History Of Video Editing

Video editing is the process in which bits of film are cut and spliced together to hopefully create
a new and better version of the original video.
In today’s age film and video editing is all done digitally by putting into a program specifically
designed to make life easier for the editor but it wasn’t always as easy. Originally, this process
used to be done by hand, cutting the physical film and then painstakingly putting it back
together in hopes to create a seamless joint.
The Gone With The Wind movie for example, was made this way, nowadays you’ll rarely see
somebody make a film this way, unless, they’re a video editor who’s trying to prove a
something, point being this method of cutting the film out by hand is outdated and more
trouble than it’s worth.
(Steenback film editing machine)

This is the machine used back in the day in order to edit as old as it looks
this is not the beginning of video editing. The pioneer of video editing
is Eadward Muybridge, he was a photographer from 1872 who
mainly dealt in motion photography. He proved, by taking
numerous photos that, horses do in fact lift all legs off the ground while running. During his
career he took more than on hundred thousand photos of animals and
people in motion which he displayed in various books and lectures. Eadward also invented a
device called “The Zopraxiscope” which would rapidly display and project these images in
sequence one a screen, making this the first animated video projector to have ever existed and
also cementing Eadward Muybridge as the grand-father of video editing. This continued for a
decade or so until the late 1800’s.
In 1890 the first video camera was invented. Back then it was called a kinetographer. It’s a mix
between kine- meaning motion and – tographer deriving form the word photographer. This
machine used a long strip of negatives called film stock and it rapidly exposed one image after
another in sequence, creating the illusion of motion when played back, giving us the first ever
film.
The first ever movies were more similar to stage plays than movies. The camera was placed to
capture a wide angle and all the action happened over one
continuous shot. It was not until Georges Melies realized that the
sequence does not need to played in the same order it was shot or
the same speed that it was recorded at. He began to experiment
by jumping forward in time to make objects appear and disappear
thus crearing the first ever video edit. Soon after it was discovered
that putting 2 next to each other in sequence would create
connection between the 2 shots in the viewers mind. This
technique is called juxtaposition and it is one of the most common
techniques in movie making to this day.
Until the advent of digital video which allowed for the earasure of
the tape and for it to be re-used, this was a great step forward for movie making, as it allowed
the same cassette to be used over and over again by recording what was on it digitally and then
erasing it, something that with normal film stock, would not be possible.
The cassette still used the method of cutting and splicing the psysical film, the same method
used to edit film stock. Cassette film was a lot more difficult to deal with though, as every cut
had to be done under a microscope since they had to be extremely precise as to not ruin the
video signal. This method of hand cutting the film under a microscope was quickly fazed out as
it was way more trouble than it’s worth.
Later on advancements in technology made it possible to invent a machine that could play,
pause and record from one tape to another without cutting the tape, which allowed the process
to be faster easier and made it less likely that any errors would occur during the process. This is
how stuff was done until 1989 when the first ever fully digital editing program was made. This
program was called “The Avid/1” this was a non linear editing program, which was performed
on a normal computer using media files, which was great since it was not destructive unlike film
editing which would physically alter the film. This program as great as it was, it still came with
some limitations in terms of resolution, framerate etc. . . This program was the initial transfer
to an all digital world in the video editing industry. It improved rapidly and brought us all the
software we have in today’s age. These days everything is a bunch of zeros and ones stored on
a hardrive inside a machine which is incredible, considering that when Eduard Muybridge made
his creation the most advanced thing at the time, would probably be a lightbulb.
The Avid program is still a thing and can be downloaded from the internet but so are many
more program’s that have popped up during the years, the most popular ones by far being
premiere pro and final cut. Premiere Pro was released to the public in 2003 roughly 14 years
after the Avid/1 and the improvements it came with were tremendous. As the years went by
the increase in editing power and prowess was exponential, making it easy for your average Joe
like myself, to wake up one day and choose to pursue an editing career without having the
hassle of painstakingly cutting film and gluing it back together or even having to worry about
how big of a fortune you’d have to spend on film etc. . . Editing has pretty much become free of
charge and hassle free after the advent of digital data and media. The only thing editors have to
worry about these days is file corruption and scheduling, making sure the project comes out as
fast as possible.
The editors went from taking years to creating simple silent film in a big money editing studio to
creating master pieces in their own bedroom all thanks to advent of digital media.