The main purpose of editing is to create a smooth sequence of scenes which gives the viewers a better experience while watching. Having a smooth sequence of scenes allows the creator to create a compilation of shots that make sense and develop an emotional impact for the audience.
Primary forms of editing were very basic; the editor’s had to physically cut and glue parts of the film together in order to create continuous film. This was made achievable by holding the film up to a light source and correctly identifying the desired frame to cut or join together. This method of work was very tedious and time consuming, however this method formed the understructure of editing techniques.
The 'Moviola’ was introduced to the film world in 1924, a piece of editing technology. This piece of editing equipment allowed editing within film to become much easier and allowed the editor to have a more precise method of editing film. It also brought about 'Edge Numbering’ which allowed audio and visual to be edited in synchronisation.
Edge Numbering:
The numbers are in order, usually occurring every 16 frames {every 12 inches} on 35 mm film and every 20 frames {every 6 inches} on 16 mm film. In a few instances, edge numbers on 16 mm films are located every 40 frames {every 12 inches}.
This image shows:
EASTMAN 16 mm Edgeprint Format Featuring KEYKODETM Numbers
The Lumière Brothers:
The Lumière Brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas; were amongst the first filmmakers in history, they created 'Cinématographe' which was a three way machine that recorded, captured and projected a motion picture. The work they produced only consisted of one long roll of film which is referred to as a 'Continuous Shot'.
Continuous Shot: A Continuous shot is referred to as a "one-shot feature film" which is a full-length movie filmed in one long take by a single camera, or edited to give the impression that it was.
In 1894, the Lumière Brothers’ father Claude-Antione who was an artist, photographer and entrepreneur observed a demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope. Claude-Antione was amazed by the device’s potential, he returned to his sons and stating that they could do better Edison’s Kinetoscope in order to reach their aim which was to ‘get that image out of the box’.
On 13th February 1895, the Lumières registered a patent for a device they called the Cinématographe which was an expansion upon Edison’s Kinetoscope.
The Lumières made two significant improvements on Edison’s device:
Firstly, it was a lot lighter than the Kinetoscope, a bulky piece of machinery that was resigned to a studio; this allowed the Lumière’s Cinématographe to be portable and allowed them to have a far greater range of subjects and locations to shoot.
Secondly, Edison’s peephole Kinetoscope meant that it could only be viewed by one person at a time; the Lumière brothers had invented a device which combined a camera with both a printer and a projector allowing for the first commercial exhibition to happen on 28th December at the Grand Cafe on Paris’s Boulevard de Capuchines which is a date we know as the day in which cinema was born.
The Lumières shot upon a film width of 35mm, and a speed of 16 frames per second, which was considered as the industry norm until ‘Talkies’.
Talkies:
Talkies or talking pictures are informal terms for films incorporating synchronised audible dialogue rather than readable text plates. The terms were widely used in the late 1920s and early 1930s to distinguish sound films from silent films.
By the early 1930s talkies were the standard and by the late 1930s the terms talkie and talking picture became superfluous. With the balance firmly in the favour of sound, it was only necessary to make a distinction when a film was silent.
Edwin S. Porter:
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer within the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company.
In 1901, Edwin S, Porter came along an introduced experimental film; he showed us that film didn't have to be a continuous shot or a long clip of footage. Edwin experimented with sticking different parts of film together, which made the films several minutes long but consisting of several shots.
In 1900 Porter was hired by the Edison Company to make improvements and redesign their motion-picture equipment and was soon placed in charge of Edison’s skylight studio on East 21st Street in New York City. For the next few years he served as Director/Cameraman for much of Edison’s output; starting with simple one-shot films and progressing rapidly to films with special effects.
Edwin was known for his innovative use of dramatic editing which consisted of piecing together scenes shot at different times and places in such films as 'The Life of An American Fireman' and 'The Great Train Robbery' which were both produced in 1903, he revolutionised filmmaking.
Temporal continuity from one shot to the next was proven to be a major problem for early filmmakers however Porter’s 'The Great Train Robbery' is widely acknowledged to be the first narrative film to have achieved such continuity of action. 'The Great Train Robbery' embodies 14 separate shots of non-continuous, non-overlapping action and was considered a major departure from theatrical staging.
Flatbed Edit Suites:
Since the early 50’s, The Steenbeck Company which was founded by Wilhelm Steenbeck. Since then, the name Steenbeck has become widely known in the film editing community due to their renowned history of manufacturing film editing, viewing and controlling tables.
During 1953, Steenbeck released their first Flatbed 16mm 4 Plate, ‘The ST200’ was born. ‘The ST200’ editor included optical sound and playback of 16mm perforated magnetic tape. The prime editing methods were still very practical and require the use of trim bins, guillotine’s and the use of a light table.
Soon ‘The ST100’ followed, which was a 4 plate 35mm editor released in 1954. Following ‘The ST100’ was the first editor with back projection on a ground glass was the 35mm ‘The ST400’ which was later followed by ‘The ST500’ a switchable for standard film and Cinemascope.
Live television editing became the pioneering form of editing, which began in the early of the mid 40’s which led to ‘Kinescope Recordings’, which consisted of a camera recording a video screen of a live broadcast. This later proven to not be a very successful method as it led to various issues such as ghosting and banding, nonetheless TV Studios were using more ‘Raw Film’ in their ‘Kinescopes’, than most Hollywood film studios combined.
Raw Film: Raw Footage is the crude output of a video or still camera recording. It is the unprocessed data from a camera's image sensor.
In the early 50's, Engineers working for Bing Crosby's production company, pioneered in recording Video Images onto ‘Magnetic Tape’.
In 1956, Ampex released the first 2" Quadruplex Video Tape; editing 2" Quadruplex Video Tape, was a similar process to that of editing film. Initially the tape had to be developed, using extremely fine iron filings suspended in a toxic, carcinogenic carbon tetrachloride solution.
This method was used so that the Magnetic Bands on the Video Tape were visible for the editor when viewed through a microscope, so that it could be aligned in a specialised ‘Splicer’ and cut precisely.
Splicer: A Splicer is a device used to hold two sections of motion-picture film or recording tape in proper alignment while they are being spliced together.
Video and Audio read heads were several inches apart in the machine, this resulted in physical cuts between both video and audio not functioning correctly. As a result of this, a cut was made for the video then a portion of the audio was re-copied into the correct part.
Non-Linear and Digital Editing:
A Non-Linear Editing approach may be used when all assets are available as files on video servers or hard disks, rather than recordings on reels or tapes while Linear Editing is tied to the need to sequentially view film or hear tape. Non-Linear editing enables direct access to any video frame in a digital video clip, without needing to play or scrub/shuttle through adjacent footage to reach it, as is necessary with video tape linear editing systems.
When ingesting audio or video feeds, metadata are attached to the clip. Those metadata can be attached automatically {Timecode, Localisation, Take Number, Name of the Clip} or manually {Players Names, Characters, In Sports: Red card, Goal..}. It is then possible to access any frame by entering directly the timecode or the descriptive metadata. An editor can, for example at the end of the day in the Olympic Games, easily retrieve all the clips related to the players who received a gold medal.
The non-linear editing method is similar in concept to the cut and paste techniques used in IT. However, with the use of non-linear editing systems, the destructive act of cutting of film negatives is eliminated. It can also be viewed as the audio/video equivalent of word processing, which is why it is called desktop video editing in the consumer space.
Digital editing involves transferring film and audio into computer formats capable of being modified editor. Scenes are trimmed, cut, and arranged to create a fluid and coherent story.
Reference List:
The Lumière Brothers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re
Edwin S. Porter: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edwin-S-Porter
Steenbeck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steenbeck
Talkies: https://wonderfulcinema.com/talkie-definition/
Non-Linear Editing System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-linear_editing_system
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