Focusing on visual editing, it had definitely come a long way as the technology has advanced. Since it's start in 1882 with the Kinetoscope, made by Thomas Edison, it has gone from cutting physical pieces of film and taping them together in an order which you wish to clicking and dragging with the pressing of a few buttons to get a similar effect.
The Kinetoscope was a simple simple design with it being a box with the reel of film inside with a glass screen which you could look through to see the picture after putting the correct value coin into the machine. During this time, this was the most common way of viewing any visual content created. The Kinetoscope has been featured in Bioshock Infinate as a form of foreshadowing. An example from the game is below:
Moving on from the Kinetoscope, the first moving image was created by Eadweard Muybridge. Eadweard was a photographer who grouped a collection of photos together and created a moving image when placing multiple pictures that he had taken one after each other to make it look like the topic of the picture was moving when looking at them one after each other. These images were placed against a reel with gaps in so that you could look through after spinning it, it created the illusion of the subject moving. An example is below:
The technology of editing began to become more advanced and there was more knowledge on the whole editing system. The Lumiere Brothers, which consisted of Auguste and Louis, were the first filmmakers and created The Cinematographe. The Cinematographe is the combination of the camera, with the printer and projector. This was much smaller than the Kinetoscope and was was hand cranked meaning that you could watch it at your own speed rather than having to watch it at the speed that the reels would move. Also this used a film speed of 16 fps (frames per second) whereas the kinetoscope used 48 fps which is a lot slower but this allowed people to be able to see more within the frames and also this meant that less film was used. An example of The Cinematographe is below:
Edwin S. Porter created the continuity editing. He had a lot of electrical engineering knowledge which helped with his line of work within the Vitascope Marketing Company. He used to make illegal duplicates of films and he would do this by taking act reels apart and joining many parts together to make a short 15 minute programme. The main way that this was done was on a workstation where the film would be cut by hand and taped back together in the desired sequence. This was a good way to start off, however, a lot of the footage would have been lost due to misplacing it when cutting the different films.
Turned 1931, Wilhelm Steenbeck created the flat bed editor which allowed people to edit their reels of film still by the cutting and sticking method but you could see the image on a screen rather than having to look very closely at piece of film in the light. Also, the reels would fit onto the table and spin how you would like them to to show the picture. An example of the editor is below:
Edwin S. Porter created the continuity editing. He had a lot of electrical engineering knowledge which helped with his line of work within the Vitascope Marketing Company. He used to make illegal duplicates of films and he would do this by taking act reels apart and joining many parts together to make a short 15 minute programme. The main way that this was done was on a workstation where the film would be cut by hand and taped back together in the desired sequence. This was a good way to start off, however, a lot of the footage would have been lost due to misplacing it when cutting the different films.
Turned 1931, Wilhelm Steenbeck created the flat bed editor which allowed people to edit their reels of film still by the cutting and sticking method but you could see the image on a screen rather than having to look very closely at piece of film in the light. Also, the reels would fit onto the table and spin how you would like them to to show the picture. An example of the editor is below:
Moving even further on, the first non-linear editing system, known as the CMX 600, was released in 1971 and this allowed editors to digitally edit their films without the fuss of cutting and taping piece of films together by hand. Having this made editing history with only 6 being produced and it made things more simple when it came to creating something.
1984 comes along and a man called George Lucas created the Editdroid and this allowed editors to edit everything digitally with the footage stored onto laser disks rather than film. This was a good idea to start out with, however, this system didn't work very well and the company that created this, which was a spin off of the company Droid Works, was shut down in 1987.
Other machines were created and they tried to use banks of VCR's as a way of storing the footage. But it would found that this way of storage meant that they were very slow and was not used often.
The company EMC2 created the first all digital offline non-linear editor in 1988 which had all its data on optical disks. This allowed editors to cut and paste in different clips during a show so that it could run smoother and with a story-line.
The Avid 1 was released not long after in 1989 which was a Macintosh based non-linear editor and this was the gold standard for editing in Hollywood. The main problem with this was that there wasn't much storage so as technology advanced, in 1995, more storage was added to make it a 7TB. This allowed it to hold a feature length film and only low quality tape was used.
Another problem with the Avid 1 system was that it was so expensive so the company Media 100 and Adobe Premier tried to reduce the price. But in 1998, Final Cut Pro was released as an editing software which was then later bought but Steve Jobs and Apple and has made it into the Final Cut Pro that we know today on Apple products.
Editing has come a long way since the start and it has definitely been due to the advancement in technology. We have gone from filming on reels which were expensive to buy and use, to now being able to film onto a memory card with more storage and with less of an expense; from cutting and taping the separate films together after looking closely at each individual piece to cutting and dragging to get the sequence that you desire within a few of clicks with it all being digital.
The main reason that we edit it to make a sequence of clips run smoothly, to make the final product look better and so that we can tell a story-line through it. We also edit to add in any parts that may not have been there whilst filming. This can include things such as the setting if shots were filmed with a green-screen and adding in little extra things such as, using the film Deadpool as an example, speech bubbles and boxes with texts in.
Continuity editing allows for a smooth final piece as it is the cutting and pasting together of clips to make one long film/video.
Jump cuts is the quick transition between clips. By using jump cuts, it can allow for the setting of that scene to change between intimate and more awkward.
The 180 degree rule is the standard rule that any filmmaker abides. The rule is that both characters should stay on the same side when being filmed whether that be on the left or the right but the camera should not flip to the other side to break the rule.
Shot-reverse-shot is the process of showing a character talking to another and then flipping it round to see the second character talking to the original character and this allows us as viewers to see what is happening from both sides.
Cutting to a sound track is that when there is a main beat change in the song that you may be using, the video will cut to another clip which could be a different perspective or different clip whatsoever. This helps to make the video more interesting and can help it to tell more of a story.
Jump cuts is the quick transition between clips. By using jump cuts, it can allow for the setting of that scene to change between intimate and more awkward.
The 180 degree rule is the standard rule that any filmmaker abides. The rule is that both characters should stay on the same side when being filmed whether that be on the left or the right but the camera should not flip to the other side to break the rule.
Shot-reverse-shot is the process of showing a character talking to another and then flipping it round to see the second character talking to the original character and this allows us as viewers to see what is happening from both sides.
Cutting to a sound track is that when there is a main beat change in the song that you may be using, the video will cut to another clip which could be a different perspective or different clip whatsoever. This helps to make the video more interesting and can help it to tell more of a story.
