Editing Vlog Script

Introduction 

So  welcome to this my vlog on the development and principles of editing. I have three topics to discuss:

Number 1 - The development of editing 

Number 2 - The purpose of editing

Number 3 - The conventions and techniques of editing 

First of all I'll talk about the development of editing. 

1) The Development of Editing

Editing has changed and developed over the years because the film technology has evolved

Show clip of history of cinema

Voice Over- The origins of cinema are linked to the work of Eadweard Muybridge who's interest was how things move. 

Image of Edweard Muybridge

Voice-over  - To try and work out how human beings and animals move he used sequence of cameras to create sill images that were played back at speed to create the illusion of movement. If you were to play a back a series of connected images at a rate of 24 frames per second the brain will believe that they are images are moving. Voice Over - One of the works that Edweard Muybridge did was he tried to find out if a horse lifts all four of it's hooves off the ground when it gallops.

In production and post-production it is important to understand the frames and frame rates because we still use the idea of frame rate to adjust the speed of images. The first ever film cameras where rolls of film which were moved by frames mechanically and moved past a shutter and lens system. They were created by the Lumiere Brothers in Franc and Thomas Edison in America at about the same point in history.

The first films that were filmed  were not edited. The films would have been a single shot and shot from a single point of view.

The use of variety of shots which use multiple points of view and that the story could follow the action didn't come about until editing in camera was invented. Edited in camera means a film is created shot by shot in the camera. You can then add the next shot to the story by filming it next.

Voice-over - The Straight 8 film festival is a festival where entries are made up of films edited in camera which is a mm. As you can see editing in camera allows film-makers to do more than just show the world from one point of view.

Editing

Editing in camera wasn't going to be enough. If you have experienced it yourself it is it is very difficult to assemble a finished film in camera. Trying to judge where each shot should start and finish is just to hard to get perfectly accurate. To compensate early film makers needed a way to trim shots and to alter the order of shorter selection of film called clips.

Voice-over - In the early days of movie production the idea of cutting up and taping film back together to edit was developed. For many years this was done by hand with a pair of scissors and a magnifying glass.

 The first mechanical editing decks used to edit movies were invented by Iwan Serrurer in 1924

These machines revolutionised editing and allowed more sophisticated cutting techniques to be developed.

This technique of cutting film and reassembling the pieces, whether done by hand or with help from a machine is called linear editing which is assembling clips one after the other. The process is purely mechanical . From the 1920 until the end of the second world war , film editing was done exclusively on Moviola decks. Then in 1945 the German company Steenbeck introduced their machine. Steenbeck rapidly the industry standard. The process of cutting film continues to this day. Steenbeck still produce and sell film editing decks

Invention Of Film Editing





Voiceover - The idea of recording to something other than film (Video Tape) was  invented in 1951 by the Ampex research team. The first video editing machines came into existence in 1956. This is the Ampex VRX-1000 which  became the first commercial videotape recorder.



The original video editing systems were also linear editing systems. However instead of physically cutting the video tape the data was copied from one tape to another, via a control desk which would control the in and out points of clips you wanted to copy across. At the time both the image quality and editing techniques were very primitive. They were used primarly for TV usage. Neither the picture quality or image quality were suitable for cinema use.

The first feature film shot on video was Julia and Julia in 1987

The first commercial movie shot in HD was 2004 Once Upon A Time In Mexico 

Non-Linear Editing Systems (NLE)

In 1970s the first attempts to create non linear editing systems were attempted. No one was able to bring a commercial system to the market. In the 1980s Lucasfilms with the EditDroid but this also never turned into a commercial system. In 1989 however Avid created the first commercially successful NLE system  the Avid 1 Media Composer editing system. The Avid editing system was a hardware + software system based on Apple computer technology.

This as the first computer based system that turned tape data into files. Files that could then be moved about on a timeline. One of the major developments which allowed this to happen was the creation of digital video cameras. The first professional camera, the Sony D1, coming on to the market in 1986.

What allowed this change from linear to non-linear, was the idea that the on either film or video. could be transformed into digital information and that the information could then be altered without destroying the original file. This is known as Non Destructive Editing.

Once the images were digital, it became possible to alter and manipulate that data (images) in ways that were impossible using linear editing systems.

2) Purpose


Story Telling

Whether it is drama, news or documentary the purpose of editing is the same. Effective storytelling is when we control the audiences POV (Point of view). The shots that we decide to shoot in production to be exactly what we need to tell our story in the edit.

Genre

Genre is how filmed is defined y either its content or style so Horror, Comedy, Thriller, Action, Art-House are all genres.

Pace

Pace of cutting is used to control the tension in a scene. The more cuts per minute, the faster the pace

Action movie edit

Voiceover - An action movie like Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift will use a lot of cuts so pace of the film will be faster. A film like Titanic will use less cuts because it is a romance and so the pace of the film is slower.

Combining shots into sequences to engage the viewer

By combining shots into sequences this allows questions to be raised and answer questions previously posed by the audience. Doctor Who does because of its cliff-hangers to leave the story hanging and then when the . story resumes the questions can then be answered.

Voiceover - This clip is from the 1982 5th Doctor story Earthshock where the doctor is attacked by two androids where it is revealed that the Cybermen were behind them at the time the fans would never have expected the Cybermen to be in the story.

3) Conventions and techniques

Shot Reverse Shot (180 Degree Rule)

This is mainly used in a scene involving dialogue, the POV moves from the face from one person to the reverse view of the person they are talking to.

In this scene of Sherlock - The Great Game Sherlock stands off against Moriarty the POV changes when the talk.

Montage

A montage is a sequence of clips used in a film to show a developments of  a character through time this is a montage from the 1984 film The Karate Kid where Daniel fights in the tournament near the end of the film. The track used in the montage is You're The Best by Joe Esposito.