Task Three – From Analogue to Digital Editing

Analogue Editing

Analogue editing when you edit your film but cutting and gluing together pieces of celluloid film. Traditionally films are made up of images that have been printed on to acetate negatives. These are then ‘spliced’ together to form a reel of films. These are then feed through a projector at a constant speed of 24 frames a second which makes the pictures appear to be moving as there are so many of them in such a little space and every one of them is different by only a little bit to give the illusion of movement. The advantage of using analogue editing is that it will give people a sense of nostalgia, especially to the older generations as it may bring back memories of their youth. The disadvantage of this is that when it comes to editing you have to do it by hand which will take many hours and you will also need to edit it from the beginning to end, not in any order you want.

The First Moviola

Before the widespread of non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all the films made was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film work print (cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and pasting together of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer such as the Moviola. The advantage of using a Moviola is that people could actually see what they was editing while they was doing it, which made it easier to edit, which meant less chance of mistakes. The disadvantage of this machine is that it also needed to be edited from the beginning to end, not in any order you wanted.

Video Editing

Before digital technologies become available, magnetic tapes were used to store information – these are known as video tapes. Most video editing has been superseded by digital editing which is faster and cheaper to make than video editing.

Digital Editing

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data are stored in digital (as opposed to analogue) form. Digital editing is the use of computers to order and manipulate the digital data. Digital cinema uses bits and bytes (Strings of 1’s and 0’s) to record, transmit and relay images, instead of chemicals on film. The whole process is electronic so there in to printing or ‘splicing’ involved. The advantages of using digital editing is that you are able to edit in any order you want which was a big benefit to the editors as if they had an idea they could do it there and then in case they forgot it. Also there is no ‘splicing’ involved there is less chance of mistakes and also you are able to go back on the changes you made as you have not physically cut anything. The disadvantage of this type of method is that people might not be up-to-date with technology and not know how to edit the film, or they like the sense of nostalgia and actually prefer doing it by hand and ‘splicing’ the film to edit it, as it may give them a sense of achievement.

Non-Linear Editing

In digital video editing, non-linear editing is a method that allows you to access any frame in a digital video clips regardless of sequence in the clip. The freedom to access any frame, and use a cut-and-paste method, similar to the ease of cutting and pasting text in a word processor, and allows you to easily include fades, transitions, and other effects that cannot be achieved with linear 

editing.

T:2 Developing Editing Techniques

In-camera editing is one of the simplest and one of the most earliest forms of films editing. It is a filming  technique which only requires the filmmaker to record when he wants the film and pause it when he wants it to stop, that is why this technique is very difficult as you can only do it once and there is no retakes or post editing. The film has to run in order you wish to show it, as you cannot edit it at the end to go in the order you wish to show it. This technique became popular thanks to a magician called George Melies, who made a little film called 'The Vanishing Lady' which in its time was revolutionary. Here is his film:




Below is the short film, me and my group made using In-Camera editing:



In our firsts two scenes, it shows David walking down a set of stairs, we put the camera in the middle of the stairs, aiming up so that David was walking down towards the camera, and once he was out of view we stopped it and put it down the bottom of the stairs so it was a similar view which in my opinion made flow better.

The third scene we decided to place the camera out side of the building, and got him to walk outside the door, so it looks like he walked down the stairs and gone straight outside the door and walk along side the path to make the film look continuous from the last as it he stopped walking it would not flow.

The next scene we brought in another actor to join David, once the scene started we saw Tony come into the shot as he appeared around the corner to greet David, then Tony decides to go with David to where ever he was going. We made a mistake as we was talking in the video and you can hear laughing, and the film was meant to be silent.

In the fifth scene we see them walk in between two buildings... talking, thus giving the illusion they know eachother and generally talk to eachother. In my opinion it was a very good scene as we had the camera low, so as they walked further away the got smaller and smaller, more so than if we had it eye hight. We stopped filming when they got about three quarters of the way down so that when we shot the next scene and they wasnt already turning it gave the illusion that they still had to walk down to the end.

In the sixth scene we see them turn the corner, carring on their conversation, not looking at the camera to give a better illusion that the camera is not actually there. In comparision to the rest it is a fairly short scene.

In the sixth shot we decided to change the camera angle by shoting them through a window, instead of just being directly behind or infront of them. This made it seem as if you was actually watching them walk and we could also do two scenes at once which required less setting up as in stead of filming them coming up to the doors, then through them and then start going up the stairs, we could do it all at once. Also at the end you see two girls walk past which give it more of a real effect as they walked accross a whole school without seeing one person is quiet unusual so that aspect added a sence of realness to the scene.

In the seventh scene it shows them coming up from the staircase they entred at the end of the previous shot, this scene ends with a 'close-up' of David using his card on the machine so that they can get into the study hall.

Finally film ends in them walking through the door and then it ends by the door closing behind them.


The pro's of in-camera editing are that it can be very quick to record, as you do not need all the hastle of editing the clips afterwards as you have done it in-camera. Also it is not as expensive to make as you do not have to pay for the recording equipment and software.

The cons of using in-camera are that if you make a mistake you cannot edit it out, also the are times in your clip when it doesnt 'flow', as if you are running for example in the next clip it is hard to make it look as if he was continuasly running as he would have been standing still until the director told him to run.

AS1 : T1 : Editing in Early Cinema

Editing has changed and developed in many ways in the early stages of film making, all because of a few individuals dared to explore different ways of editing. In this blog i will be explaing the few indivuals who made those changes.

Thomas Edison ran a film laboratory which is where he made the Kinetographic Camera and the Kinetoscope were invented. He also developed the 35mm film strip, which then became the industry standard. Once he done that, he went even further and developed a projector to play the film.

The Lumiere brothers worked with Edison to create short films with just one long, static, locked-down shot.  During their first films, the only thing to make them popular with the public was simple movements as films had never been done before, so just filming traffic moving was a big hit in their early years. This can be seen in the film Sortie d'usine, which was made in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers.



G.A. Smith is a filmmaker that used editing, but in his early years there was no editing and each film only lasted as long as the film in the camera. An example of this would be a film he made called 'The Miller and the Sweep'. Later on he made a film called 'The Kiss in the Tunnel'. This was said to mark the beginning of narrative editing. He took advantage of the brief onset of darkness as they went into the tunnel to splice in the shot of the couple.



George Melies is a magician who once saw a lumiere brothers film and saw the possibilites of a novelty more than just motion itself. So he bought a camera, built a studio, wrote scrips, designed sets and soon he discovered basic camera tricks we see today. There is a rumour that he discovered the art of stop motion by accident when his camera broke down for a brief second. In 1886 he made a film called 'The Vanishing Lady' using a technique known as in-camera editing. It never occured to him to move the camera for long shots or close-ups, which sadly resulted in his films being over-looked.



Edwin S Porter is an American filmmaker who helped Thomas Edison make films longer and more interesting, as before they done this together films normally only lasted a minute/minute and a half. This helped revoulutionise the way films are done today as they was able to introduce a plot to the films. The film that made this breakthrough was 'The Life of An American Fireman', which was premiered in 1903. It was among the first to have a plot, but it also had action and a never before done close up of a hand pulling a fire alarm. He also introduced a method called splicing in that film as he was able to show the outside of the burning that was on fire and also the view of the women and child inside of the burning building.



Porter was also famous for another film called 'The Great Train Robbery' which was one of the first to have a serious plot, with different locations, different camera angles, action sences and and a story you can follow and relate to, the s a big step, going towards how films are made today.



The next filmmaker im going to talk about is Charles Pathe, he was famous for his film called 'The Horse that Bolted' which was premiered in 1907. Charles was the first to introduce the filming technique called Parallel Editing, which is when you cut between the two story lines. He done it between the Horse which was eating the grain and running around in the middle of the street causing havoc and the delivery man who was doing his deliveries to his customers while the horse was running away.



D.W. Griffith was an American film director, who was one of the early supporters of the power of editing. He made use of cross-cutting, as it allowed him to show parallel action in different locations.
His work was highly regarded by many and greatly influenced the early filmmakers understanding of editing.