Cinema began as a novelty – projecting dancing shadows on a screen of simple every day scenes. But through the contributions of talented artists, a new cinematic language of editing emerged. Trace the development of editing from The Lumiere Brothers through Georges Méliès, Edwin S. Porter, and D.W Griffith;xNLx; Created by Daniel cardoso
The very first films were called actualities - they were short, single-shot films with a stationary camera, viewing a scene (a train pulling into a station, workers leaving a factory, etc.), without editing of any kind. The art of film editing (originally called "cutting" since it involved splicing together pieces of nitrate or celluloid) first developed in the films of Parisian Georges Melies (e.g., Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) (aka A Trip to the Moon)) and Edwin S. Porter (e.g., Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1903)). Editing involved the manipulation of time and space to tell a story.
d. Georges Melies Film Editor: Georges Melies (uncredited) This pioneering science fiction film, a 14-minute ground-breaking masterpiece with 30 separate tableaus (scenes), was one of the earliest experiments in film. It was made by imaginative, turn-of-the-century French filmmaker/magician Georges Melies, approximating the contents of the novels by Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon) and H.G. Wells (First Men in the Moon). With innovative, illusionary cinematic 'editing' techniques (trick photography with superimposed images, dissolves and jump cuts), he depicted many memorable, whimsical old-fashioned images: a modern-looking, projectile-style rocket ship blasting off into space from a rocket-launching cannon (gunpowder powered?) a crash landing into the eye of the winking 'man in the moon' a dream sequence with a dissolve the appearance of fantastic moon inhabitants (Selenites, acrobats from the Folies Bergere) on the lunar surface who disappeared in a puff of smoke (jump cut) a scene in the court of the moon king a miraculous last minute escape back to Earth
d. Edwin S. Porter American director and film pioneer Edwin S. Porter, chief of production at the Edison studio, helped to shift film production toward narrative story telling with such films as this one -- the first realistic (or documentary) film with continuity editing. It featured the following editing features: overlapping action and cross-cut editing a last-minute rescue of a mother and child in a burning building (in an interior shot) The film was interspersed with scenes of the firemen responding to the sound of the alarm (a hand pulled the alarm in close-up), descending on a fire pole, and coming to the rescue in a horse-drawn wagon pumper (in exterior shots), heightening suspense.
d. Edwin S. Porter This 10-minute dramatic film was the first to use a number of innovative, modern film techniques, many of them for the first time, such as parallel editing, minor camera movement, location shooting and less stage-bound camera placement. It also featured multiple camera positions, filming out of sequence and later editing the scenes into their proper order. There were 14 scenes with parallel cross-cutting between simultaneous events in its narrative story with multiple plot lines. Porter's film was a milestone in film-making for its storyboarding of the script (about a robbery, the getaway, the pursuit, and the capture), the first use of title cards, an ellipsis, and a panning shot, and for its cross-cutting editing techniques. Jump-cuts or cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique, showing two separate lines of action or events happening continuously at identical times but in different places.
French caricature artist Émile Cohl created what is considered to be the world’s first animated cartoon in 1908. His black-and-white short film, Fantasmagorie, is composed of 700 drawings that Cohl illuminated on a glass plate. He photographed black lines on white paper and then reversed the negative to make it look like chalk on a blackboard. Each drawing is only slightly different than the one before it. Timing in advance was key (and laborious), but Cohl’s process allowed some spontaneity with the images — which is why Fantasmagorie has such a stream of consciousness style
Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California[6] is an American animation studio which creates animated feature films, short films, and television specials for The Walt Disney Company. Founded on October 16, 1923,it is a unit of The Walt Disney Studios. The studio has produced 53 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 to Frozen in 2013.
d. Sergei Eisenstein Film Editor: Sergei Eisenstein (uncredited) Legendary Russian auteur director Sergei Eisenstein's classic landmark and visionary film was released in the US in 1926, advancing the art of cinematic storytelling with the technique of montage (or film editing). Its most celebrated film scene, with superb editing combining wide, newsreel-like sequences inter-cut with close-ups of harrowing details to increase tension, was the Odessa Steps episode. The scene was based upon the incident in 1905 when civilians and rioters were ruthlessly massacred. It was beautifully orchestrated with a montage of close-ups of faces and objects and long-shots, all rapidly cut together and contrasted as the images built to a devastating conclusion. In the scene (with 155 separate shots in less than five minutes), successive waves of white-uniformed soldiers appeared, ordered by city officials loyal to the czar to attack the riled-up citizenry.
Currently, the The Walt Disney Studios releases films from Disney-owned and non-Disney owned animation studios. Most films listed below are from Walt Disney Animation Studios which began as the animation division of Walt Disney Productions, producing animated short films since 1923. The studio produced its first feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and as of 2014 has produced a total of 53 feature films. Beginning with Toy Story in 1995, The Walt Disney Studios also released animated films by Pixar Animation Studios, which became a wholly owned subsidiary in 2006.
d. Orson Welles (Best Film Editing Nominee: Robert Wise)This highly-rated classic masterpiece from director-star-producer Orson Welles brought together many cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations (in photography, editing, and sound) to reconstruct the title character like building a jigsaw puzzle. The innovative, bold film is still an acknowledged milestone in the development of cinematic technique, although it 'shared' some of its techniques from many earlier films.
d. Alfred Hitchcock (Best Film Editing Nominee: George Tomasini) In the film's most-renowned and brilliantly-edited 7-minute attack sequence with a slow suspenseful buildup - the cornfield crop-dusting sequence - Manhattan businessman Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) was lured into the flat countryside (of Indiana) by enemy spies. He was led there on the pretext of meeting and connecting with the fabled Kaplan - his non-existent double. The dapper Roger arrived by bus at a barren road-crossing out in wide-open farm country surrounded by plowed-up dirt and cornfields, incongruously dressed in a neat suit in bright sunlight. He was entirely exposed and vulnerable - a modern, urban individual without any amenities or artificial resources - there wasn't even background music on the soundtrack until the climax of the set-piece.
d. William Wyler (Best Film Editing Winner: Ralph E. Winters, John D. Dunning) The film has been most heralded for its classic, memorable and spectacular 11-minute chariot race scene around a central divider strip composed of three statues thirty feet high, and grandstands on all sides, rising five stories high. This sequence set the standard for all subsequent action sequences. The contest between the competitors was highlighted by a series of close-ups of the action. One by one, Messala (Stephen Boyd) eliminated the other drivers in the ferocious race, shattering their chariots.
d. Alfred Hitchcock Film Editor: George Tomasini In Hitchcock's classic, brutal shower murder scene, an unexplainable, unpremeditated, and irrational murder, the major star of the film - Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) - was shockingly stabbed to death after the first 47 minutes of the film's start. It was the most famous murder scene ever filmed and one of the most jarring. The scene took a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing of 78 pieces of film, 70 camera setups, and a naked stand-in model (Marli Renfro) in a 45-second impressionistic montage sequence, involving the inter-cutting of slow-motion and regular speed footage. The audience's imagination filled in the illusion of complete nudity and fourteen violent stabbings.
-- the technology behind the worldwide consumer video revolution, and is used in all home Video Tape Recorders today.
d. Alfred Hitchcock Film Editor: George Tomasini Hitchcock's first film with Universal Studios was this modern thriller/masterpiece, an apocalyptic story of a northern California coastal town filled with an onslaught of seemingly unexplained, arbitrary and chaotic attacks of ordinary birds - not birds of prey. One of the most remarkable, well-edited sequences was the one of the attack of seagulls swooping down on a gas station attendant at the Capitol Oil Company. When knocked to the ground, the gasoline hose began to send a stream of gasoline downhill.
d. Arthur Penn Film Editor: Dede Allen This Arthur Penn film, with many opposing moods and shifts in tone (from serious to comical), was a cross between a gangster film, tragic-romantic traditions, a road film and buddy film, and screwball comedy. It exemplified many of the characteristics of experimental film-making from the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) movement of its time. The most classic of all its scenes was the shocking and tense "ballet of blood" finale - an ultra-violent, country backroads ambush set for Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), the doomed lovers. The ambush scene was marvellous choreographed and edited, with multiple cameras shooting at different speeds.
d. Stanley Kubrick Film Editor: Ray Lovejoy Stanley Kubrick's landmark, science fiction classic, in the opening Dawn of Man sequence, contained one of the most famous jump-cuts in cinematic history. In slow-motion, the man-ape leader flung his weapon, a fragmented piece of the bone, exultantly and jubilantly into the air. it flew and spun upwards, twisting and turning end-over-end.
The first NLE was the CMX 600 in 1971 -it was a beast of a machine that recorded half resolution black and white video files onto washing machine size disk packs and cost a little over $250,000 in 1971 dollars – which is about 1.2 million in 2013 money. Only 6 were produced.
d. William Friedkin (Best Film Editing Winner: Gerald B. Greenberg) The film's most incredible scene was the hair-raising sequence of unbelievable car-chasing. New York detective "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) was driving a car at 90 mph in pursuit after a suspected drug dealer in a hijacked elevated subway train above him. During the chase, he - among other things - half-collided with another car, dodged a mother and her baby carriage, and side-swiped a delivery van, all the while furiously honking the car's horn and frantically switching from his brake to accelerator.
d. Francis Ford Coppola (Best Film Editing Nominee: William H. Reynolds, Peter Zinner) In the final extraordinary baptism scene, probably occurring in 1955, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) acted as godfather at the christening of his sister Connie's (and Carlo's) child, his nephew and namesake. [The infant in the scene was director Coppola's daughter Sofia Coppola in an uncredited role.] The scene brilliantly crosscut back and forth from the church to locations throughout the city as gangland murders were orchestrated. With controlled intensity, Michael engineered a cold-blooded mass killing of Barzini, Tattaglia, Greene and all other rival gangleaders of the Five Families to settle the "Family business."
d. John Avildsen (Best Film Editing Winner: Richard Halsey, Scott Conrad) This phenomenally successful, uplifting, "sleeper" film was filmed in a record twenty-eight days with a paltry budget of about $1 million, and ultimately grossed well over $100 million. The action-packed, 'feel-good' crowd-pleasing story, shot mostly on location, told of the rise of a small-time, has-been, underdog Philadelphia boxer named Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) against insurmountable odds in a big-time bout. He was given emotional support by his shy, hesitant, loving girlfriend Adrian (Talia Shire).
d. George Lucas (Best Film Editing Winner: Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas, and Richard Chew) The Oscar-winning Death Star battle sequence was prefaced by a briefing session. Rebel Alliance pilots, including young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), were told about the Death Star's one vulnerable Achilles' heel "weakness" - a long, narrow shaft at the center. If penetrated, entered by a small one-man fighter after a difficult approach, and struck in a direct hit with a proton torpedo, it would explode the entire leviathan in a lethal chain reaction.
d. Francis Ford Coppola (Best Film Editing Nominee: Richard Marks, Walter Murch, Gerald B. Greenberg, Lisa Fruchtman) Producer/director Francis Ford Coppola's visually beautiful, ground-breaking masterpiece with surrealistic and symbolic sequences, detailed the confusion, violence, fear, and nightmarish madness of the Vietnam War. The war film told about a US Army assassin's mission, both a mental and physical journey, to 'terminate' a dangerously-lawless warlord and former Colonel who had gone AWOL, had become a self-appointed god, and ruled a band of native warriors in the jungle.
d. Steven Spielberg (Best Film Editing Winner: Michael Kahn) At the start of a memorable sequence in the film's exciting prologue, Indiana "Indy" Jones (Harrison Ford) had just snatched a fierce-looking but beautiful golden idol from an altar, located in a mid-1930s South American rainforest jungle cave setting.
EditDroid which debuted at NAB in 1984 from a George Lucas spin-off company, DroidWorks. This computer pulled footage stored on LaserDisks which really didn’t work very well and the company shut down in 1987. Other machines tried using a bank of VCRs but they were also slow and cumbersome.
This was followed a year later by the public release of the Avid1 – a macintosh based Non Linear Editor in 1989. Avid would go on to become the gold standard for editing in Hollywood.Storage was still a issue and these machines could only edit short music videos and commercials
video NLE designed by a group of film editors — Paul Bamborough, Nick Pollock and Neil Harris, the founders of a company called OLE Limited. It subsequently changed hands several times, and in 2009 was bought by EditShare, the current owners, along with Gee Broadcast's GeeVS video server system. Historically, Lightworks has built a strong reputation in the film-editing community and has been used on turnkey systems, with its associated Lightworks control console hardware, to edit a number of well known, big-box-office movies.
d. Jonathan Demme (Best Film Editing Nominee: Craig McKay) In the Shelby County Courthouse, the fourth and final encounter between FBI agent-trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and ex-psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), played out like a profound, perverted parody of a "love scene," sexual power struggle, or a complex chess game. In the middle of the Historical Society Room on the fifth floor, a massive temporary iron cage had been erected, cordoned off by black and white striped police barricades. Inside the cage, Dr. Lecter sat at a table reading, his back to her. Without turning, he greeted her: "Good evening, Clarice."
d. James Cameron (Best Film Editing Nominee: Conrad Buff, Mark Goldblatt, Richard A. Harris) Two of this action film's best sequences were masterfully edited, showing a neat role reversal: the former cyborg assassin T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from the first film was really a good-guy Terminator in this sequel, programmed to protect the young teen John Connor (Edward Furlong)
Director: John Lasseter A cowboy doll is profoundly threatened and jealous when a new spaceman figure supplants him as top toy in a boy's room.
d. Tom Tykwer Film Editor: Mathilde Bonnefoy In this relentlessly-thrilling, exhilarating hit film, there were three breath-taking and frenetic attempts (all "what-if" scenarios of reliving the past), largely shot in real time, of short red-haired, tattooed Lola (Franke Potente) running to help her dependent, drug-dealing boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). In each instance, she ran and acquired replacement cash of 100,000 Deutschmarks in 20 minutes so that he didn't have to rob a grocery store - and suffer the fateful consequences.
d. Andy and Larry Wachowski (Best Film Editing Winner: Zach Staenberg) The Matrix became best known for its phenomenal and revolutionary visual effects - airborne kung fu, 3-D freeze frame effects with a rotating or pivoting camera, and bullet-dodging ("bullet-time" and "Flo-Mo"). This action film became a smash hit, featuring elaborate fighting and stunt sequences with complex editing.
Final Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X 10.1, runs on Intel-based Mac OS computers powered by OS X version 10.9 or later. The software allows users to log and transfer video onto a hard drive (internal or external), where it can be edited, processed, and output to a wide variety of formats. A fully rewritten and re-imagined non-linear editor, Final Cut Pro X, was introduced by Apple in 2011, with the last version of the legacy Final Cut Pro being version 7.0.3. Since the early 2000s, Final Cut Pro has developed a large and expanding user base, mainly video hobbyists and independent filmmakers. It had also made inroads with film and television editors who have traditionally used Avid Technology's Media Composer. According to a 2007 SCRI study, Final Cut Pro made up 49% of the United States professional editing market, with Avid at 22%.[1] A published survey in 2008 by the American Cinema Editors Guild placed their users at 21% Final Cut Pro (and growing from previous surveys of this group), while all others were still on an Avid system of some kind.
24 is a serial drama which stars Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, focusing on the efforts of the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit, and their efforts to protect America from terrorism plots. Each episode typically follows Bauer, officials in the U.S. government, and the conspirators behind the events of the day, often simultaneously. The episodes take place over the course of one hour, depicting events as they happen, in real time. To emphasize the real-world flow of events, a clock is prominently displayed on-screen during the show, and there is a regular use of split screens, a technique used to depict multiple scenes occurring at the same time.
d. Sam Raimi Film Editors: Arthur Coburn, Bob Murawski Geeky, bespectacled Midtown HS senior Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) had recently been bitten by a "genetically-designed super-spider" during a school field trip to Columbia University's Science Department - and was soon transformed.
d. Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund (Best Film Editing Nominee: Daniel Rezende) Covering a period of two decades (from the 1960s to the 1980s), this auteurist crime-drama film told about the Cidade de Deus, a violent slum-ghetto section of housing projects in Rio de Janiero. There, a young fishmonger's son grew up amidst gang warfare and drug-dealing.
Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based video editing software application. It is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes video editing, graphic design, and web development programs. Premiere Pro is used by broadcasters such as the BBC[3] and CNN. It has been used to edit feature films, such as Gone Girl, Captain Abu Raed and Monsters,and other venues such as Madonna's Confessions Tour.
SR: The scene where Jake [Sam Worthington] flies in on the Leonopteryx and becomes the savior of the Na’vi was a scene that nearly broke the performance-capture system in terms of working with the number of crowd extras. The Na’vi have their own very distinct language, and Sam was having some problems with his speech in this scene; there was too much space between his lines and the rhythm was off. Stephen Rivkin.John Refoua. Jim is very particular about the accuracy and inflections of the language and wanted the pauses to be in just the right places, so editorially we had to cut Sam up so that he spoke in the right cadence. However, that created jump cuts where he would jump forward spatially, and it just didn’t flow. Sam wasn’t available, so we brought a stunt double onto the Volume stage to walk the scene and give us a smooth, fluid walk up the stairs with the same expression in his hands and body motion that Sam would have had. We then mapped Sam’s original performance face onto the face of a stunt double, using a stitch FPR to lose the pauses. Later, we had Sam come back for some conventional ADR just to smooth out the pronunciation. But the process allowed us to make this important scene flow smoothly.
The Earth was ravaged by the Formics, an alien race seemingly determined to destroy humanity. Seventy years later, the people of Earth remain banded together to prevent their own annihilation from this technologically superior alien species. Ender Wiggin, a quiet but brilliant boy, may become the savior of the human race. He is separated from his beloved sister and his terrifying brother and brought to battle school in orbit around earth. He will be tested and honed into an empathetic killer who begins to despise what he does as he learns to fight in hopes of saving Earth and his family.
Director: Alfonso Cuarón Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone - tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.
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