Film and Video Editing Techniques - Assignment 2

In 1895 the Lumiere Brothers invented Cinematographe. The Cinematographe was a camera, printer and projector. Movies using this were only one minute long and they held many private showings before the official reveal in December 1895. Then in 1901 Edwin S. Porter came along and showed people that Film didn't have to be all just one still image for one minute. In 1908 D.W Griffiths made a movie titled "For Love of Gold" which featured the first ever continuity cut when a scene cut. Griffiths then showed that the use of different camera angles can improve the quality of the Movie showing more emotions on peoples faces. It was also the first American Movie with a close up camera angle. Then in 1915 D.W Griffiths released "The Birth of a Nation" based on the novel "The Clansman" The movie included Camera techniques such as long shots, iris effects, and panning shots all techniques used in today's Movies. Also the use of sound for the first time showed the Movie would be more interesting and enjoyable for the audience. In 1920 Lev Kuleshov created the Kuleshov Effect which was a montage effect which Lev thought the audience would respond more as it would create more idea's from the average movie. 

 

In the early 1950's some people were using New Video Tape Recorders, which they would then use a knife to cut the tape reel from the recorder and then stick it together to edit the Movie they just shot. In the 1970's/80's a huge improvement was made in the Film industry. As more equipment was available to purchase and with the invention of the Flying erase-head it allowed New video and audio material to be recorded. People were then also introduced to the Linear Editing. This is where a scene closer to the beginning of the video tape needed to be changed in length, all later scenes would need to be recorded onto the video tape again in sequence. Then not far after that clips could be played simultaneously through a vision mixer. A popular system in the 1970's/80's was the U-Matic equipment. A system that used two tape players and one tape recorder, and edits were done by automatically having the machines back it up. Then in 1980's/90's the smaller beta equipment came about and it then with more complex controllers making creating a Movie easier as the years go on. 

As you get to the 2000's Almost everyone owns a Home Computer that either has access to Windows Movie Maker or Apple's iMovie software's so anyone is able to create their own Movies at home. You also no have equipment such as Video Tape Recorders, then moving on to Digital Camera's. Later on in the 2000's you now have High Definition quality Camera's, and now with the New 4K Quality... The quality of movies are getting better each year with New Equipment and Editing techniques. People also now have their hands on very advanced Editing software, and are now able to add features like Titles, Credits, Special Effects, Audio Sound Effects and On Screen Graphics in a very simple way. There are also many ways of distributing a Movie, weather it is DVD, Blu-Ray or Online via Netflix, Google Play Store, App Store or Amazon Prime Instant Video.

There are many different purposes of why we edit films. One being to engage the viewer with storytelling. If the Movie didn't have any speech, storytelling or anything. The viewer would probably get very bored and would lose interest quickly. Storytelling can be done by adding music to go with the mood, for example if it is a happy mood you might have a pop song playing. However if it's a sad scene you might have somebody playing a violin. All of this adds to the storytelling in a movie and engages with the viewer more by playing with the emotions. Editing is also very important because if you didn't edit movies, they would all have to be done in one take, making the production very long. Also if the film wasn't edited with effects, music, titles, and cuts... The movie would be very dull and boring and people would lose interests very quickly. The use of changing the color of the footage has been used for many years now as doing this creates a different mood for the scene. Adding a color effect such as darkening the footage, will create a dark, sad and depressing mood. Where if the color has been changed so bright colors stand out it will show that the mood of the scene is an uplifting happy mood. For example, this scene from 22 Jump Street shows how colors can be effective when showing what kind of mood and is also a good example of a split screen shot.


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riCt1hEUp5o

The 180 Degree Rule is used in most movies, when it features two people with just dialog. It is a rule that Movies should stick too, but it has been broken many times especially in a classic movie from the 1980's "The Shining" directed by Stanley Kubrick. The 180 Degree Rules is a guideline that states two characters in a scene should maintain the same left/right relationship throughout the scene. Continuity editing gives the viewer the impression that the action unfolds with spatiotemporal consistency. In most films, logical coherence is achieved by cutting to continuity, which emphasizes smooth transition of time and space. 

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly if at all. This type of edit gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character often off-screen, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character.Cutting to soundtrack is the technique where each cut is influenced by the style of music heard in the background. So if the scene is a sad one, perhaps at a funeral, a slow song will be heard. If there is a car chase scene, the music will be fast and upbeat.