Film editing research

I did some research into how they used to edit films as it is some old technology that would only really have been able to be taught at higher education, that now someone would be able to learn at home on a laptop. 

Editing is the action of selecting different scenes or clips and putting them together to design a movie. Film editing is one of the many integral aspects of post-production. Editors work with the footage, creating sequences by selecting various shots and completing a motion picture. Today it is achieved through the use of digital technology. 

Back in 1800’s. early motion pictures that were recorded were shown to be one locked-down shot. No editing was required as there generally wasn’t any story. Everyday movement recorded like people walking up and down a street and shown to an audience was enough to amaze as this technology wasn’t around before. British film pioneer Robert W. Paul’s ‘Come along and do!’ which was made in 1898 was one of the first films ever to have more than one shot. 

Steenbeck is the name of the old process to editing films. It can also be called editing on a flatbed. The first feature film to be cut on an Avid, ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers’, was released in 1992, and before that every single film in history had been cut the old-fashioned way, although some videos and advertisements had been done on NLE systems. Final Cut Pro was released in 1999, and in 2007, ‘No country for old men’ became the first Oscar-winning film edited with Final Cut. 

One hundred years before Final Cut Pro was released the first edits in movie history were being made by filmmakers like Edwin S. Porter and Georges Méliès, whose work like ‘The great train robbery’ and ‘A trip to the moon’, included the first influential cuts in film history, made on editing tables with scissors and tape. Apparently Méliès “Discovered” film editing accidentally when his camera jammed in traffic, so that “when he watched [the footage] back, a bus was replaced with a hearse, creating the jump cut. 

A few years later the Moviola was introduced, with the first machines being sold to famed actor/director/producer Douglas Fairbanks; within a few years, it was the editing machine of choice in Hollywood, and the first Oscar for Film Editing was awarded in 1934, to Conrad Nervig for Eskimo.

The introduction of flatbed machines like Steenbeck in the 1950s added a new dimension to linear film editing, and by the 1970s, the flatbed technology, with its precise motor speed, had grown quite sophisticated. Unlike NLE systems, which are non-destructive, analogue systems used physical prints of the film, usually struck from the original negative. These were a series of rollers, which were the synchronized by hand. Finally, editors ran the film back and forth until deciding on a frame on which to cut, which involved removing the film, making cuts at the precise frame, and then joining the desperate pieces of film with a tape splicer. 

This took a considerable amount of time, and since there was a physical print involved, editors had to be extra careful before making each cut, as is they made a mistake it would require significant effort to fix. As the edit progressed, the pieces of film that had been trimmed were catalogued and hung from a bin, using the print’s edge numbers as a way to organize all the footage, so that takes could be replaced and moved around without losing organization. When the picture finally locked, the edited print was conformed to the negative for striking final release prints. It’s at this point that effects like fades and dissolves are added using optical printers, along with the optical soundtrack containing the audio. 

Despite how common the NLE system was, there were still holdouts, including Michael Kahn, Steven Spielberg’s frequent collaborator who has been nominated for 8 and won 3 Oscars, all while cutting on a Moviola. George Lucas once remarked of Kahn, “He can Moviola faster than anyone can cut on an Avid.” Another advocate is Alan Heim, editor of ‘All that Jazz’, among many other classic films. Who has been quoted as saying of the differences between the two systems: “The benefits [of NLE] are speed and adaptability to make many choices and look at alternatives instantly.” But “the image is not as good to look at…and it’s more difficult to make certain performance judgements. It’s hard to see peoples’ eyes, and most editors use eyes a great deal.”

https://www.slideshare.net/OrcSmasher1993/how-editing-has-changed-over-time