Task 1 - History of editing
History of Film:
Some of the first filmmakers in history were the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, were French filmmakers born in the 1860’s. They were famous for making some of the first films, or ‘Moving Pictures’. They revealed, and privately screened, their first film in 1895. They later showed ten individual short films. One of their first films showed factory workers leaving their factory; it was called ‘Exiting the Factory’. One of their other films showed a train stopping at a station; it was called ‘L’arrivee d’un Train en Gare de la Ciotat’. The film at the time was so realistic that people ran out of the cinema, fearing this train would hit them. People had never seen anything like this before. The Lumiere brothers were the first Cinematographers in history. The Lumiere brothers died at age eighty-three, and ninety-one years old.
The brothers designed a camera, which served as both a recording device, and projecting device, they named it the Cinematographe. The camera shot sixteen frames per second.
One of the most famous screenings in history took place on December 28th 1895; the venue was the Grand Café in Paris. Customers paid one Franc for a twenty-five minute programme of ten short Lumiere films.
Another famous Cinematographer was George Melies. He made his first film in 1896 called ’Playing Cards’. It was a short black-and-white silent film and was a remake of Louis Lumiere’s film, The Messers. He also made a silent French film called ‘Trip to the Moon’. It was released in 1902. While the special effects may seem laughable now, at the time they were mind-blowing. Nobody had ever seen anything like this before. The most popular special effect from Trip to the Moon was the moon; the moon had a face covering its entire surface. In the film, a spaceship shaped like a bullet hit the eye of the moon. Out of the hundreds of films made by George Melies, Trip to the Moon was his most famous and his best. In 1993 the hand-coloured version of A Trip to the Moon was rediscovered. A frame-by-frame restoration was launched in 1999 and finished in 2010.
By 1898, George Melies had only made thirty films, but each one became more ambitious. By 1900 George Melies had made thirty-three films. George Melies had made a total of 531 films in his lifetime. However, only 200 of these films were recovered. This is because Melies himself destroyed many negative copies, and the French army confiscated many of them when they turned his studio into a hospital for wounded soldiers during the war. Melies died of Cancer on January 21st 1938.
Another famous filmmaker was Thomas Edison. Edison invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and most famously, the electric light bulb. Edison created many short films, one of them was an eighteen second long film called ‘The Execution of Mary Stuart’. It was released in 1895 and showed Mary, Queen if Scots, being led to the execution block. It was one of the first films to use editing for special effects. Alfred Clark, who created the first motion picture special effect, directed it.
Audiences were amazed by simple moving pictures, so when Edwin Stanton Porter (who was hired by Edison to look after his New York motion picture studio) made a film in 1903 called ‘Life of an American Fireman’ with a plot and action sequences, it was a massive breakthrough. Porter had made minor films before but they were quite unpopular. Porter experimented with his cinematic techniques in later films. One of his later films, ‘The Great Train Robbery’, contained action and dynamic scenes and was groundbreaking. It was one of the first films with editing of action and dynamic sequences.
Two types of film, continuous and montage are very popular. Continuous films are made to look like it’s all been filmed in one shot, and that the camera has just changed angle. A montage is when separate clips have been joined together and it tells a story (it usually shows the passage of time). Montages usually appear at the start of a film. They’re good at telling stories. Some famous montages are from the films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rocky and the Karate Kid.
More care should be taken when filming a continuous shot than when filming a montage. With continuous shots, if you stop filming, everything has to be exactly the same when you resume filming. For example, if you stop filming when an actor is halfway through eating a sandwich, you can’t continue filming later and the actor has a full sandwich. You have to resume exactly where you left off. The audience will notice because although there’s a break in filming, it is a continuous shot, so to the audience it’s one shot. It’s quite common for filmmakers to make this mistake, so it’s important that the script supervisor, who assists the director, notices any changes.
Film editing‘s vital when making any film. The most common type of editing is the cut. A cut is when two clips are joined together. It’s called a cut because back when film-making began in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, they cut the film and then attached it together with tape. This meant they could cut out certain scenes and have the shot miss out that scene.
A popular Canadian-born American film director named Edward Dmytryk made up seven important rules that a good editor should follow when cutting a film:
Rule 1: “Never make a cut without a positive response.”
Rule 2: “If you can't decide where to cut, cut long rather than short.”
Rule 3: “Cut in movement when possible.”
Rule 4: “The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'.”
Rule 5: “All scenes should begin and end with continuing action.”
Rule 6: “Cut for proper values rather than proper matches.”
Rule 7: “Substance first – then form.”
Edward Dmytryk worked as a film director and a film editor, he is believed to have directed 53 films in his 50 year film career between the years 1935 and 1976. He died at age 90 in 1999.
An American film editor named Walter Murch made a list of importance regarding the things a cut needs to be successful:
Emotion (51%) - Does the cut make the audience feel how the director wants them to feel?
Story (23%) - Does the cut follow the story?
Rhythm (10%) - Does the cut occur at the correct moment?
Eye-trace (7%) - Will the audience be looking at the part of the cut they're supposed to?
Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) - Does the cut follow the 180 degree rule?
Three-dimensional space of action (4%) - Does the clip follow the relationships within the diegesis?
The 180 degree rule is an important part of filming, it is especially important in continuity films. The 180-degree rule is basically making sure that the audience connects with unseen movement happening around the main subject. For example, in a dialogue scene where two people are having a conversation, both actors can stay in the same place, but the camera may move behind them to focus on one of the actors.
Early filmmakers edited films using a film-editing device, called the Moviola, it allowed the film editor to view the film whilst editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing, it was invented by a man named Iwan Serrurier in 1924. The original concept of the Moviola was available to sell to the general public, the original concept was a home movie projector, but it was not very popular, mainly due to the fact that it was very expensive, it cost $600 in 1920, which is the equivalent to around $20,000 today, so very few actually sold. A film editor who worked at Douglas Fairbanks Studios suggested that Iwan should specialize the device for film editors. Iwan took this advice and the Moviola film editing machine was made in 1924, with the first Moviola being sold by Douglas Fairbanks Studios themselves.
Some of the first filmmakers in history were the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, were French filmmakers born in the 1860’s. They were famous for making some of the first films, or ‘Moving Pictures’. They revealed, and privately screened, their first film in 1895. They later showed ten individual short films. One of their first films showed factory workers leaving their factory; it was called ‘Exiting the Factory’. One of their other films showed a train stopping at a station; it was called ‘L’arrivee d’un Train en Gare de la Ciotat’. The film at the time was so realistic that people ran out of the cinema, fearing this train would hit them. People had never seen anything like this before. The Lumiere brothers were the first Cinematographers in history. The Lumiere brothers died at age eighty-three, and ninety-one years old.
The brothers designed a camera, which served as both a recording device, and projecting device, they named it the Cinematographe. The camera shot sixteen frames per second.
One of the most famous screenings in history took place on December 28th 1895; the venue was the Grand Café in Paris. Customers paid one Franc for a twenty-five minute programme of ten short Lumiere films.
Another famous Cinematographer was George Melies. He made his first film in 1896 called ’Playing Cards’. It was a short black-and-white silent film and was a remake of Louis Lumiere’s film, The Messers. He also made a silent French film called ‘Trip to the Moon’. It was released in 1902. While the special effects may seem laughable now, at the time they were mind-blowing. Nobody had ever seen anything like this before. The most popular special effect from Trip to the Moon was the moon; the moon had a face covering its entire surface. In the film, a spaceship shaped like a bullet hit the eye of the moon. Out of the hundreds of films made by George Melies, Trip to the Moon was his most famous and his best. In 1993 the hand-coloured version of A Trip to the Moon was rediscovered. A frame-by-frame restoration was launched in 1999 and finished in 2010.
By 1898, George Melies had only made thirty films, but each one became more ambitious. By 1900 George Melies had made thirty-three films. George Melies had made a total of 531 films in his lifetime. However, only 200 of these films were recovered. This is because Melies himself destroyed many negative copies, and the French army confiscated many of them when they turned his studio into a hospital for wounded soldiers during the war. Melies died of Cancer on January 21st 1938.
Another famous filmmaker was Thomas Edison. Edison invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and most famously, the electric light bulb. Edison created many short films, one of them was an eighteen second long film called ‘The Execution of Mary Stuart’. It was released in 1895 and showed Mary, Queen if Scots, being led to the execution block. It was one of the first films to use editing for special effects. Alfred Clark, who created the first motion picture special effect, directed it.
Audiences were amazed by simple moving pictures, so when Edwin Stanton Porter (who was hired by Edison to look after his New York motion picture studio) made a film in 1903 called ‘Life of an American Fireman’ with a plot and action sequences, it was a massive breakthrough. Porter had made minor films before but they were quite unpopular. Porter experimented with his cinematic techniques in later films. One of his later films, ‘The Great Train Robbery’, contained action and dynamic scenes and was groundbreaking. It was one of the first films with editing of action and dynamic sequences.
Two types of film, continuous and montage are very popular. Continuous films are made to look like it’s all been filmed in one shot, and that the camera has just changed angle. A montage is when separate clips have been joined together and it tells a story (it usually shows the passage of time). Montages usually appear at the start of a film. They’re good at telling stories. Some famous montages are from the films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rocky and the Karate Kid.
More care should be taken when filming a continuous shot than when filming a montage. With continuous shots, if you stop filming, everything has to be exactly the same when you resume filming. For example, if you stop filming when an actor is halfway through eating a sandwich, you can’t continue filming later and the actor has a full sandwich. You have to resume exactly where you left off. The audience will notice because although there’s a break in filming, it is a continuous shot, so to the audience it’s one shot. It’s quite common for filmmakers to make this mistake, so it’s important that the script supervisor, who assists the director, notices any changes.
Film editing‘s vital when making any film. The most common type of editing is the cut. A cut is when two clips are joined together. It’s called a cut because back when film-making began in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, they cut the film and then attached it together with tape. This meant they could cut out certain scenes and have the shot miss out that scene.
A popular Canadian-born American film director named Edward Dmytryk made up seven important rules that a good editor should follow when cutting a film:
Rule 1: “Never make a cut without a positive response.”
Rule 2: “If you can't decide where to cut, cut long rather than short.”
Rule 3: “Cut in movement when possible.”
Rule 4: “The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'.”
Rule 5: “All scenes should begin and end with continuing action.”
Rule 6: “Cut for proper values rather than proper matches.”
Rule 7: “Substance first – then form.”
Edward Dmytryk worked as a film director and a film editor, he is believed to have directed 53 films in his 50 year film career between the years 1935 and 1976. He died at age 90 in 1999.
An American film editor named Walter Murch made a list of importance regarding the things a cut needs to be successful:
Emotion (51%) - Does the cut make the audience feel how the director wants them to feel?
Story (23%) - Does the cut follow the story?
Rhythm (10%) - Does the cut occur at the correct moment?
Eye-trace (7%) - Will the audience be looking at the part of the cut they're supposed to?
Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) - Does the cut follow the 180 degree rule?
Three-dimensional space of action (4%) - Does the clip follow the relationships within the diegesis?
The 180 degree rule is an important part of filming, it is especially important in continuity films. The 180-degree rule is basically making sure that the audience connects with unseen movement happening around the main subject. For example, in a dialogue scene where two people are having a conversation, both actors can stay in the same place, but the camera may move behind them to focus on one of the actors.
Early filmmakers edited films using a film-editing device, called the Moviola, it allowed the film editor to view the film whilst editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing, it was invented by a man named Iwan Serrurier in 1924. The original concept of the Moviola was available to sell to the general public, the original concept was a home movie projector, but it was not very popular, mainly due to the fact that it was very expensive, it cost $600 in 1920, which is the equivalent to around $20,000 today, so very few actually sold. A film editor who worked at Douglas Fairbanks Studios suggested that Iwan should specialize the device for film editors. Iwan took this advice and the Moviola film editing machine was made in 1924, with the first Moviola being sold by Douglas Fairbanks Studios themselves.
Task 3 - Continuity
Two types of film, continuous and montage are very popular. Continuous films are made to look like it’s all been filmed in one shot, and that the camera has just changed angle, so for example if the scene is of a character running down a street, the camera should be at the end of the street, if the character runs down a different street then the camera should be at the end of that street. The same rule applies with car chase scenes for example. More care should be taken when filming a continuous shot than when filming a montage. With continuous shots, if you stop filming, everything has to be exactly the same when you resume filming. For example, if you stop filming when an actor is halfway through eating a sandwich, you can’t continue filming later and the actor has a full sandwich. You have to resume exactly where you left off. The audience will notice because although there’s a break in filming, it is a continuous shot, so to the audience it’s one shot. It’s quite common for filmmakers to make this mistake, so it’s important that the script supervisor, who assists the director, notices any changes. There was a very good example of continuity with the James Bond car chase in Quantum of Solace.
Task 4 - Montage
A montage is when separate clips have been joined together and it tells a story (it usually shows the passage of time). Montages usually appear at the start of a film. They’re good at telling stories. Some famous montages are from the films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rocky and the Karate Kid. Another famous montage is from the film ‘Up’, where the old man, Mr. Frederickson, goes from being a child to getting married, the montage then shows the darker part of the couples life when Mrs. Frederickson’s baby dies, the montage becomes very depressing, it cuts to his wife becoming very ill and passing away, the montage finishes with what Mr. Frederickson was originally doing. Although the montage is very sad, it gets the message across very well.