Camera editing is a stripped-down method for shooting a finished video. it's editing without any cables, computers or other technical facilities. In-Camera editing isn't when you finish shooting and you can put all the pieces together, it requires you to edit while you shoot. In-Camera editing isn't true editing, instead it refers to the process of shooting your program sequentially, each scene shot in order and at the length that it will appear in the finished program which means you have a complete program as soon as you are done taping. In-Camera editing leaves very little margin for error, every shot must be right or the whole show is a bust. This means you have to do a lot more pre-production planning before shooting. An example of in camera editing wound be 1895 exiting the factory, this shows that what they have filmed on the camera is the order that it was going to be seen on the film. This is one of the first films that the Lumiere Brothers created; the camera would have just been set to film this video clip but before they filmed it they would have thought about what they wanted to film and they order that they were going to film in. This video shows how what they have filmed has been repeated over and over again showing that it’s the sequence in what they filmed in.
Following the action is used in editing when there is a scene with a lot of movement or a big action scene. Basically the camera follows the action, it stays on that scene and moves around the main characters in the scene and shows different parts of the scene so we can see more action. 2005 Mr & Mrs Smith shows the rotation of the camera around the gun fight to enable to show more of the action.
Multiple points of view is where something is happening in a scene involving multiple characters. We will see what is happening with one character and then the camera will cut to another character followed by another character if there is another and so on. It shows a scene from the point of view of all the characters involved. The film Life of an American Fireman in 1903 shows the events of a fireman rescuing a women from a burning building. The film is first viewed by the audience from inside the building and then a shot shown from outside the building which repeats the action in the narrative. This editing technique of using different points of view of the action demonstrated its own laws of time and space on narrative.
Shot variation basically means using a variety of different shots when filming which includes:
Long shot: Gives a full picture of the subject, showing fully what it is.
Medium shot: Doesn't show as much but isolates the subject from the background, it is often used to focus on one part of something.
Close up: A shot that zooms right in on the subject, the subject fills the screen bringing the audinece closer to it.
Extreme long shot: Just a variation of the long shot which films the subject from even further away.
An example of the first version of shot variation could be Inception where there’s a constant flowing shot, but yet it’s digitally mastered to look unreal.
Manipulation of Diegetic Time and Space is when editing is used to make an object, person or place look like it is changing over time. It should make the audience easily recognise that something is changing. a good example of this would be the new version of ‘the karate kid’ as through the time he learns to train, it speeds up to make it last about 15 minutes, when it would have lasted days or even weeks. As it lets the audience know it’s been a long period of time, it also allows the director and editor to add more footage into the film as it’s shortened down what would have been a long piece of film, showing the days/weeks of training day by day.
The purposes of editing
Every film needs to be able to tell a story in order to interest the audience. it is important as the attention of a viewer must be captured during the film's running time. If the edit is poor then telling the story becomes difficult. Before a script has been produced there will have been some sort of an idea in place, a story to tell. The basic story is developed in pre-production along with the script. The director then decides how the story will be told. The Dark Knight is a good example of engaging the audience especially the beginning. Through the use of quick jump cuts, the viewer is able to follow two different sequences that are assumed to be happening simultaneously. The scene gradually builds in intensity, and follows the pace of each shot until it is clearly obvious that a bank robbery is taking place. Because of the quickness, it is almost impossible to watch the scene for the first time and understand exactly what is being said that will come into context later in the film, while also following the progression of action.
When it comes to editing, different genre's of film have different conventions, techniques and styles.
Comedy:
Bright scenes.
Day time
Cities
Food, sports equipment
Characters - Accident prone/idiotic, the 'straight man', the love interest.
Horror:
Dark scenes, Low key lighting
Isolated/small towns
POV shots
Disturbing sounds
Characters - lonely/psychotic antagonist, unremarkable lead who takes a journey to become the strongest of their group, the hopeless, the couple who have sex, strong/brave who dies early.
For The Dark knight as it is an action film there will be dark scenes, cities, cars, guns, fight scenes and blood. Thinking about the 8 character types in The Dark Knight it's quite predictable.
Villain - The Joker
Hero - Batman
Dispatcher - James Gordon
False hero - Harvey Dent
Doner - Lucius
Helper - Alfred
Horror:
Dark scenes, Low key lighting
Isolated/small towns
POV shots
Disturbing sounds
Characters - lonely/psychotic antagonist, unremarkable lead who takes a journey to become the strongest of their group, the hopeless, the couple who have sex, strong/brave who dies early.
For The Dark knight as it is an action film there will be dark scenes, cities, cars, guns, fight scenes and blood. Thinking about the 8 character types in The Dark Knight it's quite predictable.
Villain - The Joker
Hero - Batman
Dispatcher - James Gordon
False hero - Harvey Dent
Doner - Lucius
Helper - Alfred
Creating motivation is done by making the continuity of the project looks smooth, checking that one shot to another doesn’t jerk and that the position is in the same place for a perfect edit.
You have to keep the audience interested and motivated to watch the project you have made, if you do have jerky shots the audience will notice and can get frustrated by this and not want to watch it, when you gain experience from making smooth transitions from one shot to another, you will be able to make a continuous flow of the shots. In the Fast and Furious movies they make the editing so great its almost invisible for us to see, by doing this it interests us and makes it easier to understand the plot. in Fast and Furious 5 there is a chase scene with a safe and the editing is really smooth that it makes the scene more intense and interesting.
A conversation is a good example of creating motivation, instead of keeping one shot and seeing the back of the head of one of the people involved you can cut and use the 180° rule to keep the shots cutting to the person speaking and keeping the audience interested. A good example of this would be See No Evil, Hear No Evil from the Kiosk scene.
It is vital to cut at the appropriate and right time to make sure the narrative develops and progresses further. Choosing the correct pace, depending on the genre of the film, of the cuts is also important. In order to help persuade the audience how they feel about a scene or a character, the editing team needs to get it right when cutting from one scene to another or from one character to another. Sound plays a big part in creating motivation, too. For example, if a character hears a very loud noise, causing them to turn their head, cutting to the thing they are looking at keeps the audience interested. Fast and Furious also show this technique in Fast 5 when Roman plays with this big modified gun and almost kills Dom.
Combining shots into sequences is the most simple and most used method in film and video editing. It is just placing shots after one another, creating a seamless flow in order to become a full sequence. They describe the edit as invisible because it's almost as though you can't tell that editing has taken place.
The Principles of editing
Shot-reverse-shot is a standard shot pattern that director's use to film conversations between two characters; a character speaking and then the other characters response.
Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa, we see a standard over the shoulder shot, combined with eye-line matches between the two main characters shows how focused each is on the other. The over the shoulder technique allows the viewer to see the facial expressions of each character while listening or speaking. More importantly, the over the shoulder technique creates a sense of space between the characters greater than the actual distance between them. This keeps the frame from being uncomfortably cramped, and also shows the distance between the characters’ different standpoints.
continuity is the cutting that is so seamless from one shot to the next that audiences in the theatre are not even aware that they are seeing an assembled sequence of images.A scene from Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV we see a simpler style of matches on action. The camera stays at relatively the same level, with few zooms in or out. The matches on action are used to keep the fight realistic looking, as well as to keep a certain character in focus/the centre of the screen.
A clip from No Country for Old Men offers a different kind of parallel editing in the use of sound. The basement of criminals contains only diagetic sound, but as the sequence cuts to the police raid, the voice of the man on the TV carries over, becoming non-diagetic sound. This created the effect of the man practically narrating what we see occurring with the police. In this way, parallel editing can be used not only to add suspense but also to narrate a line of action with another line of action.
