EDITING AND FILM HISTORY

LUMIERE BROTHERS
in 1895 the Lumiere Brothers invented Cinematographe. Cinematographe was a three in one device that recorded, captured and projected motion picture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nj0vEO4Q6s

EDWIN S. PORTER
After Lumieres great invention Edwin S. Porter came along and showed that film didnt have to be one long still in 1901. Edwin S. Porter also used footage to tell a different story unrelated to what the footage originally was meant to portray. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0gJ7BnLc

GRIFFITHS FILM
. In 1908 D.W Griffiths film For Love of Gold featured the first ever continuity cut. Griffiths then realised that emotions could also be portrayed through different camera angles and pace of editing and it wasnt all down to the actors. Griffiths was given credit for the narrative of a film, the production of the first American feature film and the discovery of the close up. This is his first directed one reel film... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQCTEYjYDA

Between 1910 and 1920, American filmmaking shifted to Hollywood. Leading directors such as Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments, 1923), Ernst Lubitsch (The Marriage Circle, 1924), and John Ford (The Iron Horse,1924) offered a variety of genres---epics, romantic comedies, and westerns. Mack Sennett pioneered film slapstick with the Keystone Cops and introduced English comic Charlie Chaplin. Portraying the forlorn "tramp" in The Kid(1921), The Gold Rush (1925), and others, Chaplin became one of the first international movie stars.

SOUND
The 1927 U.S. film The Jazz Singer introduced sound to movies, revolutionizing the industry worldwide. Genres requiring witty or action-oriented dialogue, such as gangster movies and screwball comedies, gained primacy, as did extravagant musicals. The American studios, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, and Warner Bros., honed a "studio system" that produced a steady stream of films and stars for Depression-era audiences seeking escape. American stars of the period included James Cagney, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, and Katharine Hepburn. The system reached its apex in 1939, with dozens of nowclassic films, including the Civil War epic Gone With the Wind (1939).

CREATING MEANING THROUGH COLLAGE TEMPO AND TIMING

Joining images is a type of editing form in which, several clips are joined together to create meaning, like a montage,Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first to use this editing style in this sequence, of Psycho to create tension and make what a boring scene would be more exciting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvPqSRLO5Ms

TEMPO
Tempo has to do with the speed in which a scene is moving, whether its fast pace or a slow pace. Editors use the control of tempo to manipulate the audiences attention level depending on the feel of a scene. For example in the James Bond film Casino Royale the chase scene is fast in tempo which makes the audience excited and anticipating the outcome. Tempo switches rapidly between long shots and slow edits with the longest cut lasting 23 seconds and the shortest a single second. Recently shots are increasing in pace in direct contrast to The Golden age of Hollywood. The mean shot timing was 5.15 seconds it is now 4.75 seconds.

FADES
Fades normally fade into black or white before actually going to the next seen. They rarely occur in modern day cinema but when they do it is to create a clear transition into memory, fantasy, dreams, flashback or flash forward

STORY- CENTRED EDITING AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING

Editing and spaces have to do with closeness of the shots, for example if scene in a film were consisting of a conversation between two friends talking in a small room, the shots they would be cutting between would mostly be close-ups and medium shots, this is to emphasise the small space and closeness between the characters. In the opening chase scene of James Bond Casino Royale the shots that are used are mostly long shots, extreme shots and birds-eye-views, these shots create the illusion of wide open space.

 Films like Fight Club and Limitless are the perfect example of media res, which is a type of narrative that doesnt follow the traditional conventions of a normal film narrative of beginning, middle and end. All of this had to do with a linear or none linear editing arrangement of events, the arrangement of events. The arrangements of events can be altered from the traditional linear order for the reason that; it adds mystery and a sense of wonder to the film and also the film makes more sense this way

 Cutaways are usually used when there is a conversation between people and a different situation is happening in the same scene and moment, this allows the audience to receive two sets of information at once. Cutaways are used to link inanimate objects or scenery with the current situation of mind. Cutaways are used very often in the movie U-Turn by Oliver Stone

One key characteristic of soviet montage movies is the moderation of individual characters in the centre of attention. Single characters are exposed as members of different social classes and are representing a general category of people or class. Soviet montage is important as it conveys variety in characters and separates them, allowing the audience to tell apart the importance of each characters role in the film.