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Editing Documentary Script

Film editing is the process of assembling shots into a coherent narrative after filming. Early editing involved physically cutting film and sticking pieces together. The 1903 film The Great Train Robbery used techniques like parallel editing that are still used today. In the 1920s, the Moviola machine allowed editors to study shots more easily. In the 1970s, nonlinear computer editing began with machines like the CMX 600. Modern digital editing software running on powerful computers now allows editors to seamlessly cut and rearrange footage without risking damage to the original film.

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158 views

Editing Documentary Script

Film editing is the process of assembling shots into a coherent narrative after filming. Early editing involved physically cutting film and sticking pieces together. The 1903 film The Great Train Robbery used techniques like parallel editing that are still used today. In the 1920s, the Moviola machine allowed editors to study shots more easily. In the 1970s, nonlinear computer editing began with machines like the CMX 600. Modern digital editing software running on powerful computers now allows editors to seamlessly cut and rearrange footage without risking damage to the original film.

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Editing documentary

NARRATOR
Editing. What is it exactly?

Film editing is the process of actually assembling the film. It is the


power to influence the film, even after the final footage has been
shot.
As described by the famous American actor, director and producer, Philip
Seymour Hoffman: “The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of
the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the
ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the
store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those
ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.”
The first type of editing in film was called cutting. It was first
introduced in 1895 and was the first type of editing within the film
industry. Cutting required physically cutting the still images then
sticking them back together in a different sequence before planting
them into the Kinetograph – the first motion picture camera invented
by Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson in 1888.
The Kinetograph was able to imprint up to 50ft of film at about 40
frames per second, it worked by one person at one time looking down
through a peephole to see a series of still images changing at a fast
pace under a light source, creating what appears to be moving images.
Before editing, films were shot in one long take.
The Great Train Robbery  was the first film to use modern film editing
techniques we see in films today. It was created and edited by Edwin.
S Porter in 1903 and used many editing techniques that no editor at
the time had ever seen before. The Great Train Robbery was a short 10
minute film on the hijacking of a train in an attempt to steal the
money on board. Techniques Porter used were cutting, and parallel
editing within scenes. The film, in total, contained 14 scenes, using
techniques such as cuts and cross cuts and other sophisticated editing
techniques.
American Film Producer, D.W. Griffith was one of the first to use
revolutionary editing and cutting techniques in film, such as the jump
cut or match on action cuts. He used new types of shots which were
never before featured in film, like extreme close up's of characters
faces in order to show emotion. This combination of cutting and adding
new shots, allowed him to create stronger emotions in audiences than
before, it also helped him to draw the attention of audiences to
particular elements or subjects. He applied these techniques into a
variety of films, but one of his most famous was 'The Birth of a
Nation' in 1915. However, the production was widely criticized for its
racist nature.
In the early 20th century, Lev Kuleshov, a Soviet filmmaker, was among
the first to dissect the effects of juxtaposition. Kuleshov discovered
that depending on how shots are assembled the audience will attach a
specific meaning or emotion to it. In his experiment, Kuleshov cut an
actor with shots of three different subjects: a plate of food, a girl
in a coffin, and a pretty woman lying on a sofa. The footage of the
actor was the same expressionless gaze, yet the audience described
that first he looked hungry, then sad, then lustful - This effect came
to be called The Soviet Montage. 
Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage, a specific use
of film editing. He and his contemporary, Lev kuleshov, two of the
earliest film theorists, argued that montage was the essence of the
cinema. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than
just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related
images. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to
manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He
believed that an idea should be gained from the juxtaposition of two
independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film. He
developed what he called "methods of montage", starting from Metric,
Rhythmic, Tonal, Overtonal and Intellectual.
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most memorable filmmakers and pioneered
the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze,
forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to
maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing.
He became an icon in the film industry.
As time went on and filmmaking became more popular, more and more
relevant technology was being developed.
The Moviola was the worlds first successful editing machine, invented
by Iwan Serrurier in 1924. The machine provided editors the luxury to
study individual shots in the cutting room through a vertically-
oriented machine where the workprints and magnetic sound tapes were
run similar to the thread in a sewing machine. At one point, each
frame on the print would pass through a lens and the image gets viewed
in the machine’s viewing screen. Using a special chalk-like pen meant
to write over workprints, markings could be placed on specific frames,
depending on where the editor would want to cut and splice the print
for editing. The Moviola provides a convenient way to determine more
precisely where to cut or splice a particular part of a print. This is
like the manual counterpart of todays editing using a computer
software where there are tools like razor, extender, and drag-and-drop
functions to cut or splice specific shots in a film being edited. 
The Steenbeck flatbed editing machine provided a complete editing
suite where the workprint gets attached horizontally into the slots
within the editing table, then the footage is viewed in a monitor.
This was founded by Wilhelm Steenbeck in Hamburg, Germany.

In the 1930's, sound was becoming more common in film. Before, sound
may have only been background music, usually unrelated to what was
taking place visually. The power sound could have to influence
audiences became relevant to filmmakers and Editors, so music or
speech from actors was added as part of the narrative itself. This not
only helped to transform the industry further, but it allowed editors
to have more roles in the production of film thus creating more jobs
in the industry.
This also lead to more men being used in the editing process, as being
a sound technician became viewed as a more technical job. This was
when The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded its first
Oscar for film editing. Before this, editors were mostly female and
were employed to cut the film reel up to meet the director’s
specification. They were very much under-valued and were not
recognised or credited for their work in film.
In 1971, came the first computerised nonlinear editor - The CMX 600.
Introduced for offline editing, requiring disk drives the size of
washing machines. The CMX 600 was a computer with two monitors in
black and white and a pen as a method of input. The machine allowed
editors to make cuts and edits of magnetic tape in a non-linear
fashion. One screen would be used to select options and another to
show a preview of that edit. There were a number of problems with this
editor however, in that that it required a lot of power and problems
with storage of the films itself. 
In 1984, Lucasfilm creates the EditDroid, a computer workstation that
uses multiple analogue LaserDisks to enable random-access editing.
From 1983 to 1986 the revolutionary EditDroid system was developed.
This new system was created to replace the mechanical period in which
film editing found itself. The EditDroid was the first nonlinear
electronic editing system and used several laser disc players loaded
with the raw footage of a film. The simple computer interface was
unique for its time. After a short period of success the EditDroid
disappeared from the film scene and George Lucas sold the machine's
patents to a small company called Avid.
EMC and Avid introduce the world to nonlinear film-editing software,
followed by Adobe premiere, ushering in an era of professional digital
editing suites.
Now, editing happens all on a computer system, from how shots jump to
the quality of the footage of the film. Nowadays, editors do not have
the risk of delicate footage getting damaged like the risk in 1895 as
editors had to use the technique of physically cutting the footage to
create the jump cut, which could have quite easily damaged important
footage/shots. Although cons of using todays system includes the
possibility of losing raw footage if data on a computer was not backed
up and if the computer hard drive corrupts, however the benefits of
todays editing defiantly override the cons.

Editing Platforms such as Adobe, released in 1991 and created by Randy


Ubillios, allowed other people to edit their own footage at home and
even create their own short films. Since the release of home editing
software such as Adobe in 1991, higher quality software has been
introduced into the market industry such as Final Cut Pro, purchased
by Apple in 1999, with Apple going on and improving this software in
2011 creating final cut pro X and FCPX.
WORDS : 1517

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