You have attended sporadically and joined
the course late but you seem to be enjoying the subject and linking well with members of your creative team.
You need to discuss the principles of
video editing as well as the history. You need to reflect upon your own films
and how they demonstrate the principles of film editing.
Deadline of Friday 16th October
to get two assignments completed, neither of which are pass standard as yet.
The kinetoscope was a early motion picture exhibition device invented by Thomas Edison also the inventor of the light bulb. This was the first time that a moving image was seen and ever created.This was made for films to be viewed by one individual at a time and the viewers would have look through a little whole at the top. The kinetoscope created the illusion of movement by conveying strip film with a sequel of images held over a light source. The kinetoscope did not project the images but this did create a step towards projection. This is the sort of films that you could see through the kinetoscope...
As you know that we could not all see this at the same time, it would be one at a time as it is using one light source to show the moving images and there is no possible way of projecting with one singular light bulb without any other devices. we can tell this from the video as there are little jumps and bubbles in the images shown in the video and hardly any lighting which makes the images to be quite dark and quite hard to see. But this is what you would see if you watched
The style that would be used for editing at this point in time would only be placing and cutting the images together to create the a fluent short film. However what material they had it didn't exactly come out as planned as the light bulb would shine more light through more and some parts so you might up with some parts with crackles.
Lumière Brothers 1985 arrival of a train
The Lumière brothers were the first to bring early motion picture of projection to the the film industry which was the cinematograph which is a camera and a projector. Their inspiration that gave them the idea to create the cinematographic was Thomas Edison's invention of the kinetoscope and to start them off they looked at the errors of the kinetoscope and saw that the main error with the kinetoscope was that only one person could see it at a time. So they invented the cinematograph which brought projection to cinema and dismissed the error of only seeing a film per person, now people can see films at the same time. Their most well known film for using the cinematographic was a black and white, silent documentary called the arrival of the train. This was first shown to the public January 1896 but this was filmed in 1895 one year before public viewing. The arrival of the train was important and became so popular because people were so overwhelmed with the train coming towards the the screen but made to seem that it was coming to towards them that they reacted in terror and ran to the back of the room screaming. This particular film made history as the film became very popular as people could not stop talking about how good the film was. The Lumière brothers were well know for their cinematograph but was also know for creating illusions using angles that they placed the camera in. Lumière Brothers were one of the first to experiment with camera angles to create different effects and that is why the the arrival of the train is so famous because it uses a variety of angles like long shots, to establishing shots, medium and then a close ups. This changed the film industry and inspired many directors to do similar effects.
In camera editing the Lumière brothers only moved the camera for each shot and recorded in camera and they didn't use editing to change anything about the shots that they used in their film, it was all first hand filming.
George Melies- 1903. A trip to the moon.
when the Lumière brothers first brought out the cinemagraph, George Melies was in the audience when it was first shown in January 1896, he was inspired by them and wanted to change filming just like they did but with his own twist by using theatre props and setting. He also used dissolves to show the duration in the film took a while to plan to go to the moon and invent a rocket.
George Melies was one of the first directors to use dissolve, painted sets, animation, play on screen,cuts and not have the camera static through out the whole of the film. He placed it in many position and different angles to give more effect to the film. He also used illusion and magic and that was what his life revolved around about when he was in theatre.
when this video was being created it was used with the camera being set in the middle of the room to face the whole scene like you would as if you were in a theatre. this was also done with similar editing and was cut down for to those parts that was needed for the film. You can see where the cuts are put in place as you can see a jump when jumping from frame to frame.
Edwin porter 1903 the great train robbery.
Edwin porter tried to create his own projector and camera however did not succeed and went back to Edison company as a director and producer and then further down the line he created a film called the great train robbery. This was one of the first movies that had long shots and separated shots put together to create continuity within the film. This changed new cinema and inspired a lot of directors after his time.
Sergei Eisenstein (Russia) Strike 1925
Eisenstein was the first to create montages which is a series of images placed next to each other to create a meaning. Eisenstein was the first director in the 1920's to create a montage because he believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images you could learn a situation or about character.
When we did our own montage we created one about a guy failing in the gym but seems to be really confident with what he is doing. We created this in in stages like the warm, stretches then weight lifting. The montage really explained the stages of warm up and the actual exercise and using a montage help manipulate time because if we were to do this as a film it would have at least been 20 minutes plus but because we have done this in small shots and images it has shortened the film but has told the same story just in a shorter film.
Walter Merch
Manipulation of diagetic time and space. He used a dissolve effect to show that the beginning of apocalypse now was a flash back of what the person at the beginning has seen. At the beginning you see a quite tropic jungle and hear the sound of a helicopter and then a load of explosions happen disturbing the peace. At this moment in the film the song "the end" by the doors sing the lyrics this is the end. This give the impression of that there is a war and the fact that their is no more peace to in the area any more. A solider is lying a bed and is starring at the ceiling fan and this dissolves on to the helicopter paellas repentantly shared between the images of the ceiling fan, the helicopter and the man starring at the ceiling. This represents that even the small thing can set off shell shock for this man and this explains how devastating this war was for anyone involved. Also over this we have the sound of the paellas constantly played through out the scene (diagetic sound) to emphasis the sound of the helicopter and what the ceiling fan reminds him of.
We did our own dream sequence based on manipulating time and space. Our piece was based a student worried about an exam and started revising but he fell a sleep and then had a dream that he was late to his exam. Apocalypse now gave us the idea as in the film its a flash back representing the past. We wanted to do something similar by doing something in the present. That the dream was to make you think that he was late to something like an exam but he walks into the room where he is revising.
MTV editing.
This is fast paste editing that are different cuts place together to create a fast paste film.This includes fast cuts and flashes of the cuts. This was introduced in the early 21st century was used a lot in most country's like America and most ME DC's ( more economically developed country's). The clip below shows a lot of camera angles and a lot camera cuts. For example...
In this clip we can the fast changes between clips. This expresses the rush that the chicken is experiencing and all the action involved. This also represents how fast the people have to work and how busy it is in Rio. This shows the change in the type of filming type and how it has changed from slow pace filming to fast choppy editing.
Bibliography
I skimmed and scanned three secondary sources to find
out more about video editing but mainly video editing montages. With these
three sources I found out that montages are used to go over along period of
time demonstrating history or a period of days create a series of events or a
time line, however they cannot be used to create or show emotion between
characters but are used to effect emotional or intellectual responses from the
audience. They were first created by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925 and since then
he inspired many with his creations and now they have became complex and
intensive. The way they are used in films today is usually put in
The purpose of my research is to find out the meaning
and the purpose of editing and how it has changed over past 100 years. I have
used many resources to use in my research that explains a lot about the history
of editing from websites, books and articles.
This website explained the principle of montage
editing and the purpose and what it wanted to give/ get from the audience. It
also explained that Eisenstein inspired a load directors and the development
of a montage has become so complex over the last 100 years.
The grammar of the film language
A book By Daniel Arjjon
This explains how parallel editing works and has
diagrams to explain what it’s mainly used for. For example, you have cameras
set parallel from each other and captures different parts of the scene e.g.
camera A captures the left side of the close up and camera B capture the
close up on the right side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope
I used this as evidence for Thomas Edison’s
kinescope and this explained how it was used, when it was invented, how it
worked and what people thought of it.
This told me about the cinemagraph and told me about
that the Lumiere brothers were inspired by Thomas Edison to use his idea of
creating film but so everyone can watch films together.
I used this website to understand George Melies
history of how he got in to filming and who inspired him and what he used in
his films that made him successful.
