Editing Theory

The Development of Video Editing

The very origins of cinema go all the way back to the work of Edweard Muybridge with his first film 'Horse In Motion' where he set up a a lot of cameras down a stretch and had the horse run down taking multiple photographs he did this to prove that at one point when a horse is galloping its feet all leave the ground at one point, he won the best as you can see, but making the the motion film peaked his interest and he would go on to produce more and more works of film through his life with examples like 'American Bison Cantering' However this was all done using a lot of different individual cameras The First 'Film' camera was actually invented in France by the Lumiere Brothers Auguste and Louis And at the same time in America by Thomas Edison. Lumiere Brothers:Were two french filmmakers credited to be the first film makers in history They They patented the cinematograph, which contrary to Edison's "peepshow" kinetoscope, the former allowed viewing by multiple parties at once, Their very first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumiere is widely considered as the first real motion picture in history.However the films that were made by the cameras invented by The Lumiere brother and Edison we NOT edited they were just a single shot from the same point of view throughout the most first and very famous example of this would be the Lumiere brother film 

Entrée d'un train en gare de la Ciotat  shown on the right an urban myth describes that when spectators saw the film for the first time some screamed in shock and terror for they had never seen such a sight.

 The Idea of different shot choices and multiple points of view and other things like following the action until the idea of 'editing in camera'. Editing In Camera is when the film is created shot by shot within the camera that means that the next shot is added by what you then film next,editing in camera also allowed the film makers to show more than just one point of view one of the earliest examples of a  film shot using edit within camera would be the 1903 film 'Life Of An American Firefighter' , even though it was created a hundred years ago editing in camera still exists as a way of film making today.
Editing in camera was a effective way of creating and editing a film but it still wasn't the best as it is quite difficult to finish a film using edit within camera because you would have to judge where where each and every shot starts and finishes this is just to hard to get 'perfectly' Therefore the early film makers needed to find a way to 'trim' their shots and to also be able to order their 'clips' so during the early days of movie production the idea of actually physically cutting up sections of the film clips then pasting them together in the right order was created for year this was done by hand with nothing more than a pair of scissors and a magnifying glass however in 1924 a man named Iwan Serrurier created the first mechanical editing machine he went on to found the 'Moviola' company a major step forward in modern editing the company still exists today, the Moviola machines revolutionised editing and allowed a much more sophisticated brand of cutting techniques to be developed, the technique of cutting a reassembling a film is called 'Linear editing' its name derives from the assembly of the clips one after another, from the 1920s till the end of World War II basically all film editing was done on Moviola editing decks until 1945 when a German company called Steenbeck who introduced their version of the editing deck, Steenbecks editing deck quickly became the standard machine used for editing films. Video Editing was the invention that instead of physically cutting the clips together.

Non Linear Editing Systems were first invented in the 1970's but not a single one was put to commercial use, then in 1989 the first professional NLE system was created when a company called "AVID" launched the Avid 1 media composer editing system, based on apple computer technology it was the first computer based system that turned the taped data into files the files could then be moved onto a 'timeline'. One of the major inventions that helped craft the NLE'S was the digital video camera, the change from linear to non linear editing was developed by the idea that the film/video could be transformed into digital information that basically copied it so they could alter the information without destroying the original version of the data this is now known as "Non Destructive Editing"

Soviet Montage Theory is a specific way of editing first pioneered by Sergei Eisenstein in the early 1920's fewer than thirty films were shot and executed in the style but the films lived on as masterpieces in soviet montage,One main characteristic of soviet montage films is the "Downplaying" of different individual characters for example single characters are shown as members of different social and economical classes and are representing the "stereotype" of that certain class whether rich or poor for example in Eisenstein's Film "Strike" there is only one character who is actually named in the entirety of the film. The technique to soviet montage is simple, "Juxtaposing" images during the edit, for example the camera would show a character looking at something out of shot then it would cut to whatever the thing was whether it was a giant ant or a killer baboon it would show an action they performed, then the shot would cut to show the reaction of the original person whether it was shock or amusement,this in basic was soviet montage, Eisenstein believed that montage could create an idea or other impact beyond what was onscreen, so two or more images edited together wold create a "third thing" a famous example of this would be the "Odessa Steps" sequence in Battleship Potemkin.(shown below)

 

Another example would be a more recent film (early 90's) Naked gun 2 and a 1/2 which has a soviet montage themed sex scene which is a more comical example but still a strong one.

Purposes Of Editing

We use editing for many different reasons one of these reasons is Storytelling, one of the simplest purposes of editing is effective storytelling this is achieved by controlling the audiences point of view with the different shots used within the film.
Genre is how the films style is used an example of a genre is Horror. Here in this film trailer you can clearly see the main themes/shots used for a film that fits within the horror genre.

In this trailer for the film 'The Conjuring' there are various shots used with the intention of scaring someone without giving away to much plot details, some of the main conventions of horror films are also shown, for example the jump scare scream is used this technique is in my opinion overused as a 'cheap scare' however it is one of the most obvious traits of a horror films which is why they used it to convey to the audience what genre of film it is.

Pace and Rhythm- Pace is generally used when cutting it main functions are to control the tension in a certain scene faster paced movies are more likely to be action/horror based as they require either fast cuts to convey combat or a quick flash of a monster, Pace really engages the viewer into the film which is why it is a very effective editing tool because of the connection the audience feels to the film, this connection will help engross them into good quality film making.When editing Rhythm requires that the length of the different shots in a sequence vary, rhythm is also important because an audience will know when a film has no rhythm, this is potentially dangerous because the viewer will quickly become bored, bad rhythm is when a viewer is no longer engorged into the story, they forget about the world that you have created within your film and no longer care about the characters you have created.

Conventions of Editing
There are lots of Techniques used when filming and they each have their own effect on the audience most effects are used to engage the viewer a good film maker can see when they have a brilliant shot that will really captivate the audience. Continuity editing is THE most used style of editing post production its used to show logical steps the films is making in terms of a story line, there are a few techniques of continuity editing like the ESTABLISHING SHOT: this shot shows a very wide shot that ESTABLISHES where the scene is taking place the theory behind the shot is that the viewer would just get confused whenever the film cuts to a new scene and the actors are in a completely different place so it shows the space in which the next scene will take place, this shot can also be reused as a reestablishing shot if a sequence contains a complex set of cuts/ lot of cuts.
CROSS CUTTING is another technique of continuity editing it is used to help establish to points of view when action is taking place in the same place  In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action this creates the image that these two things are happening at the same time.
the 180 DEGREE RULE is one of the most basic rules of film making it is about when two things (ie actors) are on screen  there is an imaginary line between them that connects them on screen because it shows there maintained eye level, the 180 degree rule is nessacary because without it audiences could be confused as to the actual size of space where the characters are which would not make logical sense.
Cutting to a sound track is an editing method that combines the sequence with a pieces of Foley audio (this is audio added in post) to create a very effective sequence this piece of audio could be anything from a dark barking to a gunshot however the sound can even be a natural sound for example a phone ringing a cut will be made that shows the phone ringing then it will cut back to whatever was taking place before the interruption (this is cutting to the soundtrack in its simplest form) 
Dissolve is a technique used in post editing that shows a slow transition from an image into another the gradual change is a contrast to a regular cut which has no transition at all it just quickly changes. Here is a very short video showing the dissolve technique in action, it shows the slower transition from one flower to something else.