Creative Media: TV & Film Essay The common conventions, techniques and purpose of film editing: when and why it was developed
Written By Foyez Jitu 0
In this essay, I will be discussing when editing techniques in films from the years 1903 to the 2000s have been developed and why they have been developed using my own studies and research. I would like to start the essay by defining the term editing. Editing is a creative and technical part of the processes of filmmaking. Film editors work with small clips and combined them together to make one long footage, which is called a movie. Editing was created to make films look much more effective and more entertaining to watch. The purpose of editing is to help movies reach out to the audience’s feelings and emotions. This is why horror movies for example, make people feel scared and this is because of the way the filmmaker edits the movie. Additionally, editing is extremely important in the film industry as it brings many advantages to films and is a key aspect to make a good movie successful. There are many benefits to editing films. Firstly, the benefits are that it helps improve the quality of the film, which will make more people want to watch the film. Another advantage is that it helps make filmmakers do much more creative scenes and stunts within the film.
Editing was discovered in the year 1903; however, it is not the sort of editing we think of it today. It was much more different. Filmmakers had edit before by taking clips of film and cutting them up and then attaching them to other clips of film with glue. An example of this can be seen in the film ‘Wheels across India’, which was released in 1937. [1] When watching the film even though the video quality is not great, you can definitely identify that the film was edited. It had a voice narration over the film and had short cuts to different scenes. It also used techniques like ‘rack focusing’ by using this technique, it makes the audience focus on the particular object. This technique is also used in common films today like ‘Young Victoria’, where they constantly use this technique to focus on particular characters on the dining table scene. [2] This helps guide the audience’s eyes to the main parts, which the filmmaker wants them to watch. The technique has changed slightly when technology developed. Before in films, the blur focus was only slightly faint. However, now because of the modern technology the filmmakers now can make the focus stronger and heavier. The main purpose of filmmakers editing movies is to make it look much more entertaining to engage the audience’s emotions and feelings. In previous movies in the past filmmakers also had to do stunts and special effects very differently then today. In movies in the 1930s they edited special effects by overlapping film then taking it away again. This helps give the effect that the character in the film is appearing out of nowhere. An example of this film can be seen in the old film ‘Dracula’ that was released in 1931 just a few years before ‘wheels 1
across India’ was released. The film is a mixture of comedy and drama. However, they used very similar techniques we used today. The film also use overlapping film trying to give the audience the feel that the appears from nowhere. I think the director of the film ‘Dracula’ wanted to engage with the audience emotions and feelings by surprising them with something that is impossible to do in reality. I also think he wanted to shock them with a special effect. Furthermore, he played with peoples minds and made some people believe that the Dracula changes into a bat but we all know it was done by the power of editing.
Over the last month, I have looked at many different editing techniques to help me understand how important editing is to help improve the quality of the films. I first looked at parallel editing. This is the technique of exchanging two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. If the scenes are simultaneous, they occasionally culminate in a single place, where the relevant parties confront each other. One example that I looked at was the film ‘God Father’, in this film the parallel edit was very clear and you could defiantly see the contrast between the two scenes. [4] In our film ‘The Gunshot’, we wanted to keep it very clear as well, so we made sure that the contrast between the scenes were very sharp and had no fades. [5] We did this by using slick cuts between scenes. Furthermore, we wanted to show the connection between the last scenes. Therefore, we brought the characters from the two separate scenes together, so it makes sense to the audience. We wanted to engage the audience’s feelings and reaction to the short film by using dramatic music and loud sound effects. These effects really made the film look more engaging to watch and look more entertaining. We filmed the footage with a Nikon camera and did not want any sound from the characters. If we did not decide to edit the footage, the film would have looked very boring and dull. It would have also made the audience lose complete interest in the film. In addition, we looked at the long take technique. A long take is a continuous piece of footage that has no cuts in-between shots. This technique is normally used in films to help give the audience the feel that everything is happening in real time. A good example of a long take can be seen in the film ‘Goodfellas’. 2
In the film it shows the audience the movement of the characters from a calm car all the way towards a very busy environment. Also within that movement, the audience can automatically identify how the characters personality and relationship are together. The couple walk into the busy environment but although the camera looks as if it continuously following them without any cuts. There are actually hidden cuts but its very unnoticeable. These cuts are when the camera guides off the main characters and focuses on an object or people then the director will cut in addition to this, start from that point again and move back to the main characters. Although the long take is a very hard scene to get right, it’s very effective and if its done correctly audience will feel very engaged within the scene. When we tried to create the long shot in the film ‘The Deathly Follow’, we came across a few issues. [7] For instance, the camera was very shaky when using a tripod and dolly. However, we found that using steady hands and holding the camera the scene looked much better. In addition, we wanted to have some brakes that is why I chose to used objects in the scene to help give us the opportunity to have slight brakes. We chose the tree to be our brake point this really helped give us the chance to let our ghost ‘Reece’ come into the scene without the audience even realizing. [6]
INSERT PRINT SCREEN OF ‘THE DEATHLY FOLLOW’ Furthermore, I have learnt about different techniques that are used in many films and television programs. An example of a technique that we learnt was called a match shot, this is when the first shot matches the the second shot. We have also used techniques like a jump cut and a cut away. A jump cut is used to shorten down the scene by cutting out little parts of the footage. This makes the character, which may be walking look as if they have jumped position form where they were originally. In addition, it helps to shorten down the footage to keep the audience engaged with what happens in the footage.
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Similarly, there is another editing technique called manipulation of diegetic time. This is very similar to the jump cut but a bit different too. This editing technique is used to show the audience, that the characters in the film are moving in time very quickly. The filmmakers achieve this by showing different scenes building up very quickly. An example of this film can be seen in the film ‘Karate Kid’ where they show the training sessions as time goes on the character begins to get better at his training. [8] Another common technique that is used in film and television programs is the 180 Degrees Rule, this is where the camera stays on one side of the actors and then switches to an individual character. For example in the soap ‘Eastenders’ the camera switches position between the characters but stays in the 180 Degrees. [9]
Overall, the whole purpose of filmmaking and editing is to engage the audiences’ emotions and feelings. It is also a very creative way to motivate minds and helping people understand certain aspects. Every piece of media has a clear message to get across to people, weather it would be to inform people, entertain, support or even give people a fright. Film and media as a whole all use editing to help develop and succeed in putting that message across in a way people would enjoy. To conclude this essay, editing was invented to help improve the quality of film entertainment. If we did not have any editing in films, then big films today will have been seen very differently. As well they would not have been popular to how they are now. My research shows that many editing techniques in used film make the audience feel more attracted to watching it. But an un-edited film looses the audiences interest. Over the years we have also witnessed the power of technology and how it has helped the TV & Film Industry to grow rapidly. We have also learnt new ways to edit film rather than cutting and gluing film together. This has also been many different directors over the years and they’ve all developed editing skills in their own way to make remarkable films that have made big hits internationally. Also films that have used these techniques have all been very successful as they are very interesting and attention grabbing. Editing was also invented to 4
help those filmmakers and television producers lives more easy. All these essential editing techniques have helped develop a good atmosphere in a film. The techniques also give a sense of direction to the filmmaker to help make a certain scene stand out. Film is a huge asset to everyone’s live and it also brings a lot of inspiration to people. I hope we can learn more adventures way to edit films in the future.
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Reference Page [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAP9B_jfu48 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRMUbjI3grY [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nfmh178L98 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_I82117oAw [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwvWcbsW25w [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJEEVtqXdK8 [7] NEED TO UPLOAD VIDEO [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AlEspfsnUw [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibXvpsH_OEI
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