The Devolpment of Editing

Before editing short films were made such as ‘Train Arriving at a Station’ where there was no editing used just a single shot. In this short film it does exactly what it says in the title, a single shot with a train approaching the station platform. Apparently when the audience saw this in the theatre they thought that the train was going to come out the screen and run them over! They thought this because they had never seen anything like it before. This was a big start to the film and cinema industry.

Since was first used around 1902 on the film ‘Voyage to the Moon’, editing has changed and improved an incredible amount, and for the better. Editing makes todays films what they are, action movies with their fast paced scene cuts and explosions. Horror films with the tense long scenes creating suspense and adding load jumpy music.

When ‘Voyage to the Moon’ was made they used a form of editing called a jump cut, for example, in the film a character hit an alien and then the alien disappeared and a puff of smoke appeared. They made this illusion by stopping the filming as the character hits the alien, and then when its not filming the alien moves and they set a puff of smoke off and start filming again, hence why it is called a jump shot.

There was two brothers known as the ‘Lumiere Brothers’ who made short films and screened them in cinemas in front of a live audience around 1895. The Lumiere brothers created and screened many other short films during 1895 including ‘The Sprinkler Sprinkled'. The Sprinkler Sprinkled was the brother’s first film to include some acting and humour with a faint storyline as it had a beginning, middle and end. It also had music in sync with the action. The Lumiere brothers were yet to discover the wonders of in camera editing or following the action. There was no manipulation of time and all the footage was shot onto film.

Then in 1903 two men called George Fleming and Edwin Porter directed and filmed ‘Life of an American Fireman’. The short 6 minute film had developed the use of a drama in the film as a woman is trapped in a house fire and rescued by a group of firemen. Like ‘Voyage to the Moon’ life of an American Fireman followed the action without any shot variation. But finally intercutting was used in film as the film switched between the woman in her burning house and the firemen on the way to save the woman, this creates more drama and gives the audience a kind of relationship with the character in the film. Intercutting also shows how far away the woman would be from her death or how close the firemen are to saving her.

 

Later in 1903 ‘the Great Train Robbery’ was shot. Like ‘life of an American Fireman’ it followed the action as the development of drama continues but for the first time shot variation was used as at the end instead of having the classic long shot a medium shot was used as a man shots a gun towards the camera. This would bring fear to the people sitting in the crowd because they would never of seen a shot like this and may of thought they are about to be shot themselves! 12 years after ‘Life of an American Fireman’ and ‘The Great Train Robbery’ a full length silent film called ‘Birth of a Nation’ was shot and directed by D.W Griffin. He tested the boundaries many things such as shot variation as he included a lot of close ups, intercutting as he created flashbacks and match cuts with seamless editing. Griffin was beginning to use many techniques of classic Hollywood editing.

 

The rules of classic Hollywood editing were finally created. The use of establishing shots to introduce your audience to their settings which would create the story and give a certain vibe of the setting depending on what genre of film it is, seamless editing so that the audience were barley unaware of change and many more techniques were part of the ‘Classic Hollywood’ editing, this would be used if someone was turning round or opening a door and they used 2 or more shots to show this without making it look obvious there is a difference. Despite these being the unwritten film rules a film named ‘Breathless’ was made. Breathless is a 1960 French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It was one of the earliest, most influential of the French New Wave. It broke the rules of jump cuts as it jerked between shots making the film look messy and unedited. It was a confusing film for the audience to watch with no establishing shots at the beginning of scenes and the rule of 180 degree being broken; this meant that cars looked like they were coming from one direction then the other when in fact they were going the same way, this would be called poor screen direction in today’s editing world and it would not happen.