Year One Units Unit 1: Pre-Production Techniques for

the Creative Media Industries Unit 2: Communication Skills for

Creative Media Production Unit 3: Research Techniques for

Creative Media Industries Unit 16: Film and Video Editing

Techniques Unit 30: Advertisement Production for

Television

TASK 1 – DEVELOPMENTS IN EDITING

Unit 16: Assignment Brief 1

AS1: Task 1: Editing in Early Cinema

Thomas Edison Thomas Edison ran a film

laboratory where the Kinetographic Camera and the Kinetoscope were invented.

He developed the 35mm film strip that came to be the industry standard.

He also eventually developed the projector to play it!

The Lumiere Brothers Edison worked with the

Lumiere Brothers and produced short films that were one long, static, locked-down shot.

Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street

This can be seen in the film Sortie d’usine (1895) by the Lumiere brothers

G.A. Smith Initially, there was no story and no

editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera

An example of which is The Miller and the Sweep (1898) by G.A. Smith

George Méliès George Méliès was a magician

who had seen the films made by the Lumiere brothers.

Méliès saw at once the possibilities of a novelty more than just motion its self

He acquired a camera, built a studio, wrote scripts, designed sets and soon he discovered and exploited the basic camera tricks we know so well today.

George Méliès – In Camera Editing

It is rumoured that he discovered the art of stop motion purely by accident when a camera of his broke down for a brief second.

In 1986 he made The Vanishing Lady using a technique know as in-camera editing.

George Méliès Sadly it never occurred to

him to move the camera for close-ups or long shots and so his work was soon overlooked.

The commercial growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913, and he died in poverty.

Elements of his life are depicted in the recent film Hugo.

G.A. Smith In 1899 later G. A Smith made The Kiss in the

Tunnel This film is said to mark the beginnings of

narrative editing (creating a story) Smith "felt that some extra spice was called

for” in the then popular “phantom ride” genre. He took advantage of the brief onset of

darkness as they went into tunnel to splice (cut and then stick two pieces of film together) in the shot of the couple.

Porter & Edison

Edwin S. Porter worked as an electrician before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890s.

He and Edison worked together to make longer more interesting films.

Edwin S. Porter Porter made the

breakthrough film Life of an American Fireman in 1903. The film was among the first that had a plot, action, and even a close up of a hand pulling a fire alarm.

Edwin S. Porter Porter discovered important aspects of

motion picture language: that the screen image does not need to show a complete person from head to toe

That splicing together two shots creates in the viewer's mind a contextual relationship.

These were the key discoveries that made all narrative motion pictures and television possible

The Great Train Robbery Porter's (then)

ground-breaking film, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is an excellent example of how early films began to resemble the types of films we see today.

Charles Pathe In the film The

Horse that Bolted (1907) Charles Pathe introduces the first example of a technique known as parallel editing - cutting between two storylines:

The horse The delivery man

D.W. Griffith U.S. film director

D.W. Griffith was one of the early supporters of the power of editing

He made use of cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations,

Griffith's work was highly regarded by many and greatly influenced the early filmmakers understanding of editing.

D.W. Griffith Clip: The Birth

of A Nation

In Summary Thomas Edison developed the equipment need to

develop moving pictures. The Lumiere Brothers pioneered the art of moving

film. George Melies was one of the first to use “in-camera”

editing. G.A. Smith pioneered the technique of using shots from

different locations and developed filming making from single shot films.

Porter, Pathe and Griffith developed the art of story telling through editing. They made popular the art of “splicing” individual shots together in order to make longer more dramatic films.

AS1: Task 2: Developing Editing Techniques

In Camera Editing In camera editing is a technique of

video production, in which the camera operator shoots the shots in the exact order that they will be viewed in. This is a very unique process that many camera operators may be intimidated by.

It was a technique used a great deal in the early days of film making before “splicing” (the art of cutting/reconnecting film strip) became easier.

One of the most famous in-camera editors was George Melies (who we’ve already learned about)

Exercise One: In Camera Editing Your task is to produce a one minute long sequence that

you will edit “in camera”.  The sequence should be set in a school and have two

characters. Your sequence should include dialogue.

Your first task is to storyboard the sequence. You will work in a small group for the entire of this task.

Assign the following roles:

Director Camera Operator 2 x Actors

In Camera Editing Why did editors move on from “in-camera”? The process takes immense amounts of planning

so that the shots that are filmed are the ones that will be viewed in directly that order.

There is no cutting out and editing scenes later on. When the very last scene is filmed by the camera operator, the production is completely finished.

Example of In Camera Editing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPJ2t2ypTHg

Some directors in recent years have used in-camera editing to add an extra layer of “art” to their film.

Alfred Hitchcock

AS1: Task 3: From Analogue to Digital Editing

Analogue Editing Analogue editing

is the cutting together of pieces of celluloid film

The First Moviola Before the widespread use of

non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film work print (cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as a Moviola

Video Editing Video editing is the process of editing

segments of motion video production footage, special effects and sound recordings in the post-production process.

Before digital technologies became available magnetic tapes were used to store information – these are known as video tapes

Most video editing has been superseded by digital editing which is faster and cheaper

Digital Editing Digital media is a

form of electronic media where data are stored in digital (as opposed to analogue) form.

Digital editing is the use of computers to order and manipulate this digital data

Non-linear Editing In digital video editing, non-linear editing

is a method that allows you to access any frame in a digital video clip regardless of sequence in the clip.

The freedom to access any frame, and use a cut-and-paste method, similar to the ease of cutting and pasting text in a word processor, and allows you to easily include fades, transitions, and other effects that cannot be achieved with linear editing.

Final Cut Today, most films are edited

digitally (on systems such as Avid or Final Cut Pro) and bypass the film positive work print altogether.

With the advent of digital intermediate ("DI"), the physical negative does not necessarily need to be physically cut and not spliced together;

the negative is optically scanned into computers and a cut list is conformed by a DI editor.

AS1: Task 4: Montage

Lev Kuleshov Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to

theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected.

Sometime around 1918, Russian director Lev Kuleshov did an experiment that proves this point.

He took an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images.

Kuleshov Experiment

First Image Second Image

Kuleshov Experiment

First Image Third Image

Kuleshov Experiment

First Image Fourth Image

Kuleshov Experiment The original images were a shot of a

bowl of soup, then with a child playing with a teddy bear, then with a shot an elderly woman in a casket

When he showed the film to people they praised the actor's acting—the hunger in his face when he saw the soup, the delight in the child, and the grief when looking at the dead woman.

Kuleshov Experiment Of course, the shot of the actor was

years before the other shots and he never "saw" any of the items. The simple act of juxtaposing the shots in a sequence made the relationship.

The Kuleshov Experiment

Let’s now recreate the Kuleshov Experiment

How is this woman feeling?Image 1 Image 2

How is this woman feeling?Image 1 Image 2

How is this woman feeling? Image 1 Image 2

Man with a Movie Camera Vertov employed

his ideas about montage in the groundbreaking film Man with a Movie Camera

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Cs-LTNv5A

Methods of montage

In motion picture terminology, a montage (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.

Methods of montage

There are at least three senses of the term: In French film practice, "montage" has its literal

French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.

In Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.

In Hollywood cinema, a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.

Example – Rocky Balboa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRFiTwQwcNk

Soviet montage theory

The Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film.

Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.

Sergei Eisenstein was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.

Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Eisenstein was briefly a student

of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage.

By contrasting unrelated shots Eisenstein tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.

Clip: Strike Clip: Apocalypse Now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGTe1

vF679U

AS2: Exercise Two: Montage

Now that you have learned about montage theory you are going to film and edit your own montage. Your montage should be no longer than one minute.

For this exercise you will produce the following pre-production documents:

Storyboard Shot List You will also complete the following production

documents: Rushes Log

You will work in a small group for the entire of this task. Assign the following roles:

Director, Camera Operator, 2 x Actors

AS1: Task 5: Continuity Editing

Continuity Editing What became known as the popular 'classical

Hollywood' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.

The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the 180 degree rule, Establishing shot, and Shot reverse shot.

Continuity Editing Retains a sense of realistic chronology

and generates the feeling that time is moving forward.

May use flashbacks or flash forwards but the narrative will still be seen to be progressing forward in an expected or realistic way.

Continuity Editing Eye-line match We see a character looking at something

off screen and then we cut to a shot of what they are looking at.

Match-on-action We see a character start an action in one

shot and then see them continue it in the next.

Eye-line Match

Match on action

The 180 Degree Rule The180° rule is a basic guideline that

states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other.

If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line.

180 degree rule

Shot/Reverse shot

AS2: Exercise Three - Continuity

AS1: Task 6: Discontinuity Editing

French New Wave French New Wave filmmakers such as Jean Luc

Godard and François Truffaut pushed the limits of editing technique during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s

French New Wave films and the non-narrative films of the 1960s used a carefree editing style and did not conform to the traditional editing etiquette of Hollywood films.

French New Wave editing often drew attention to itself by its lack of continuity, its self-reflexive nature (reminding the audience that they were watching a film), and by the overt use of jump cuts or the insertion of material not often related to any narrative.

À Bout de Souffle (Breathless)

The gap in action (when Seberg picked up the mirror) is emphasised by the use of a jump cut.

Used to: startle the viewer draw attention to something Clip – A Bout de Souffle

Jump Cut Continuity

Jump Cut

AS1: Task 7: Creating Pace

Speed of Editing In a film each scene may last a

matter of seconds, or it could continue for minutes but the length of each sequence establishes the pace of the film moving the action along.

The speed of editing will help to determine the mood of what is taking place on screen

Speed of Editing If the audience is to feel anxiety and

suspense the editing will be quick – the scenes/shots changing frequently. For example in an action sequence.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Speed of Editing If a relaxed mood is desired, the scenes

last longer and change less frequently. For example in a romantic comedy.

Sleepless in Seattle

Speed of Editing Nevertheless a film need not have any

editing. The film Russian Ark was filmed in one take using a steadicam and a digital camera. This required split-second timing and organisation.

Speed of Editing A trailer for a film needs to pack in detail

from throughout the film. Therefore the editing will be very fast.

View the trailer for the film The Man in Iron Mask

Count the number of edits that take place.

Speed of Editing Scenes at the beginning of a film - as it

begins to tell its story – must be long enough for us to be able to understand where we are and what is going on. It is also slow to introduce the main character(s).

As the film progresses scenes may become shorter as the editing cuts between telling two or more storylines at the same time

Speed of Editing For example - compare the pace in the

opening sequence of Spiderman with an action sequence from later in the film

Try to gauge the average length of shot in each sequence

Speed of Editing View the extract from Psycho where

Marion (Janet Leigh) has checked into the Bates Motel and is about to take a shower…

1. Watch the sequence again and count the number of edits a) before the attack b) during the attack

2. How does the speed of editing match the action?

3. Why do you think that the scene contains so many edits? What do you actually see?

Speed of Editing

SummaryIt is important to consider: how quickly or slowly the shots appear in

a sequence how long they appear on screen for. EXTRACT: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

AS2: Task 4: Creating Pace

AS1: Task 8: Transitions and Effects

Style of EditingHow shots are linked together The movement from one shot to the next is called a transition.

Straight Cut Most common and “invisible” form of

transition.

One shot moves instantaneously to the next without attracting the audience’s attention.

Straight cuts help retain reality. They do not break the viewers suspension of disbelief.

Dissolves Fading one shot off the screen while

another shot is fading in.

The audience will be able to see both shots on the screen at the mid-point of the dissolve.

Used: if the film maker wants to show a

connection between two characters, places or objects.

Dissolves

Fades A gradual darkening or lightening of an

image until it becomes black or white.

One shot will fade until only a black or white screen can be seen.

Used to: indicate the end of a particular section of

time within the narrative. Can show the passing of time

Wipes One image is pushed off the screen by another. Images can be pushed left or right. It is more common for the image to be pushed

off the left-hand side as this movement is more consistent with the sense of time moving forward.

Used to: signal a movement between different locations

that are experiencing the same time.

Wipes For example Used extensively in the Star Wars films

Graphic Match

Psycho – matches the circular image of the plug hole with the next image of Marion’s eye.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4

Following the Action "Following the Action" is when

there is movement, or in an action scene, the camera would follow the event/action that is taking place.

In the extract from Mr & Mrs Smith the camera rotates around the gun battle to show more of the action instead of staying at one angle.

Following the Action

Mr & Mrs Smith extract

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0G5bi_46Crk

Multiple Points of View This is where the

characters/actors are showing each side of a particular point of view.

Where one character will show what he/she is seeing and then it will change to the secondary character and do the same.

Example - Iron Man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GWnCg88GmTI

Shot Variation Shot Variation is when a shot is

uninterrupted by editing and the shot distance changes.

The shot can be either static or mobile but it must be a continuous motion.

For example the shot begins as a long or wide shot and ends in close-up

In the following example from The Matrix it begins in long shot, the camera moves in a circular motion and ends in a mid-shot.

Shot Variation Example – The

Matrix http://www.youtu

be.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WhxbYTMNMxo

Manipulation of Diegetic Time and Space

Manipulation of Diegetic Time and Space is when a film uses effects to show an age or time change. Either a person, an object or even an environment is shown either getting younger or getting older.

There are many films which uses this technique but an example is The Time Machine

The time traveller enters the time machine and the environment changes as he travels through time.

Manipulation of Diegetic Time and Space

Example The Time Machine http://www.youtu

be.com/watch?v=M0qR7BiIWJE

AS2: Exercise 5: Manipulating Time and Space