Unit 16 The Development of Editing

In the beginning, filmmakers did not edit.

EARLY CINEMA PIONEERS - check out this website for more details on the beginnings of film which is also a history of the development of editing.

The first film camera as we know it, the cinematograph, was invented by the Lumiere Brothers and patented on 13 February 1895. The brothers then shot the first footage ever to be recorded using it on March 19, 1895. They began by filming what was available to them simply to demonstrate their new invention. At this point, there was no sense of the film camera being used as a storytelling tool. The very first film recorded using the cinematographe of workers leaving the Lumiere factory. This was also the first film to be commercially screened. 

As an example, they made a single shot film of a train pulling into a station and screened this to an invited audience. The audience was terrified. They thought the train was coming towards them and would crash into the room they were in.




The Miller & The Sweep (George Albert Smith, 1897)

Here is an early example of film being used to tell a story. However, notice that this is still using a single long shot. The action is filmed as if you are watching it in a theatre - from one position.



Edwin S. Porter

Porter made two significant films. Firstly, in 'Life of an American Fireman' (1902) he editing real footage of fires, firemen and fire engines with dramatised scenes that he had shot using actors and to a script. This was one of the first examples of intercutting or parallel editing. However, it was the positive audience reaction to the drama and tension that resulted from this juxtaposition of shots that convinced Porter to develop his ideas for using film to tell stories.

He then released his film 'The Great Train Robbery' (1903). According to the Early Cinema Pioneers website, the film 'benefited from a strong storyline, well composed, sophisticated camera work and and an excellent climax, joined together by Porter's excellent use of editing.'

With these films we can now see the filmmaker manipulating the audience's point of view by changing the position of the camera. Porter is also using the camera to follow the action and to enable the viewer to follow the action. Here we see the start of editing being used to manipulate diegetic time and space. However, note that at this point there is still little variation in the size of the shots with almost every shot still a long shot from in front of the action.

D.W. Griffith

Griffith's main contributions to the development of editing were the use of the close-up and his refining of continuity editing to tell a story. The clips below illustrate this well. The first two are from 'Broken Blossoms' (1919) where the actress Lillian Gish gives a disturbing performance in to excerpts where she is being abused by her father. The use of the close up to heighten the emotion of the actress's performance is tangible even today. The third clip from 'Intolerance' (1916) illustrates how close to modern editing the work of D.W. Griffith was by this point both in its use of close-ups as cut-ins and in terms of the illusion of continuity that is created. In the work of Griffith, we see a much wider variety of camera angles and sizes being used.

***ALFRED HITCHCOCK - EXPERIMENTS IN EDITING***

FOLLOWING THE ACTION

You could say that Porter was the first to use editing to 'follow the action' in 'Life of an American Fireman'. However, this development refers to letting the camera follow the action instead of using fragmented shots to piece together the action. This might seem like going back to the way of 'The Miller & the Sweep', but this time camera movement is crucial and the effect on the audience is more complex.

In his film 'Rope' (1948), Alfred Hitchcock experimented with avoiding editing. Notice how camera movement replaces editing; the camera moves continually to follow the action. There are a handful of cuts in the film but these are disguised.

Can you spot the cut at 4' 55"?

MANIPULATION OF DIEGETIC TIME AND SPACE

City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002) - opening sequence

and a short sequence from 'Snatch' (Guy Ritchie, 2000)

THE 5 EDITING RELATIONS:

1. Temporal
2. Rhythmic
3. Graphic
4. Spatial
5. Thematic

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Film Editing Master from Guy Stanley

Principles of Editing from rsibielski

Apocolypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) - opening sequence and thematic relations

Examples of Graphic Match:

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)

 

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

Exemplar Portfolios

https://www.scribd.com/doc/181807584/Untitled?secret_password=1gadrvcl07x0hyyxqky6

https://www.scribd.com/doc/184875800/Untitled?secret_password=19o6gdhqehthvx1y5vhv