Editing technology history

Editing technology history 

editing technology, just like film itself has grown more advanced, precise and complex throughout its life, editing technology can be traced back to the start of film making itself, around 1890 along side the creation of the very first camera, the cinematograph, film around this time was essentialy one long take of a unremarkable subject, the context of the film itself was irrelevant for the audience, as the marvel of an animated photograph was enough to satisfy, it was only by accident that the very first primitive form of editing was discovered, a theatre owner by the name of  Georges melies was filming a bus leaving a tunnel, however his camera jammed half way through the recording, when the camera began to roll again the bus had disappeared and was replaced by another automobile, upon developing the footage, he was shocked to see that the bus he was originally filming had instantly changed to the automobile instantly, this can be considered the first use of the jump cut, a cut in the film which there is an abrupt transition in the scene. after this revelation, that film could be more than a static uncut shot of raw footage, he began to develop more complex techniques in his editing, including fade in and fade outs, overlapping dissolves and stop motion photography. with these new techniques he began to push the medium of film from mundane single shots, into a narrative story telling vehicle. this can be considered the birth of film editing. 

another historical event that could be considered the birth of cutting in editing would be the technique of photographer Eadward muybridge, who would take hundreds of photos of subjects in motion, whether it be a horse galloping, or a running man and layer the pictures next to each other to visualise various subjects in motion, he would then showcase these pictures in a device he created called the zoopratiscope, a machine that would spin and show each photo rapidly, giving the impression that it was a genuine moving image. 

the process of editing would stay relatively primitive for the years to follow, until 

a device called the moviola in 1924, a device that allowed film editors to view a film whilst editing it, created by iwan serruier. the moviola allowed individuals to study individual frames of a film reel in a cutting room, allowing an editor to precisely determine where the best cut-point might be. many high profile studios quickly picked up on the use of the moviola, and studios such as universal studios, warns brothers and charlie chaplin studios quickly adopted the moviola for its practicality and precision. the need for moviola products only increased as the application of sound, and larger film stock became more readily available, the need for portable editing equipment during world war two also expanded the use of moviola products. 

moviola products were used for decades until the creation of flat bed suites around the 1970’s, 

flatbed suites are a piece of editing equipment used to join film negatives and audio together on a single film reel. since the audio and film during this time was recorded separately, the editor must combine the two together to synchronise them, the editor will load the film reel onto a metal spinning plate, and the audio reel onto the plates magnetic counterpart. the editor must then find the exact point in both reel where the ‘clapperboard’ (the tool used to mark the beginning and end of a scene session) and conjoin them together. this then creates a single film reel in which the audio and film is perfectly synchronised, any further editing after this has now been dramatically simplified as the editor only has to locate one point to cut rather than two. from this point in history, the flatbed editing suites were used religiously by editors and film studios for its accuracy and precision, but during the 80’s and 90’s editing turned to the digital era, film reel was growing obsolete as digital editing allowed for more freedom and experimentation when editing. the very first digital editing tools was the Avid 1 media composer create in 1981, the avid 1 was a software tool designed on apples macintosh 2, the software played video as a motion jpeg codec, which was the primary video codec used during the 90’s, whilst the video quality wasn’t very high, the avid 1 made up for this with a focus on accessibility and ease of access, meaning that for the first time, editing and in turn film making could be brought to individuals interested in amateur film making and editing. 

modern editing software has almost completely replaced the tradition flat bed suite or moviola, since a digital format allows for pin point precision cutting and accuracy, modern editing tools such as premier pro and final cut now allow for a wide range of digital effect to be added, along side colour and lighting correction, which result in a more professional and slick aesthetic, comparing this to the traditional film reel  filming, the ability to alter the visuals themselves makes it obvious why there was such a drastic shift to digital editing. 

film editing has come along way since its primitive origins in the 1980’s, with its static, mute visuals all the way to 2017.