The Development of Editing



This was the first edit that was ever created and it was created in 1877 by Eadweard Muybridge, a British photographer who was known for landscape photography. He was first pushed into the first idea of editing from a small bet he had with someone about if horses take all four feet off the floor at one time. He created this small edit by setting up several cameras along a race track and then putting all the pictures together so they could analyse the results and essentially see who won the bet. although the reason for this was small the outcome was huge and started off a new era in media03.

The first actual film cameras were made on rolls of film, that passed a shutter and lens. These were created both by Lumiere Brother, in France and Thomas Edison, in America, this was all around 1891. These films were not edited and were used as only one single shot. The first real start of editing came about when people started 'editing in camera', this is where you take shot after shot in the order that you want them in so no editing is necessary. This way of editing is still used and admired, you can find amazing examples of editing on camera being used at the straight 8 film festival, this was founded in 1999 and is based in the United Kingdom.





This short film was created on one single film cartridge and had no editing done to it what so ever.

Although editing on camera was a lot back then it was not enough for what people wanted, as it was hard to predict what the outcome of your shots were to be like. This is when cutting the film and taping it back together came along. This allowed directors and Filmer's to have a lot more creativity and freedom with there films as they did not only have one shot to shoot everything that they needed. They could take as long as they wanted and even use as many cameras as they wanted to film something and could put all the shots together at the end. From 1920 to around 1945 this method of editing was used.

This is a moviola editing table (used from 1920's to the 1940's)

This is a Steenbeck editing table which were introduced in 1945 by a German company.

The company Steenbeck was founded in 1931 and more than 25,000 of there machines are operating around the world. The company relocated in 2003 from Germany to The Netherlands and is still producing editing tables to this day.

The first ideas about recording film onto something other than tape came around in the early 1950's from the Ampax research team and the first video recording machine was created in 1956.

The original video editing systems were linear but instead of physically cutting the film they simply copied the data from one tape to another using a control deck. This is know as non destructive editing. This technique was used primarily for TV as the quality was not yet ready for Cinema. In the 1970's Non linear editing systems were attempted but nobody could get one good enough for manufacturing. A laser disc technology was created in the 1980's but this was never used for commercial production.
In 1989 Avid created there first editing programme 'Avid 1 Media Composer editing system'  which was available on apple computer technology. This was the first system that turned taped data into files that could be used on a timeline on Avids programme. Once people had understood that you are not damaging the file anymore by trying lots of different editing on one clip people could try more crazy things with there editing as they were not harming any of the clips they were using they were simply progressing.

When editing you must take into account which genre you are editing for. For example you would not cut a romantic love scene to a fast pace song and short clips. You would have long slow moving clips with a suitable song in the background. Here is an example of what I mean

This scene has Romantic music in the background throughout and uses slow moving clips to emphasise the emotion of what the charactors are feeling.



This on the other hand is a war scene which is fast pace with short clips and fast moving action. It mainly uses the sounds of the war, animals running, people shouting and screaming and weapons clashing. This is used to drag you into the film and make you feel like you are there with them. towards the end of the clip there is some dramatic music which makes it a lot more dramatic and interesting. This all adds to the quality of the movie.




This is another type of editing, this is a montage. It is made up from lots of different clips and sections, in this case Ivan Drago's training against Rocky's training. Throughout the full thing it is switching between the two charactors will a very fast pace and very fast dramatic music which suits the style of the editing and also suits what is happening on the montage. The music does not fill the full audio as the editor has left the origional sound in which only adds to the montage as it adds to the atmosphere and fits the music incredibly well.
The music choice on this montage is chosen incredibly well as the harder the athletes train and work the faster and more dramatic the music gets.