Unit 16: How Has Editing Developed Over The Last Century

The development of film and digital editing since the advent of cinema has truly developed and genuinely came a long way since the days where forms of editing were very basic and manual rather than mechanical.

'Spicing' was a process used by editors in order to cut out scenes which were deemed as irrelevant and strive to create a more 'Clean and Short' cut. This process was done by cutting the 'Celluloid Strips' with a blade or scissors and fitting each strip where required accordingly. In itself, this already shows how far we have developed considering the fact that this process can now be done digitally which shall further be discussed in this piece.

The 'Luminere Brothers' were the first to develop the first early film productions in the 1900s where they made an attempts to develop a simple story or concept and use it in order to try and create a storyline from a simple idea which consisted of a train leaving a station however due to the lack of editing at this time, we now see that this was very simple and basic.

One of the first Pioneers of Editing who took the idea of 'Splicing' and developed these basic principles by the 'Luminere Brothers' was Edwin S.Porter who focused on developing principles and used sequence (two shots) in order to create 'Life of an American Fireman' which was a great development as it consisted of montages and visual illusions which were deemed as interesting especially visually to the eye at this point in time as the first basic elements of slicing did not do so.






D.W Griffiths was also a key pioneer of editing who took Porter's idea however as per usual added this own twist to previous concepts.

He believed that editing possessed  psychological importance which therefore referred to the way people think or feel(emotions) which is shown through one of his movies, 'Birth of a Nation' where close-ups were used in order to further develop the connection between the audience and characters thus enabling them to understand the characters as well as helping the individuals(audience to understand the film).

D.W Griffiths was also responsible for the development of editing techniques such as Match-On-Action(Continuity editing) which were both used in the film 'Birth of Nation' but mot importantly 'The Great Train Robbery' which was a massive development through its used of basic montage, crosscutting and parallel editing. Montages were very visually interesting to the eye at this point in time because they essentially broke the rules of having to have a simple scene in which only one concept was shown but instead constantly fed the viewer with information through changing scenes therefore making everything constant. The effectiveness of using techniques such as parallel editing/crosscutting is that it helps create juxtaposition between two narratives.

Around the 40s/50s, It was realised that there were what was called the 'Rules of Editing' which were basic concepts which all films were deemed to have continuous or hardly had cuts in-between scenes for example, if a character was going into a place for instance a house, they would have to show every move of the character i.e. Getting out of the car, closing the car door, locking the car, walking away from the car and into the house and so on, so fourth which was in my opinion quite tedious as it just lengthened unnecessary action which could have been simplified or sped up if necessary.

The 'French New Wave' arose where these rules began to become more successfully broken by editors such as Jean-Luc Godard who cut these unnecessary actions through the use of jumpiest as shown through the film 'Breathless' which is linked besides.

The development of film and editing was crucial tool for political use and propaganda as this was a way in which governments or those who possessed strong political views were able to manipulate the views of the public and influence the way in which they thought or felt about certain situations. Sergei Eisenstein who pioneered a film named 'Battle of Potemkin' to show and challenge Russian  political views however he was only able to do this through his use of colliding images ad abstract montage which was formed through the juxtaposition of images. This essentially took editing to the next level due to the fact that it was much more visually capturing and really challenging the idea of sequence compared to previous editing methods or productions such as 'The Great Train Robbery' and its basic use of montage.

Today, In the 21st Century which is also known as the 'Digital Era', It is safe to say that Editing has truly developed beyond our control which is even shown through the various elements which make up editing.

One of the biggest development of film and editing is technology. Through the development of technology, basic processes which were previously used such as 'Splicing' have been swarmed which a much greater preferences to 'Digital Software' such as 'Final Cut Pro' which enable use to take editing beyond its simplicities through the use of computer generated visuals which enable the impossible to become possible for example through the editing of Special effects and things of such sort thus making Editing and Films much more visually interesting.

Digital software also achieve their purpose of advancing editing through its abilities to provide a vast number of visually exciting effects as discussed through things such 'CGI(Computer Generated Images)' which enforce limitless creativity for example, the fact that we now have what we call 'Split-Screen Reactions' which can be done using these softwares where space and time can be much easily manipulated to one's desire without actually travelling further than an 'Green Screen' and where time can be altered for instance in the film 'Matrix' where time is also shown to be sped up and slowed which was only made possible through the Digital age.

21st Century Editing now appeals to us as it has developed with the way we think as due to the way our brains work at a fast pace, Editing has also become increasingly fast pace in order to become in accordance with our minds. This also relates to the advancement in technology as the fact that we are more digitally advanced enables this to be able to occur. An example of this in a Modern film which shows this advancement in technology and successfully engaged me is 'Ride Along 2' which recently came out, I believed ha excellent editing techniques although the storyline wasn't so great.

The use of cutting to the beat was fundamental especially with its combination of shot variations which was definitely engaging because it allowed me to keep that pump of adrenaline and excitement especially considering that 'Cutting to the beat' occurred in car chases thus making it fulfilling to the eye and to oneself as it maintained the momentum and coincided with my brain considering we now tend to process information much quicker.