Hi, my name is John Loughman and I'm going to be
talking to you about the way in which films produced I will also be revealing the ways in
which special effects are done and also maybe even a few film reviews, I myself have a
great interest in film and have worked on two feature films to date. "Under The
Hawthorn Tree" and "Da' Boyz". John's profile features at the end of the
page along with links to the editing and equipment sections.
Webmasters note: This is John's fifth feature article for Cinemax Online Ireland. In case you missed the other ones, just use your back button to go back to the Feature Articles section and just click on the month you missed. Couldn't be easier!
May Feature Article
Editing has changed a lot in recent years. From the editing
if film using the splice method to linear editing to the non-liner editing stage. Each of
these steps has progressively made editing a less daunting task.
The method of editing film [splice] consisted of basically, cutting (with a blade) the
parts of the film you didn't want and joining all the bits of film you do want. This took
a long time, however if a mistake was made it was easy to fix.
Linear editing is a harder way in my opinion of editing. The setup consists of two video
recorders. And 2 television Monitors. One of the TV's is linked to the Video recorder;
this is called the source viewer. This video is then linked via a scart or AV lead to the
second video, which in turn is linked to the second TV. This is called the record viewer.
In order to "Edit" you find the shot in the source viewer that you want on you
final film; you then pause recording on the record machine. Once you have the shot lined
up you then press play on the source viewer and pause on the record machine
simutainiously. You repeat this process for the whole film.
If you make a mistake when using linear editing you have to go back and start from the
start, therefore this method can take hours if you don't have the shots planned out before
hand.
The newest and easiest method of editing is called Non-linear editing. This type of
editing is carried out on a computer. This method of editing works in the following way.
1. All of the footage from the film is
digitized on to the computer i.e. it is put on to
the hard
drive.
2. This footage can then be moved around anyway
that the editor may wish. The
editing program
uses drop and drag which means the shot you want can be
dragged where
ever you want to put it on the timeline.
3. The timeline is where the final cut version
of the film is held. The uncut footage
is held in
bins. There can be many bins in one editing session also known as a
program.
During the editing process, various tools such as cut, and paste and record are used. The
source material is viewed in a source viewer, much like the linear system. In and out
points are marked on the source footage, and this is then recorded onto the timeline. Once
the final film is edited, effects can be applied using various effects programs such as
Paint* and Effect* for the Edit* system, or Adobe after effects for the Avid system. Non
Linear editing is a very easy way to learn editing, and it is used around the world by all
of the large production companies. The above method can also be used for editing film.
Well that's it for this month, if you have any comments or questions, give me a shout at johnloughman@yifm.com
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