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in the beginning
Subsequently, the opening of the first public kinetoscope parlor was in New York City in 1894. It contained 10 machines and each one displayed a different movie clip that cost a quarter to watch (or you could watch all of them for twice that price). Examples of these early kinetoscope films included a vaudeville contortionist, wrestlers, a trapeze artist, a female dancer and a cockfight. Since these early “movies” were only a few moments long, they required no editing to speak of. Nevertheless, -
a bit of history
When the Lumiere brothers invented the Cinematographe is 1895, the camera was a one-stop-shop. It not only captured the footage, but it allowed you to process it as well as project it all from within the same device. So as you might imagine, early filmmakers had little interest in cutting up the expensive film that they had purchased for use with their new toy. Instead, "the motion picture camera was loaded to capacity with film stock, and cranked away on the scene being played until the film in -
editing footage
The practice of editing footage has been around since 1898 when British filmmaker Robert W. Paul cut together his film Come Along, Do!. However, it wasn't until filmmaking pioneer and "Father of Film" D.W. Griffith began using editing techniques, such as parallel editing, that the practice became more sophisticated -- a discernible film language that later became known as "continuity editing". As Hess points out in the video below, Griffith's approach to editing was more practical, whereas Eise -
bit of history
This was a big step forward for the evolution of editing but it wasn't until 1902 that Edwin S. Porter discovered that these scenes could be made to correlate to one another. With The Life of an American Fireman Porter realized that by placing scenes back to back they could be made to seem as though they were happening simultaneously. These were still whole scenes, though, that played from start to finish without a cut, and were then tied together by a larger narrative. In this short Porter also -
Primitive" Editing
However, filmmakers quickly discovered that editing shots into a sequence not only contributed to the audience's sense of tale, but also enabled them to tell more complex stories as a result. You can see primitive instances of editing in films like Rescued by Rover (Great Britain, 1904) and The Great Train Robbery (1903). Early on the cuts were made in the camera, so that the cameraman would simply stop cranking at the exact end of a shot, and begin cranking again when it was moved somewhere el -
Griffith and Beyond
We will read in greater detail about D. W. Griffith's contribution to editing. Here we can just note that, though he did not invent any of the editing techniques he used, he made them emotionally and thematically significant. So much so that he influenced the art of editing worldwide. The Moscow Film School of the 1920s, for example, played his Intolerance (1916) over and over again in order to use Griffith's techniques for the films of its students. One of the most notable of the Soviet directo -
molovia
he Moviola was reborn as an editing tool in 1924, with Douglas Fairbanks being the first customer, and was quickly adopted by major studios such as Universal, MGM, Warner Bros. and others. Thanks to the invention of the Moviola, film editors were able to more easily and precisely examine their shots and determine where to make their cuts. It became the standard for the entire industry and was adopted by editors everywhere. Later, as flatbed editing systems such as the Steenbeck and KEM tables g -
cinema
In the 1930s, Jean Renoir's films were filled with shots of long duration. The best examples are probably Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion, France, 1937) and Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu Sauvé Des Eaux, France, 1932). The subsequent movements most associated with less emphasis of montage are Italian neorealism and the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) and cinéma verité. -
the flat beds
In 1930s Hamburg, Germany, Wilheem Steenbeck created the popular flatbed editor that bore his name. The Steenbeck featured a large, flat table-like surface where editors could lay down their reels horizontally on separate plates and thread them through its mechanical guides and sprockets. Eventually, many came to consider the flatbed superior to the upright Moviola film-editing machines in terms of speed, sound quality and monitoring. Another well-known flatbed editing table was the KEM (Kel -
So What? Why Does it Work!
In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor in August of 1973, famous director John Huston found a keen insight into the basis of editing. "Look at that lamp across the room. Now look back at me. Look back at thtat lamp. Now look back at me again. Do you see what you did? You blinked. Those are cuts. After the first look, you know that there's no reason to pan continously from me to the lamp because you know what's in between. Your mind cut the scene. First you behold the lamp. Cut. Then -
the ditigal era
Although some may still miss the tactile sensation and hands-on approach of a Moviola or Steenbeck, editing has long transformed itself from analogue to digital. While many films are still shot on film (and later digitally scanned for editing and color grading), it is now common to shoot them digitally as well. It seems pretty obvious that as cameras continue to improve, the use of film in any stage of the process is destined to become a memory, spoken about in articles such as this one. The rec -
The ditigal era
Eventually, although the quality of the codecs improved, the system was still only suitable for short projects and television commercials — primarily because computers at that time could only access 50 gigabytes of storage at a time. This problem was circumvented in 1992 with the ability to access over seven terabytes of digital video data, which opened the door to long-form, nonlinear motion picture editing. In approximately one year, the editing industry began to switch over to the new tools a