History of Editing

What is Editing?

Editing is when you prepare or alter a piece of film for viewing purposes. This can involve lengthening, shortening, correcting, organising, and many other things.

According to Walter Murch, editing must follow the rule of six. The first rule is emotion, which is one of, if not the most important rule on this list. It is important that you make sure the audience feels what you want them to feel, and the cuts must never stop the audience from experiencing that feeling. Secondly, there is the story, as editing is wat move the story forward. Each cut must serve the purpose to advance the story, otherwise it should not be there. After the story, comes rhythm. Timing is of the essence with films, and editing must have a beat to it, like music.

Lumière Brothers

Auguste and Louis Lumière, also known as the Lumière Brothers, were the first filmmakers as well as the first editors in history. One of their films is called “L'arrivee d'un train en gare de la Ciolat” which showed the first frightening scene ever, as it horrified audiences and was said to have made them run out of the screening area since they believed they were about to get run over.

George Melies

George Melies is the director of the first ever sci- fi film known as “Trip To the Moon” in 1902. He never once had the camera move and all the scenes are still wide- angle shots. This is one that started the trend of genres in films. He also made one of the first edits in history, in the film “The Vanishing Lady” which shows the first jump cuts in film, where a magician puts his assistant on a pile of newspapers and spreads a blanket over her and a skeleton appears in her place when he lifts the blanket up.

Life of an American Fireman (1903)

This film has some of the first variation of shots in the history of filmmaking. One of the first shots it shows in the film is a dream sequence being projected with an establishing shot of a fireman sitting in his office thinking about his wife and child. It then fades to a close- up shot of a fire alarm being used. This indicates that there is a fire nearby.

CGI

CGI is another form of editing, where one is directly editing the images themselves. Computer Generated Imagery (or CGI) was used in 1973 in a sci- fi western called “Westworld”. This was the first film to use 2D CGI images and the first major film to use CGI at all, using pixelated POV shots by computer graphics experts John Whitney JR and Gary Demos.

Westworld was so popular, a sequel was made, called “Futureworld” that was also very influential. While Westworld was the first film to use 2D CGI images, Futureworld was the first film to use 3D CGI images.

Analogue and Digital Editing

Analogue editing is editing that is done by hand without the use of software or computers. Digital editing on the other hand is done on a computer.

As mentioned earlier, analogue editing is done with a physical copy of a film and without computers. The editor would have a copy of the successful film, which is where all the footage went onto when it was filmed. They’d create cutaways by cutting the film up and splicing it back together. Even though no computer was used, with analogue editing it still had to be fed through a machine.

Digital editing on the other hand is the way most people edit film nowadays. Digital editing is done on a computer using a piece of software like Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Premiere Pro.