Editing has a long history and the pioneers of editing are many. To comprehensively explain the history of editing would take a long time, so much so that there are bookshelves in libraries brimming to full with all the information concerning the progression of editing. This blog will give an idea of where editing comes from and should you feel that you would like to know more there will be links to follow at the end.
The very first films had no editing in them. They would be one continuous shot of whatever the person with the camera felt like shooting. This may sound boring and silly now but back when film was still a new invention these scenes were simply amazing. So much so that two of the most famous film pioneers, the Lumiere brothers, made a film called "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat". The film is exactly what the title says, with one continuous shot of a train pulling in to a station. This was in 1895 and people had never seen anything like this before so when the short film was seen by members of the public people literally screamed and were terrified by the sight of a train coming towards them. There were many other films like this made and the novelty of being able to see moving images was incredible.However, Edison and the Lumiere brothers were both quite cynical about film because once the everyday activities had been filmed and people got used to the idea of seeing moving images on screen, they wondered why the masses would continue to pay to see such things when they could merely open their curtains and view it in reality. In fact Auguste Lumiere stated that cinema was an invention without a future.(1)
Enter Edwin Porter. He was in the employ of Edison and proved him and the Lumiere brothers very wrong. He discovered that cutting separate shots together could create stories and narratives, as opposed to the very real and rigid films of men working in a shipyard. In 1903 he made a film called "Life of an American Fireman", which inter-cut unrelated shots to create a story. The film comprised of two scenes; one where we see firemen rushing down the fire pole and into their horse drawn carts trying to get to a fire. The second scene is of where the fire is taking place and that there is a woman trapped inside the building which is alight. Now by inter-cutting the two scenes together Porter created a narrative and drama. We as viewers are now rooting for the firemen to save the day and get caught up in the film both emotionally and psychologically. This truly was a step forward in the world of editing and the world of film in general.(1)
Porter wasn't done there though and his next film, "The Great Train Robbery" made in 1903, was when the possibilities really became clear for all the world to see. The film was heavily edited and this gave films a new direction to go in. It is important to understand that the invention of editing is the reason that film works. Up until the films of Edwin Porter film was very linear and factual with no room for creativity, story or anything remotely captivating. He showed the world that film could be so much more and bridge gaps in time and the imagination.(1) The two links below show these two very important films and are worth watching to see how editing was born.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0gJ7BnLc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7wWOmEGGY
Fast forward a few years and we arrive in 1912. This was the year that "The Unseen Enemy" was made by D.W. Griffith. Griffith is widely recognised as the first modern film editor and is revered for his understanding of the psychological impact that editing can provide. He took the techniques and discoveries that Edwin Porter had made almost a decade earlier and advanced them more than any other person. His revolutionary way of editing was seen to be too radical by the producers he worked for because nothing like his work had ever been made. His producers told him that the audience would be baffled by his use of close-ups and the way in which he cut his films, however the audiences completely got caught up in the emotion that he wanted to show because of the way he had edited his work. It is common knowledge amongst film makers of today that close-ups are effective ways to show raw emotion of a character but back in 1912 nobody had ever done it that way. Griffith truly did invent a lot of the basic techniques and grammar that modern editors today use. His film "The Birth of a Nation" that he made in 1915 was the culmination of a decades worth of editing techniques and knowledge. The film contained close-ups, flashbacks, action and it was all to make the audience feel a specific way. He wanted to mediate the emotion and the thrills of the story to his audience and the reason this was possible was down to his brilliant ability to edit films in particular ways.(2) Below is the link to this truly revolutionary film, but be prepared for a long watch because this film is 3 hours long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRyIndtcYU4
Porter laid the foundations of editing and Griffith built his palace on them. The techniques and grammar that these two men came up with founded classical editing. Classical editing is a term used to describe what else but how films used to be edited. One strong principle that classical editing depended on was the invisible cut. This is simply cutting a shot with another without the audience noticing that it has happened. It is also used to make sure that the film doesn't show the same action twice. This principle is still extremely prevalent today and if the cuts become clear then the film simply won't work.(2)
Unfortunately for editors the better they do their job the more invisible they become in true life as well. The first editors were considered hands for hire and the directors took all the credit for the film, including the presentation which is heavily influenced by the editor because after all the editor decides on which shots go where along side the director. Because film was used back then the editor would hold the reel of film up against the light to see the images on it. They would then run the film through a projector to check they were satisfied with their work. Of course in modern day editing checking your work and making alterations is as easy as clicking a mouse which is far easier and extremely less time consuming. The editing process used to be such a long task that D.W. Griffith's main editor Jimmy Edward Smith practically lived together and worked long in to the night on their films. Smith's wife Rose joined the editing team and were only given the weekend off for their honey moon because at the time they were cutting together "Intolerance". This kind of unrelenting work ethic was expected for editors. Having said that editors today don't have it much easier. Editing a whole film takes a very long time and takes its toll on all involved.(2) Editing then is not for the feint hearted and is a pain staking process that only rewards those who get real satisfaction out of taking the time to create something they are really proud of and enthusiastic about.
Films were edited by hand and checked through a projector as we know until the invention of the Moviola. It was invented in 1924 by Iwan Serrurier and it was the first machine made for motion picture editing. It allows an editor to continue viewing film while editing it and it is still used to this very day, albeit in declining numbers due to the more and more prevalent use of digital equipment. Steven Spielbergs "Munich" was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Editing" in 2005 having been edited on a Moviola by editor Michael Kahn. (3)
Directors and editors often work together when cutting a film. The directors already have an image of how they want the film to look and try to get the editors to see things there way. Editors however don't, or at least shouldn't, have any kind of attachment to the shots that they are working with. A director may really want to include a certain shot because getting it to work or getting the lighting right may have been a huge task and therefore has to be put in the film to justify the angst that capturing it created. An editor should simply look at what works and where without having to justify his choices. Alexander Payne, director of "Election", commented that editors are like sly politicians. (4)
Editing used to be done by hand in its earliest days. Film cameras used to use reels of film, something you may be familiar with if you ever handled cameras that contained the old film reels. These film would have to be cut manually with a blade and put in the order that the director wanted. This is why editing is often referred to as 'cutting'. Woman were used to cut the film reels as it was seen as a delicate process that wasn't unlike sewing and knitting. This was in the days of the silent film when any kind of sound was usually provided by a piano player who would play along to the images that were displayed on the screen. When sound was successfully integrated with pictures the editing process was seen as too technical for woman, so men took over. This was before woman were seen as equals. Thankfully today that is no longer the case.
While editing has been changed and tampered with since it was discovered as a valuable tool, modern day editing is much the same as its been for years now. The biggest difference is in the technology used as more and more editors are using computers and specifically designed editing software. There are still people who chose to use old methods as mentioned before but the programs available now are so easy to use and well put together. A lot of footage is filmed digitally now too and transferring footage to a hard drive is extremely easy and quick. Certain programmes allow you to edit the images and the sound at the same time to achieve distinct sounds to go with distinct images. It is also very easy to pin point exact frames and cuts so if an editor has an exact idea of what he wants it can be done in mere seconds. It is important to remember though that the principles of editing, such as montage, key frames, invisible cuts and continuity are the same and just because an editor has a whole plethora of tools and buttons at their disposal while editing footage on a computer, real skill always shows through and unless they can adhere to the unwritten rules that Edwin Porter and D.W. Griffith pioneered, their work fall short and lack quality.
There is an extremely interesting and helpful documentary about film editing called "The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing" and it is well worth a watch for anybody evenly remotely interesting in editing. Below is the link for the first part and you can follow the links on the page to the other parts. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508MHvMGWEg
Sunday 5 December 2010
The Discovery of Sound.
As you probably know, or at least have heard about, films used to be silent. The theatres that would show films would have a house piano player that would play along with the images to give the audience at least some audible stimulation. The speech was often written on "Intertitles", the words on screen in between the pictures. Sometimes a live raconteur would narrate the on-screen actions to the audience. Film makers and inventors alike were keen on coming up with an idea that could make moving images and sound play in sync at the same time. Unless you haven't read a book or watched TV since you were a baby you will have heard of Thomas A. Edison, usually referred to as simply Edison(if you're thinking why does that name ring a bell then A. It's safe to say you should read more and B. He invented the light bulb). He invented the Kinetophone along side the quite eccentrically named film-maker William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson and together they used this device to record the first known film as well as live sound at the same time way back in late 1984 or early 1985. It is known as the Dickson film experiment. This was the first attempt at recording moving images and sound simultaneously and the clip of this experiment is below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s
Edison tried to get sound and film to mesh a long time before it was a commercially viable concept. He was trying to get sound and image to work from the very beginning cinema, way back in the late 19th century. The difficulties with getting sound incorporated into films were many. Technology was the biggest stumbling block but even audience satisfaction was a point that had to be dealt with. Audiences weren't left wondering why there wasn't sound in film and had got used to the sound being provided live. Films had become far better in terms of story telling as well and films were being edited in ways to provide all the information the audience needed with minimum use of Intertitles. But again it was the technology available that was the hardest obstacle to overcome.
The problems were with amplification and synchronization. It was no good having sound that was out of sync or at the wrong volume. Several American corporations began to really tackle these issues: RCA, Western Electric, AT&T and Warner Brothers. Western Electric were looking in to both sound-on-film and sound-on-disc technology. Since Edison had already invented the phonograph it made more sense to use disc technology, as the phonograph was made for discs. The phonograph was an invention Edison came up with to play back telegraph recordings and to automate speech sounds by telephones. This was the first device that could record and playback sound, so it wasn't a huge leap for the machine to be used in the film business. Warner Brothers bought Western Electric and together they came up with a viable sound system: Vitaphone. It was essentially a phonograph platter hooked up to a projector so that the disc that contained the sound would play at the same time as the images. In modern day terms it would be like playing a DVD with no sound and playing a CD at the same time with the sound at the same time, from the same machine.
Even after its invention, sound presented a host of problems. The early sound cameras and equipment were big and noisy, and had to be kept in their own soundproof room, called a "blimp." It took a while for someone to figure out that you could move the microphone around by placing it at the end of a stick—called a "boom"—just above the range of the camera. This made early sound films seem very static because actors had to speak to a stationary mike, and the cameras movement no longer had that graceful and supple fluidity it had been developing over the years. Another obvious problem was that certain actors didn't sound the way they looked, which really unsettled audiences as they couldn't look at the actor in the same way. Some actors struggled with the new demands of sound in film, such as remembering lines, getting the timing of speech right and also while some actors in silent films were very good, they couldn't speak convincingly. It's one skill to act physically and another to deliver speech effectively.
The first sound films, or "talkies" as they are sometimes called, found getting the balance between dialogue and action hard to get right. This made film producers fear the loss of audiences as all the issues of the first talkies could potentially put audiences off, whereas silent films had an automatic audience.
Sound in film did catch on though. Audiences weren't deterred and so came a new wave of film making. Scenarists now had to be well versed in script writing, actors now have to have a sense of delivery and certain stereotypes were no longer seen as acceptable or usable. Asian vamps were in some of the silent films but they didn't transfer well to the talking pictures. Also some accents and dialects weren't clear and sounded like gibberish through the eras primitive microphones. In paved the way for some of the most highly regarded writers of recent times to come and write for the big screen, such as the revered Ernest Hemingway. (5)(6)(7)
Technology got better and better and the methods improved with time as well. Booms became more popular, acting techniques got better, scripts were being written by talented writers and editing became a tool of mighty importance to all. The introduction of sound has made the world of film better in many ways and while we take it for granted, it can be a tool that changes how we feel about the images we see, how we react to them and how we perceive them when used effectively.
I think it's important just to give Thomas A. Edison a special footnote as it was inventions and innovations, as well as his obsession with sound, that helped the film industry to be what it is today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s
Edison tried to get sound and film to mesh a long time before it was a commercially viable concept. He was trying to get sound and image to work from the very beginning cinema, way back in the late 19th century. The difficulties with getting sound incorporated into films were many. Technology was the biggest stumbling block but even audience satisfaction was a point that had to be dealt with. Audiences weren't left wondering why there wasn't sound in film and had got used to the sound being provided live. Films had become far better in terms of story telling as well and films were being edited in ways to provide all the information the audience needed with minimum use of Intertitles. But again it was the technology available that was the hardest obstacle to overcome.
The problems were with amplification and synchronization. It was no good having sound that was out of sync or at the wrong volume. Several American corporations began to really tackle these issues: RCA, Western Electric, AT&T and Warner Brothers. Western Electric were looking in to both sound-on-film and sound-on-disc technology. Since Edison had already invented the phonograph it made more sense to use disc technology, as the phonograph was made for discs. The phonograph was an invention Edison came up with to play back telegraph recordings and to automate speech sounds by telephones. This was the first device that could record and playback sound, so it wasn't a huge leap for the machine to be used in the film business. Warner Brothers bought Western Electric and together they came up with a viable sound system: Vitaphone. It was essentially a phonograph platter hooked up to a projector so that the disc that contained the sound would play at the same time as the images. In modern day terms it would be like playing a DVD with no sound and playing a CD at the same time with the sound at the same time, from the same machine.
Even after its invention, sound presented a host of problems. The early sound cameras and equipment were big and noisy, and had to be kept in their own soundproof room, called a "blimp." It took a while for someone to figure out that you could move the microphone around by placing it at the end of a stick—called a "boom"—just above the range of the camera. This made early sound films seem very static because actors had to speak to a stationary mike, and the cameras movement no longer had that graceful and supple fluidity it had been developing over the years. Another obvious problem was that certain actors didn't sound the way they looked, which really unsettled audiences as they couldn't look at the actor in the same way. Some actors struggled with the new demands of sound in film, such as remembering lines, getting the timing of speech right and also while some actors in silent films were very good, they couldn't speak convincingly. It's one skill to act physically and another to deliver speech effectively.
The first sound films, or "talkies" as they are sometimes called, found getting the balance between dialogue and action hard to get right. This made film producers fear the loss of audiences as all the issues of the first talkies could potentially put audiences off, whereas silent films had an automatic audience.
Sound in film did catch on though. Audiences weren't deterred and so came a new wave of film making. Scenarists now had to be well versed in script writing, actors now have to have a sense of delivery and certain stereotypes were no longer seen as acceptable or usable. Asian vamps were in some of the silent films but they didn't transfer well to the talking pictures. Also some accents and dialects weren't clear and sounded like gibberish through the eras primitive microphones. In paved the way for some of the most highly regarded writers of recent times to come and write for the big screen, such as the revered Ernest Hemingway. (5)(6)(7)
Technology got better and better and the methods improved with time as well. Booms became more popular, acting techniques got better, scripts were being written by talented writers and editing became a tool of mighty importance to all. The introduction of sound has made the world of film better in many ways and while we take it for granted, it can be a tool that changes how we feel about the images we see, how we react to them and how we perceive them when used effectively.
I think it's important just to give Thomas A. Edison a special footnote as it was inventions and innovations, as well as his obsession with sound, that helped the film industry to be what it is today.
References
Youtube.com (n.d.) The Cutting Edge: Magic of Movie Editing pt1[Internet], Available from <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508MHvMGWEg> Accessed on 2/12/2010 (1)
Youtube.com (n.d.) The Cutting Edge: Magic of Movie Editing pt2[Internet], Available from <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw7qqRtQgp0&feature=related> on 2/12/2010 (2)
wikipedia.com (2005) Moviola [Internet], Wikipedia. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moviola Accessed on 2/12/2010 (3)
wikipedia.com (2002) Frame Rate [Internet], Wikipedia. Available from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate> Accessed on 2/12/2010 (9)
wikimedia commons (2005) 180 Degree Rule [Internet], Available from <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:180_degree_rule.svg> Accessed on 5/11/2010 (10)
Youtube.com (n.d.) The Cutting Edge: Magic of Movie Editing pt2[Internet], Available from <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw7qqRtQgp0&feature=related> on 2/12/2010 (2)
wikipedia.com (2005) Moviola [Internet], Wikipedia. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moviola Accessed on 2/12/2010 (3)
Youtube.com (n.d.) The Cutting Edge: Magic of Movie Editing pt3 [Internet], Available from <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7TAw9NI6T4&feature=related> on 2/12/2010 (4)
infoplease.com (n.d.) A Brief History of Sound [Internet], Available from <http://www.infoplease.com/cig/movies-flicks-film/brief-history-sound-movies.html> Accessed on 2/12/2010 (5)wikipedia.com (2005) Vitaphone [Internet], Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaphone> Accessed on 2/12/2010 (6)
wikipedia.com (2002) Phonograph [Internet], Wikipedia. Available from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph> Accessed on 7/12/2010 (7)
100fps.com (n.d.) How Many Frames Per Second Can The Human Eye See? [Internet], Available from <http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm> Accessed on 2/12/2010 (8)wikipedia.com (2002) Frame Rate [Internet], Wikipedia. Available from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate> Accessed on 2/12/2010 (9)
wikimedia commons (2005) 180 Degree Rule [Internet], Available from <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:180_degree_rule.svg> Accessed on 5/11/2010 (10)
Thursday 2 December 2010
The Grammar of Editing.
Like most aspects of life editing comes with certain grammar and lingo that are used frequently. Words like montage and frame rate are key words in editing and unless you know what they mean then you could be left wondering what you are doing.
Cutting.
The term cutting is just a slang term for editing. It is derived from the way old film reels used to be cut in order to edit them. Everybody has heard this term even if only when referring to shots cutting away or cutting to another. Editors are also sometimes referred to as Cutters in keeping with the theme.
Montage
A montage is a series of shots put together in a sequence. In the Techniques of Editing blog I have posted I have written about the Kuleshov effect and how it is the principle for montage. Montages are used to create a meaning that the viewer clearly mediates without the images having to completely spell it out for them. Classicly montages are used in films to show the passing of time, with shots of a person looking young or commonly a novice at a certain skill. Shots of the slightly older person or that person becoming better at whatever skill they were a novice at in the first shots moves the narrative along without any need for a shot by shot account of time or practice. I have posted a link below to the Team America Montage Song which, while being a parody of the montage technique, actually explains it pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU9Uwhjlog8&feature=related
Frame/Frame Rate
This is slightly complicated. Frames are the still images that when put together make up moving images. The amount of these images that occur in a single second is usually abbreviated to FPS with the letters standing for Frames Per Second. The more images in a single second the better the fluidity of the moving image that they create. Confused? The informal and much easier way to get your head around this is to think of a cartoon that someone has drawn on a notepad in the corner of the page. They then turn over the page and draw the same cartoon but slightly more advanced in the timeline, so if the first image was of a stick figure walking towards a car, then the next image would show him slightly closer to the car. The images would be continuously drawn on a different piece of paper until the cartoon has finished and then you would flick through the pages to see every still image coming straight after the other one. When these still images are shown very very briefly and very very quickly next to each other they create a moving image. So going back to the beginning a frame in this case is one of the pages that the cartoon is drawn on and the frame rate would be (x) frames per second the number of pages that were seen in one second. (8)
There are different FPS used in film and TV. This depends where in the world you are viewing from and what analog system that part of the world uses. There are three main frame rate standards but as technology moves forward there are new standards emerging, but for editing purposes only two are really needed. First there is PAL which is the analog TV system that stands for Phase Alternate Line. It is used all over the world, mainly in Europe and most of Asia and Africa. The frame rate for PAL is 25 FPS. The second most used system is NTSC which stands for National Television Standard Committee runs at 29.97 FPS(the reason they felt the need to have such an usual number of frames a second is anybody's guess). The last of the big three is called SECAM, also written SÉCAM which stands for Séquentiel couleur à mémoire, French for Sequential Colour with Memory. It too has a frame rate of 25 FPS. (9) This is used in France and Russia as well as some African countries. Below is a link to an image that clearly shows which places use which particular system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PAL-NTSC-SECAM.svg
Films, or at least most Hollywood productions anyway, are produced at 24 FPS. This is slightly lower than TV but is still enough to satisfy the human eye. (9)
Now I am aware that there is a lot of information here and you may be wondering what it has to with chopping up some clips and putting them in the right order. The fact is editing is about precision and timing. Each frame is important and how good your final piece is often depends on how carefully you time your cuts and the duration of them. Knowing that 24 FPS is what the human eye is content with lets you play around with individual frames to achieve certain creative flair and styles. It also helps greatly with sound effects and soundtracks. A lot of the sound in film and TV is done in the editing room and there may be a scene where a character is startled by a noise. The editor has to find the right time to put the noise in and can match up the actors actions with each frame and this gives him/her an idea of where the sound should go so it syncs with the images perfectly. It is possible to do all of this with total disregard for frames and their importance but the fact is any work done with that attitude will fall short of any kind of quality.
Frame/Frame Rate
This is slightly complicated. Frames are the still images that when put together make up moving images. The amount of these images that occur in a single second is usually abbreviated to FPS with the letters standing for Frames Per Second. The more images in a single second the better the fluidity of the moving image that they create. Confused? The informal and much easier way to get your head around this is to think of a cartoon that someone has drawn on a notepad in the corner of the page. They then turn over the page and draw the same cartoon but slightly more advanced in the timeline, so if the first image was of a stick figure walking towards a car, then the next image would show him slightly closer to the car. The images would be continuously drawn on a different piece of paper until the cartoon has finished and then you would flick through the pages to see every still image coming straight after the other one. When these still images are shown very very briefly and very very quickly next to each other they create a moving image. So going back to the beginning a frame in this case is one of the pages that the cartoon is drawn on and the frame rate would be (x) frames per second the number of pages that were seen in one second. (8)
There are different FPS used in film and TV. This depends where in the world you are viewing from and what analog system that part of the world uses. There are three main frame rate standards but as technology moves forward there are new standards emerging, but for editing purposes only two are really needed. First there is PAL which is the analog TV system that stands for Phase Alternate Line. It is used all over the world, mainly in Europe and most of Asia and Africa. The frame rate for PAL is 25 FPS. The second most used system is NTSC which stands for National Television Standard Committee runs at 29.97 FPS(the reason they felt the need to have such an usual number of frames a second is anybody's guess). The last of the big three is called SECAM, also written SÉCAM which stands for Séquentiel couleur à mémoire, French for Sequential Colour with Memory. It too has a frame rate of 25 FPS. (9) This is used in France and Russia as well as some African countries. Below is a link to an image that clearly shows which places use which particular system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PAL-NTSC-SECAM.svg
Films, or at least most Hollywood productions anyway, are produced at 24 FPS. This is slightly lower than TV but is still enough to satisfy the human eye. (9)
Now I am aware that there is a lot of information here and you may be wondering what it has to with chopping up some clips and putting them in the right order. The fact is editing is about precision and timing. Each frame is important and how good your final piece is often depends on how carefully you time your cuts and the duration of them. Knowing that 24 FPS is what the human eye is content with lets you play around with individual frames to achieve certain creative flair and styles. It also helps greatly with sound effects and soundtracks. A lot of the sound in film and TV is done in the editing room and there may be a scene where a character is startled by a noise. The editor has to find the right time to put the noise in and can match up the actors actions with each frame and this gives him/her an idea of where the sound should go so it syncs with the images perfectly. It is possible to do all of this with total disregard for frames and their importance but the fact is any work done with that attitude will fall short of any kind of quality.
Wednesday 1 December 2010
Techniques of Editing
There are lots of different techniques in editing as well as general rules. This includes everything from special effects to continuity and invisible cuts to the 180 degree rule. This blog covers some of the most important and most effecftive techniques in editing and explains why they are used.
Special Effects
When it comes to special effects it all depends on what equipment you have. There are basic effects such as filters and gradients or slo-motion which are available on basic software such as Windows Movie Maker. Filters are used to give the images a particular look to acheive a distintct tone, i.e. sepia filters make the images look worn and old, so are used a lot in historic dramas such as Gladiator and Troy. Other filters inculde black and white where the images are drained of colour. This is usually an artistic choice and can impact the images dramatically depending on what image is being shown. Schindlers List is famously in black and white for nearly the whole film and this is to make the images look bleak and lifeless. But if there were images of some people having the time of their lives put into black and white it would have a completely different feel.
More advanced special effects include motion graphics and computer generated graphics (CGI). These are used to create images that are impossible to shoot, or at least practically impossible. These sort of effects are common place in modern day media and that is because directors, writers and producers want to show just how exciting they can make their production. The Star Wars franchise is said to have kicked off the special effects generation because of it's unrivalled amount of action and pace that was made possible because of special effects. The first film released in the franchise was called A New Hope and was released in 1977, so viewers were blown away by waht they saw on screen.
Continuity/Invisible Cuts
Continuity is vital in keeping the images moving and more importantly believeable. When editing a film or TV show together the idea is to go from shot to shot without the viewer really noticing. A shot of a man in a red shirt being cut next to a different shot of the same man in a black shirt does not make a continuous series of images. It isn't just clothes and make-up that has to stay the same from shot to shot; if a person walks to a window in one shot and stands there for a few seconds, the next shot must be of him standing there and not of him approaching the window again. It seems obvious but it is vital to get in right because bad continuity can break a viewers concentration and perhaps most importantly their enjoyment of the media.
Invisible cuts are in the same vain as continuity as they serve to keep the images flowing smoothly. An example of an invisible cut would be of the a man facing a window and turning round. If the shot changes as he is mid-turn then it has to follow exactly from the prervious shot. If it doesn't sync then it becomes visible. If it syncs correctly the it will be an invisible cut and keep the images flowing smoothly and will contine to hold the viewers attention. (2)
Special Effects
When it comes to special effects it all depends on what equipment you have. There are basic effects such as filters and gradients or slo-motion which are available on basic software such as Windows Movie Maker. Filters are used to give the images a particular look to acheive a distintct tone, i.e. sepia filters make the images look worn and old, so are used a lot in historic dramas such as Gladiator and Troy. Other filters inculde black and white where the images are drained of colour. This is usually an artistic choice and can impact the images dramatically depending on what image is being shown. Schindlers List is famously in black and white for nearly the whole film and this is to make the images look bleak and lifeless. But if there were images of some people having the time of their lives put into black and white it would have a completely different feel.
More advanced special effects include motion graphics and computer generated graphics (CGI). These are used to create images that are impossible to shoot, or at least practically impossible. These sort of effects are common place in modern day media and that is because directors, writers and producers want to show just how exciting they can make their production. The Star Wars franchise is said to have kicked off the special effects generation because of it's unrivalled amount of action and pace that was made possible because of special effects. The first film released in the franchise was called A New Hope and was released in 1977, so viewers were blown away by waht they saw on screen.
Continuity/Invisible Cuts
Continuity is vital in keeping the images moving and more importantly believeable. When editing a film or TV show together the idea is to go from shot to shot without the viewer really noticing. A shot of a man in a red shirt being cut next to a different shot of the same man in a black shirt does not make a continuous series of images. It isn't just clothes and make-up that has to stay the same from shot to shot; if a person walks to a window in one shot and stands there for a few seconds, the next shot must be of him standing there and not of him approaching the window again. It seems obvious but it is vital to get in right because bad continuity can break a viewers concentration and perhaps most importantly their enjoyment of the media.
Invisible cuts are in the same vain as continuity as they serve to keep the images flowing smoothly. An example of an invisible cut would be of the a man facing a window and turning round. If the shot changes as he is mid-turn then it has to follow exactly from the prervious shot. If it doesn't sync then it becomes visible. If it syncs correctly the it will be an invisible cut and keep the images flowing smoothly and will contine to hold the viewers attention. (2)
Kuleshov Effect
The Kuleshov effect is named after the Russian Lev Kulsehov who was the first aesthetic film theorist who lived from 1899 to 1970. He derived his theories and insight from American films, especially those of D.W. Griffith. He was a huge influence on other famous names, such as Eisenstein and Pudovkin. He was the first to see that montage, the arrangement of shots, was what really created the meaning of the shots and not the content within them. He experimented with this idea when he made a montage using one actor with a neutral face expression. He intercut 3 exact shots of the actor between 3 different shots of unrelated things – a bowl of soup, a woman draped over her husbands coffin and of a little girl playing with a teddy bear. The viewers of this short montage praised the actor for his sensitivity and acting skill, even though the actor had the exact same expression in each shot. This is what is known as the Kuleshov effect. It is a way of creating new meanings simply by choosing what shots to cut together and the order they are cut in. Kuleshov also put this into practice where he took shots of different locations miles apart and cut them together to make them seem like one landscape. An example of how this can be done is to take two different shots of unrelated things and cut them together to create a meaning.(4) An example would be of a shot of a submarine, and then cut it with a shot of some ice caps. These two unrelated things shown consecutively creates the meaning of location. Below is a link to the montage that illustrates the Kuleshov effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZCPPGeJ1c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZCPPGeJ1c&feature=related
180 Degree Rule
The 180 degree, or line of action, is a technique that is used when filming. It is an imaginary line that should not be crossed once a camera has taken a shot. It is used to keep the action coherent when cutting shots together. Another way of explaining this rule is to say when a line of action has been designated for any give shot, subsequent shots should not go past 180 degrees.If the line is broken and shots are taken from both sides of the line, it makes the edit of the shots look disjointed and the viewer’s point of view becomes disjointed and incoherent. (10) If this explanation doesn't quite make sense enough for you then the image in the link below should clear it up for you.
Friday 22 October 2010
An Introduction to Editing
Hello there and welcome to the huge and dynamic world of film and video editing. This blog aims to give you a general introduction to the world of editing, so you can ease in to the vast and broad spectrum of editing. We will look at the basics, such as the first film edits and the people who pioneered new techniques across the world. Editing has a long and fruitful history with many techniques, rules and general guidelines that are applied to it. By looking at these techniques and rules as well as examples of thier use we will uncover why they are used and why we take editing for granted.
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