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Evolution
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The Development of Early Cinema was as much about editing as it was about the development of the use of the Camera, Use of Colour, Lighting. Early Films were limited in duration by the filmstock and the cameras. However, it quickly evolved into an art form with its own language and its own expressive techniques for telling a story. The ability of fimmaking techniques to tell a particular kind of story in a patricular kind of way both was as a result of the technology but was also what the technology - with its team of directors, producers and operators sought to do. The art of narration through cinematic means was evident in the earliest films.
"The earliest films consisted of a single image. They were analogical material, as Christian Metz once remarked. A little later, multi-image films develop and language appears on the screen. These developments occur more or less simultaneously. This presents fresh problems to early filmmakers, solved through trial and error. One set of solutions, and it is the most studied one, leads to the construction of editing and framing patterns to join and to articulate the flow of images. The set of solutions is often regarded as akin to building a language. A somewhat less discussed problem and set of solutions arose with the introduction of actual language in the form of on-screen printed texts. " Link
By 1908, the conventions of editing were mostly set in place. The most basic of these dealt with time: for example, prior to 1907-1908, action in successive shots often overlapped, but the new convention demanded that story time always move forward in a linear fashion as screen time progresses
Editing related to time
The nature of time which is being
represented by the moving image.
Good article
Let There Be Meaning The Early Development of Film
Editing
http://homepage.mac.com/conkyfilms/meaning.html
Single Shot Actions
Shot Selection
"In the earliest days of the cinema, filmmakers primarily concerned
themselves with capturing single-shot actions on film and distributing the
results. The most popular films were the so-called "actualities" produced
by the Lumières and others. Although they consisted of only one shot,
editing was present in the form of shot selection - deciding what to shoot
and when to start shooting it".
http://homepage.mac.com/conkyfilms/meaning.html
Related Scenes - Starting and Stopping the Camera
Chronological Takes and Shots
Scenes as sequence of
events, the unfolding of the story
- Placing the Camera
-
Temporal Duration of shot
- Beginnings of a story
Typically in early film, the camera was put in position and the action was recorded. Early films such as the actuality and reality films as well as vaudeville and performance films were recordings of action in front of the camera unedited. The camera took position some distance from the action. The Takes were chronological. The story action was linear, it moved along chronologically
In Camera Editing
Stop action shooting
Emphasis on
Scene Transitions
George Méliès
"Meanwhile, a different sort of in-camera editing was being
pioneered by Georges Méliès. As the story goes, Méliès happened upon the
phenomenon of stop-action shooting by accident
when his camera jammed and restarted while shooting a traffic scene. When
he projected the film, a bus on the street appeared to turn into a hearse
(North 201). This prompted Méliès to experiment further with the
technique, and he used it to great effect in films like A Trip to the
Moon, in which hostile lunar inhabitants appear to disappear in a puff of
smoke when touched by the heroes' umbrellas." ..Used medium shot
mostly...
Drawbacks
"Even after others had begun experimenting with continuity-style editing, Méliès held to the belief that each scene should unfold within the space of one shot: it was a "non-continuous" style where the junctions between scenes were emphasized over the action across cuts (Bottomore 105). This emphasis on scene transitions rather than continuity is further underscored by another accidental invention used extensively by Méliès, the dissolve between scenes (North 203). Indeed, even as editing advances were being made worldwide, Méliès and much of the rest of the French film industry remained stuck in the film-as-recorded-theater paradigm (Macgowan 107). "
http://homepage.mac.com/conkyfilms/meaning.html
Other links
Extensive Resource
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/trip_to/trip_to.htm
Video Clip Link to Voyage to the Moon
Cross Cutting - show actions happening
simultaneously
Cutting to close-ups
Acknowledgement of offscreen
space
Cutting between interior and exterior shots
Alternating
shots
Breaking down of several scenes into seperate shots
Parallel
Editing - events going on in different places at the same time
Cutting
from scene to scene
Editing to show Contrast
Continuity of Story
perceived through editing despite leaps in time and space
"Britain
. Some historians consider G. A. Smith as the first
filmmaker to cut within a scene. In the 1900 film Grandma's Reading
Glass, Smith uses a youngster playing with his grandmother's
magnifying glass as a motivation for cutting to close-ups of the objects
he investigates (Macgowan 105). In fellow Englishman James Williamson's
film Attack on a China Mission, completed in January 1901, several fairly
advanced editing concepts come into play, including acknowledgement of
offscreen space, cutting between interior and exterior shots, and
alternating shots between the distressed woman and her saviors to build
tension (Macgowan 106). Williamson went on to create more films of the
chase/suspense genre, such as 1901's Fire! and 1903's The Robbery of a
Mail Coach, which some see as an inspiration for Porter's The Life of an
American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery (Macgowan 111; 107). "
Edwin S. Porter
Cross Cutting
1903 Edwin S. Porter shows The Great Train Robbery, a ground breaking one-reeler, considered by many to be the first satisfying American narrative film.
Innovations:
- used editing to show actions happening simultaneously (cross cutting)
- introduced movement of camera (roof of train)
- had characters moving toward and away from camera
- continuity of story preserved through editing despite leaps in time and space
- in an "epilogue" used dramatic closeup to involve audience
http://phs.mat-su.k12.ak.us/departments/english/cinema/history.html
Experimenting with longer films
The Life
of an American Fireman. The film was notable for its interweaving of
staged and unstaged film (a technique that would go on to serve many a
science fiction B movie) and its breaking down of several scenes into
separate shots
In 1903's The Great Train Robbery and The Kleptomaniac, Porter employed parallel editing to
show events going on in different places at the same time, in addition to
cutting from scene to scene rather than dissolving (North 226; Rosenblum
37). Editing was used to show contrast in The Ex-Convict, which portrayed
the environmental inequalities between the title character and a rich man.
http://homepage.mac.com/conkyfilms/meaning.html
Edwin Porter
The Life of an American
Fireman Directed by Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company studios
in 1902, this six minute film showed a dramatic rescue from a
burning building. It is "one of the most extreme
examples of early cinema’s distinctive non linear continuity"
(Musser). The actual rescue is shown twice, from both inside and outside
the building. However, the time taken for each action varies between each
version, time being "severely condensed whenever something happens off
screen". Musser notes that the Edison Company provided two quite different
descriptions of the film, one highlighting its fictional aspects and
another "emphasising the film’s documentary qualities over the elements of
fictional narrative".
The Great Train Robbery This ten minute Edison film, directed by Edwin S. Porter in 1903, was the most famous and influential film, until D.W. Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation was released in 1915. The film tells the story of a group of outlaws who board a train, force the passengers off and rob them. They use the train’s engine to escape to their horses. A posse is raised and chases the robbers on horseback. The final scene is a shoot out, won by the posse. Some of the original prints of this film contained hand coloured sequences. One of these was a medium close up of the leader of the outlaw group firing a shot at the audience.
By combining film editing and the telling of narrative stories, Porter produced one of the most important and influential films of the time revealing the possibility of fictional stories on film. The film was the one-reel, 14-scene, approximately 10-minute long
It was based on a real-life train heist. His film - not particularly
artistic by today's standards - set many milestones at the time: it was the first narrative film with a storyline, the first film shot out of chronological sequence and
utilizing revolutionary cross-cutting or parallel
action, the first western (?) (Edison's Cripple Creek BarRoom Scene
may actually be the first), and the first real motion picture smash hit.
In an effective, scary closeup (placed at either the beginning or at the
end of the film), a bandit shot directly into the audience.
http://www.simplytaty.com/history/filmhistory.htm
Video Clip of Train Robbery - RS Porter - Real Media
http://www.simplytaty.com/history/filmhistory.htm
and
Use of close-ups
Recognised the Expressive
Potential of Close ups
Use of various angles to show emotion and
the psychology of characters
Use editing to show content of characters
thought
Shot subservient to the story
Action across cut
Story
Telling
D.W. Griffin
Body of work - 1908 and 1913
D.W. Griffith experiments with and perfects a wide array of photographic, narrative, and editing techniques including:
- dramatic use of cross cutting
- extensive use of closeup and wide angle shots
- various editing devices such as fades and irises
- symbolic use of tinting
- construction of scenes from fragmentary shots
- planning of recorded musical accompaniment
- high and low angle shots, panning and other camera movements
- use of narrative flash backs
- development of feature-length films
http://phs.mat-su.k12.ak.us/departments/english/cinema/history.html
"action moves across shots, not within them"
Griffith was masterful in his use of analytical editing: using
close-ups and other angles to show the emotion and psychology of his
characters (Macgowan 144). In addition, he pioneered the practice of using
editing to show the content of a character's thoughts, as he did in After
Many Years when he cut from a close-up of the lead actress to the object
of her thoughts, her husband stranded on a desert island (Rosenblum 38).
He also expanded on his predecessor Williamson's use of suspense in the
chase genre, manipulating time, space and rhythm to heighten dramatic
impact (Rosenblum 39). Griffith also greatly refined the craft of
continuity editing in the period from 1908 to 1909 with films like
Betrayed by a Handprint and The Guerilla. By matching action between
spaces, he defined the shot as subservient to the story, establishing the
important maxim that "action moves across shots, not within them" (Musser
271).
http://homepage.mac.com/conkyfilms/meaning.html
Master of story telling
Inventing the
language of cinema, he used the camera and film in new, more functional
ways with composed shots, camera movement, split-screens, flashbacks,
cross-cutting (showing two simultaneous actions that build toward a
climax), fades, irises, intercutting, parallel editing, dissolves,
changing camera angles, soft-focus, lens filters, and
experimental/artificial lighting and shading/tinting. At the time, they
were innovative cinematic techniques that we now take for granted. He also
trained and created his own company of 'players' - including such future
stars as Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, and Lionel Barrymore. Griffith went
on to direct hundreds of films at Biograph over the next few years.
http://www.simplytaty.com/history/filmhistory.htm
The Biograph Camera
Article by his cameraman
The Biograph Camera by Billy
Bitzer September 6, 1939
http://www.soc.org/opcam/06_sp95/mg06_biocam.html
No double exposures or trick work was possible with the Biograph camera. Other motion picture practical cameras used the perforated sprocket hole 35mm film, which is still the universal film used today. This sprocket hole permitted the running of the film through the camera for purposes of a second exposure (superimposed) or as many exposures as desired. This was accomplished by the simple process of marking the starting picture frame and having the pull-down sprocket claws engage in the same holes following each exposure. The film could be run through the camera again and again, behind desired masks, etc. (Melies Trick Films, Pathes, Edisons, et al). The film could also be run backward for lap dissolves.
Video Clip Excerpts from D.W. Griffith's Greatest
Films:
Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Way down East, Hearts of the
World, Judith of Bethulia, Orphans of the Storm
http://www.uno.edu/~drcom/Griffith/home.html
More info on Griffin
http://www.silentsmajority.com/BTC/direct5.htm
Video Clip Excerpts From Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
http://video.xoom.it:8080/ramgen/servizi/xoom/BattleshipPotemkin.rm
Montage
From site:
http://www.imperica.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&cid=49&mid=-1&bid=27
"
Montage (at least in its European sense) is characterized by a particular
film editing method: shots, rather than just 'edited' together, are
constructed.
"A dialectical process that creates a third meaning out of the original two meanings of the adjacent shots (editing thus has only two fundamental methods: cut and overlap). A process in which a number of short shots are woven together in order to communicate a great deal of information in a short period of time. The last is simply a special case of general montage; the dialectical process is inherent in any montage, conscious or not. Still pictures can be put together solely with regard to the rhythm of the succeeding shots. Any kind of montage is defined according to the action it photographs. James Monaco. How to Read a Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. pp.183-4. "
Montage, in this sense, operates on a more practical level in editing. It can be used, for example, to manipulate time. The jump cut, thus, is an element that can be used in montage. Shots can be repeated, manipulated, or have time expanded or contracted in them. Cross-cutting gives ability to have stories running concurrently, interweaving between each one - in real time or otherwise. You may want to think about formal meaning too. Overall, what is produced from montage is a construction of a specific notion that the director has in mind. A particular sequence uses montage for an identifiable purpose - as with the examples just given. This notion is usually thematic, but it can produce far deeper connotations, such as the following.
Eisenstein and Soviet Montage
..The montage of attractions advocated by the young Eisenstein, a conception of editing that, it might be added, the Russian master subsequently repudiated once he realised that film form essentially depends on a dialectical opposition between a continuity and a discontinuity. Noel Burch. Theory of Film Practice. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1969. p.71.
The director most often associated with montage is Sergei Eisenstein, Russian director of the early 20th century. As this is very much the case, this page shall be linked to Eistenstein's methods and motifs. In Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, a small scene where a sailor smashes a plate, occurs over ten cuts. On one hand, we have the mise-en-scene. On the other, we have the editing. The editing makes the action more powerful, and it agitates. There is no smooth continuity between the cuts, and there is hardly any match-on action. There is also a zoom effect which, rather than being smooth, jumps. Hollywood would never do this - it would take the mise-en-scene first, rather than the editing - the opposite to Potemkin. Here we have form matching the content, and it also expands time. Eisenstein's editing is very emotional. The patterns that Eisenstein makes is a montage of collusions - one shot being very different to another.
Intellectual Montage,
occuring also in Potemkin, consists of
cuts between visual icons. By linking two shots together with editing, an
idea is created: a+b=c. For example, a shot of a cross (representing the
church) cuts to one of a sword (the state). This is diegetic - the objects
occur within the world of the film - and metaphorical - meaning something
beyond their literal representation. Eisenstein wanted a shot to be the
opposite of the previous one - for a collision to occur.
Overlapping Montage is where shots 'overlap' each other. It opens the action up, so that you can see it from various points. It also, by definition, has to further the action - these functions are at odds with each other. The idea of continuity editing is to push the narrative along. Montage tends more to create atmosphere, mood, and ultimately, emotive impact. It also pushes the narrative along, but allows for a greater exploration of both form and content.
David Parkinson summates the technical categories of Eisensteinian montage:
... (they) could be employed independently or simultaneously within a sequence. Metric montage determined the tempo of the editing, and was dictated by the duration, rather than the content, of each shot. Rhythmic montage, on the other hand, did take the shot content into account and gave it a valuable emphatic or contraputal function, as in sequences of sustained tension. The texture or emotional feel of the shots was the basis of Tonal montage... ...while Overtonal montage was a synthesis of metric, rhythmic and tonal which, while not existing in a single frame or in an edited sequence, became evident, as Eisenstein wrote, the moment the 'dialectical process of the passing of the film through the projection apparatus' commenced.
David Robinson. History of Film. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995. p.76.
Critically evaluating montage Peter Gidal in Materialist Film argues that a use of montage must take into account the duration of the film, both of the film itself, and of the narrative:
The notion of post-Eisensteinian editing, for example, parallel montage (two things going on in different places at the same time, building suspense) is fundamentally opposed to film-as-duration... Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, Russia, 1924) produced filmic montage-as-duration, the foreground setting up of artifice and form within structures not subsumed by narrative. This was why Eisenstein at the time was accused of formalism! Peter Gidal. Materialist Film. London: Routledge, 1989. p.7.
"
Links and info on Ben-Hur 1926
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicolor3.htm
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/benhur/benhursb1.htm
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/benhur/benhursb2.htm
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/benhur/hur2.mpg
Video clip Excerpt Chariot Race begins video clip
at:
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/benhur/benhursb3.htm
Citizen Kane - Wedding Scene
Link to analysis and 14 MB movie clip
Link
TODAY:
The cut in post production basic technique of digital video
editing......computer ease....
Selection of Shots and Takes,
Assembling. Edit Decision Lists etc.....
Links
Video clips of Arthur Griffin - Quicktime
http://www.simplytaty.com/history/filmhistory.htm
Video Clip of Train Robbery - RS Porter - Real Media
http://www.simplytaty.com/history/filmhistory.htm
Editing Glossary with Video Clip samples to illustrate some points
http://www.inform.umd.edu/rosebud/Glossary/
Silent Thrills - Pre Talkies - Video clips
Ben Hur
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/
George Meiles - Trip to the Moon
http://rhs.jack.k12.wv.us/sthrills/trip_to/trip_to.htm
Editing Resource - Contemporary
http://www.imperica.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&cid=49&mid=-1&bid=27
The Biograph Camera
http://www.soc.org/opcam/06_sp95/mg06_biocam.htmll
Important Dates in Film History
http://www.ouc.bc.ca/fina/film/filmdate.html
History of Cinema
http://www.theactorstudio.com/e_history_of_cinema/e_history_of_cinema_silent_screen.htm
A Brief History of Cinema
http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~mhjarron/filmhist.htm
History of Digital Cinema
http://www.tech-notes.tv/Dig-Cine/Digitalcinema.html
Greatest films of the 1920s
http://www.filmsite.org/20sintro3.html
Good link to site that illustrates the early video editing
equipment
http://www.sssm.com/editing/museum/