The History of Film Editing

Early Film Editing

The Lumiere Brothers & Georges Méliès

Filmmaking disperses!

● Thomas Edison & his assistant Edwin S. Porter

● Filoteo Alberini, L’Inferno, and Pastrone’s Cabiria
● Griffith and DeMille

Continuity Editing - Cutting to maintain a sense of continuous space and time

● 180 rule, intercutting/cross cutting, Establishing, reverse shots, matching eyelines, cutting on action,
MONTAGE

Pure Cinema
The Russians!
Lev Kuleshov
● The meaning of film is not only in spatial comparison, but in the arrangement of shots
● The viewer can construct a reality in their own heads as their watching the film

Eisenstein
● Developed theories around Montage, creating the building blocks of film language.
● Marxist dialectic: 1 Shot creates conflict with another, to create a new idea. And so on.

5 Methods of Montage
● Metric - cutting to the beat
● Rhythmic - cutting to the rhythm of action in the shot
● Tonal - Concerning the tone of the shot
● Over-Tonal - Concerning montage of large sequences
● Intellectual/Ideological - juxtaposing ideas
Classical Hollywood Cinema
As the science of filmmaking developed, the edits and editors remained invisible.
In classical Hollywood cinema, editing was there to maintain the continuity of the
story, and not much else (at least for the most part…)

Max Ophuls, Orson Welles, Elia Kazan, Kurosawa, David Lean

Early Hitchcock films were edited in-camera to restrict the meddling of producer
David O. Selznick

Although many film historians list the end-point of this era as the 1960s, there is
an important distinction between the films before and after the 1950s, when
filmmakers in and out of Hollywood responded to the staleness of major
Hollywood productions.
Editing Gets Crazy in Europe!
French New Wave

● A direct response to Classic Hollywood

● Examined what worked best in Hollywood films and pushed the boundaries of filmmaking language
with discontinuous editing, wild jump cuts, fourth wall breaks, and so on.

Italian Neo-Realism

● Editing was not used to dramatic effect, or to do anything manipulative. This movement stripped all
artifice away

Art Films and Dreams

● Federico Fellini - 8 ½
● Luis Bunuel
American New Wave/New Hollywood
Because of history’s need to name things, the continuation of the European
stylistic choices in America is given a very obvious name. Similar to that of the
French new wave, the Director was key source of vision.

There is a constant dialogue between different filmmakers that helps to build the
film language and integrate new ideas that pop up. Much like the French film
scholars of the Cahier Du Cinema, American film students sought to build upon
the ideas of their predecessors.

Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, New Hollywood

Transition to Non-Linear Editing
Through the 1980s, the development of editing itself had largely stalled. Many of
the different modes and conventions at this point had been largely discovered by
film makers and become the norm. However, the digital age was being developed
by industry innovators.

TV! - The need to broadcast nationwide and make live edits led to the creation of
the Kinoscope, Linear editing using video tape, and Non-Linear Editing systems
like the Avid, which allowed for the same creative freedom as film editing, and led
to celluloid to be bypassed altogether.

If you want to learn more about the transition to NLEs - VIDEO

Because of the ubiquity of creating digital images, it makes sense for us to learn
about editing using an NLE. Old-heads will talk about the AVID like it’s god. That
it’s perfectly intuitive, and that working on another NLE makes no sense. For
people who learned how to edit using celluloid, their first foray into digital editing
was most likely through the AVID, and people love what they’re familiar with.

But whatever gets the job done the way you want is your best tool. So, logically,
most NLEs will do.

Because most NLEs will do, I choose to use an application that constantly updates
their software, dialogues with filmmakers, and can integrate seamlessly with other
creative apps.

We’re going to learn editing techniques using Adobe Premiere Pro, and the things
we learn can be applied to all editing avenues.
Types of Edits and Terms to Know
● Continuity Editing - Visual editing where shots are cut together in a clear and linear flow of
uninterrupted action. This type of cutting seeks to maintain a continuous sense of time and space.
● Cut - One shot followed by another
● Jump Cut - A cut that pushes forward in time, can disorient continuity by leaving out action
● Montage - A sequence of shots assembled to create an emotional impact, condense a story, or
convey an idea.
● Cross Cutting - Technique used to give the illusion that two story lines of action are happening at the
same time by rapidly cutting back and forth between them.
● J Cut - Audio of a scene before picture of that scene
● L Cut - Picture of a scene before the audio of that scene
● Match Cut - A cut joining two shots with matching compositional elements.
● Shot/Reverse - How we shoot conversations
● Cutting on Action - On the point of an action, not after it
● Cutaway - The interruption of a continuously filmed action with a shot that’s peripherally related to
the principal action.
● Eyeline Match
● 180 Degree Rule