Editting - Final Evaluation

As a general evaluation of editing, I believe my editing skills have grown and improved massively throughout the year as I started with a. basic knowledge of editing from working with editing in film studies as well as doing it as a hobby. Although I still have a way to go before it is prefect and doing these practical projects across the year has certainly developed the skills I already had and helped me to see what I need to improve upon. The main issue I have run into is not having enough time/poor time management. I wish I had the opportunity to show my improvements within this area however with my promotional video brief having to be changed last minute due to unforeseen circumstances I never had the chance to show I could improve this. one thing I would change throughout this unit would be reshooting the short film project for film studies as it could have been such a good project If I didn't run into complications.

In Conclusion the work I have done has improved my editing from where it was to a standard that would help me to work at a slightly more professional level however it has many improvements to make before it is a level that would be acceptable in the industry.

Editing - Lableing clips, footage and bins

Unfortunately due to a wipe of my footage from my hard drive on my laptop and no access to the backup stuff on the college computers due to the current situation of the lockdown. I am not able to show where I have have labeled my clips etc.
However I understand the importance of using them as it helped to show the footage that I had in a concise form where I could see which footage was useable and the folders in which I would be using for each project.
An example of doing this is down below found from : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hur3G1h4LlY (accessed 10/06/2020)

Editing - Evaluation of the year

During the year, I was tasked with editing together different pieces of practical work that I created, the software I used throughout this course was Adobe Premiere Pro. To start this unit off I researched the history of editing software while slowly moving on looking at the software I would be using and how to use it to do this is looked at different YouTube tutorials and online help as well as help from peers. Using what I had learnt I created a number of projects for the completion of the course.

The first practical editing tasks were the four hour film challenges we did to help us learn the proper use of premier pro and how to edit under a strict time limit, this helped improve my editing skills along with the time mange mat skills for the practical side of things. For this, I created 4 short films shot and edited in 4 hours, in personal opinion they weren’t the best but helped me to develop the needed skills and learning of using the software. My first short film I was tasked with using different camera angles in a unique way to help me develop my skills and to get me to think about different shots and how they would be edited together create a unique perspective for the viewer. The next short film I developed was based around Jump Cuts, we chose to use the Wii Music that is played in the background on the console. In this video, I edited the jump cuts on the beat helping me develop my skill editing in a unique way and also looking at editing to audio tracks. The third short film I created was editing based, in this short film I had to use footage found online to edit together a music video, this short film drastically developed my editing skills allowing me to be as creative as I wanted and not limiting me with footage that I could shoot. and the final was a challenge to create a silent film, looking at using grains and filters to create a look of films that were seen in the 1920s.

Other than the main set of challenges I also used premier pro for the Music Video and the New wave film, for the Music video I used my knowledge of grains and editing to the beat from the challenges and created a somewhat successful edit with the footage I had, even though I was lacking in footage to edit. the new wave film I looked at films from the new wave era and the style ion editing and tried to implement the same techniques editing the footage into chapters. as well as this I looked at a practical way of organising my footage into folders and naming the clips as well as seeing which of the clips were useable, because of this organisation editing was a lot easier as I wasn't trudging through hours of footage to try and find the clip that I wanted or needed.

Form my final project the editing was planed for however wasn't able to be done along with the practical side of the unit due to the lockdown in effect, because of this I couldn't use what I had learnt to show an improvement upon the mistakes that were made in previous projects.

in conclusion I certainly improved my editing as I started off with a basic understanding of how to edit and some of the features I could do with the effects, but over the corse of the year doing the little challenges helped me to broaden my view of what I could do with the software and gave me the chance to experiment and play with other effects, because of this development I have gained an interest in editing and when I take my education further I will be able to do a lot more with what I have available to me, and create a better product with any project I am tasked with.

Music Video - proof of time management

Music Video - First edit

Contextual Studies - American new wave film

EVALUATION -

The overall film doesn't scream new wave however taking inspiration from pulp fiction I wanted the audience to follow a story in chapters however the overall story doesn't have a strong narrative due to the time limit.
In this video the aim was to show a new wave film within 2 minutes. I chose to base my film around a normal day for myself when I am not at college or work, the reason for this was the fact that I had access to locations I could film easily in, I also based my video around a specific moment from pulp fiction, the car scene, with the unscripted dialogue and the long takes and jump cuts seen in new wave film.
Overall I'm not very pleased with my Film I believe the footage I shot could have been better and the narrative structure could have been better, as well as having more examples of typical new wave ideologies and techniques.

4 hour film challenge - unusual perspective

We were tasked with making a short film exploring a different perspective of what would normally be seen, in knowing this I based my film around a persons day to day life of going and sitting at a bench,  when shooting this I decided to follow the protagonist throughout the film using different angles and distances that could be considered unique for this sort of movement, such as extremely long shots from a weird angle or close up shots of the protagonists feet while walking. In editing this short film I learned how to create "bins" in premiere pro and learnt the importance of renaming and organising clips as it makes the editing process a lot simpler, especially if you are coming back and continuing with the edit at a later date, helping you know what shots are what and whether the clip is particularly useful or not.

4 hour film challenge 1920's

Contextual Studies - American new wave short film task

Brief - 

I am tasked with investigating a New Wave of my choice from a recognised era,  critically assessing the key factors surrounding a range of films and assessing the impact of their reception, alongside that I am tasked with creating a short film that is around 2 minuets long, demonstrating the techniques of the new wave I have been assessing, I have chosen American New Wave as my area of study for this assignment.

Planning - 

• Car scene, 
• Pub scene.      all of theses because of ease of accesses the weekend I will be filming will be at 
• Skating.          the last 2 locations and a friend has agreed to use his car.

• Long shots and jump cuts prominent in filming, due to the use of them in new wave film.
• Lack of script due to the objection of the conventions of classical cinema

Techniques of new wave

focus on crime and drugs
real conversations non scripted
jump cuts
punchy dialogue
mistakes
long takes
inspiration - the godfather and pulp fiction
In particular the car scenes

Narrative

my narrative changed over time, originally I was going to do a short clip about 2 guys buying drugs from a crime lord, however now realising the complications of such, with a limited time to film, I changed my idea to a simple 2 minute video of my weekend, done In the style of American New Wave Film.

Test Footage - 

This is some of the test footage I took, using a tripod and camera and adapting the iso settings to get some footage that looks natural, the dialogue in the videos is non scripted and is natural conversation between the subjects of the film,  the shots are a mix of mid and long shots focusing on a subject, and they are all long takes, in editing I will add them together including jump cuts and non diegetic sound in some places to add to the stylism of American New Wave.

Bibliography:

Pulp Fiction scene. Available at: https://youtu.be/LBBni_-tMNs (accessed 7 NOVEMBER 2019)

4 hour film challange - editing found footage

given the brief of using found footage to crete a short video editing to a given song, the song that was given was about you by xxyyxx. i found it hard to create a narrative using found footage, if i was to this differently next time i would choose a different song that would allow for a narrative, however creatively speaking using the editing skills from other tasks it was easy to edit to the music and the effect given was a creative effect and the feedback given from my peers was that it was .....

4 hour film challange - illusions

Given the brief of using jump cuts to create illusions, we chose to edit to a soundtrack of the popular Wii theme tune as it was easy to define the beats in which to do the cuts to, creating the illusion of people appearing and disappearing to the tune. For this we had a camera setup in the corner of the room facing to the other corner so the front of the room wasn't in shot allowing for a free space to use for holding props and keeping the actors out of shot, as well as making it safer to shoot stopping people from tripping over the tripod legs. the only health and safety risk we came across was when stacking things on tables like rolling chairs etc, but that was overcome by making sure we marked out where we were putting things. I feel like I could improve the video by adding more jump cuts to the beat when there are longer durations between cuts to stop the video from looking weird, however after getting feedback from the clip I was told that it made audience members laugh, showing that I got engagement from the audience and when doing a group critical analysis of the clip we agreed it was creative, we had Thought of sound first for ease of editing we used a tripod to make sure the camera didn’t move so we had a stable image however it was slightly out of focus, wasn’t the best footage, due to the exporting process so maybe we needed to use a different clip type.

Editing - Development of editing technology and techniques

Editing has many purposes, including telling a story, creating a mood or creating Atmosphere, all leading to the success of a video/ film.



Introducing New Information:
• A new shot should always present some new information to the viewer. In a motion picture, this may primarily be visual information (a new character / a different location) but it may also be aural (voice over / narration / important sound).
• Editing is one of the most important steps in making a film, it is essential for creating the desired mood, atmosphere and theme wanted by the director. Motivation:
• The new shot you cut to, should provide new information, but so should the shot you are cutting away from - For example, a shot of a man looking in the air in amazement, then the scene cuts to a shot of another man flying.

WHY EDIT?

Shot Composition:
• This is vital in making a scene make sense and keeping a scenes continuity fluent.
• This could be arranging clips in an order that helps the shot keep to the conventions of the genre and of film in general.
• E.g. using the 180 degree rule to help the scene make sense.

Continuity:
• Providing smooth, seamless continuity across transitions is a very important element in an edits.
• Making sure the sequence makes sense throughout, whilst keeping the scene interesting.

EDITING

•All of these conventions can amount to engaging the the viewer, creating motivation, developing drama, and creating pace.
• Overall, combining shot to create sequences gives us the basic term for editing, and doing it correctly can lead to very rewarding results for a film, advert, propaganda, music video etc.

HOW THE FIRST FILMS WERE EDITED

• The earliest films in the in the 1900’s were all done in camera, meaning there was no editing involved, and the entire film was filmed in the order would be seen in theatre, just one reel of film played at once.
• The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 Western film written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. Porter. 12 minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making.The film used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, double exposure composite editing, camera movement and on location shooting.
• Cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique for the time.Some prints were also hand colored in certain scenes. None of the techniques were original to The Great Train Robbery, and it is now considered that it was heavily influenced by Frank Mottershaw's earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary



THE FIRST 3 PEOPLE TO USE EDITING

DAVID GRIFFITH
• Considered the father of narrative cinema, D.W. Griffith practically invented such techniques like parallel editing, pushing them to unprecedented levels of complexity and depth.
• Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by Kuleshov and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.
• What became known as the popular 'classical Hollywood' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the 180 degree rule, Establishing shot, and Shot reverse shot.

LEV KULESHOV

• Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema — that which could be duplicated in no other medium — is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-byshot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.
• He was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School.
• Although editing innovations, such as crosscutting were used by directors in Hollywood before him, Kuleshov was the first to use it in the Soviet Russia.
• He studied the techniques of Hollywood directors, particularly D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett and introduced such innovations as crosscutting in editing and montage into Russian cinema.
• Kuleshov remained quiet about this part of his career when he experimented with editing technique. He focused on putting two shots together to achieve a new meaning.

EISENSTEIN

• Sergei Eisenstein was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.

Eisenstein describes five methods of montage in his introductory essay "Word and Image".
1. Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience.
2. Rhythmic - includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit.
3. Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots -- not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics -- to elicit a reaction from the audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation.
4. Over tonal/Associational - the over tonal montage is the accumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.
5. Intellectual - uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIGITAL EDITING TECHNOLOGIES AND TECHNIQUES

• Starting in the late 1970s to the early 1980s, several video equipments were introduced such as the TBC – Time Base Correctors and digital video effects units. They operated by using standard analog, it composed the video and then within digitalized it. This made it easier to correct or enhance the video signal.

LINEAR VS NON LINEAR

• In the early days of electronic video production, linear (tape-to-tape) editing was the only way to edit video tapes. Then, in the 1990s, non-linear editing computers became available and opened a whole new world of editing power and flexibility.
• Non-linear editing was not welcomed by everyone and many editors resisted the new wave. In addition, early digital video was plagued with performance issues and uncertainty. However, the advantages of non-linear video eventually became so overwhelming that they could not be ignored.

EDITING HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

A computer system comprises hardware and software.
Hardware is the physical medium, for example:
• Circuit boards
• Processors
• Keyboards
Software are computer programs, for example:
• Operating system
• Editor
• Compilers

TAPELESS EDITING

Tapeless editing is camcorder that is based on digital recording instead of tape. These are stored as computer files onto data storage devices such as hard drives and solid-state flash memory cards. • Most consumer-level tapeless camcorders use MPEG-2, MPEG-4 video compression or its derivatives as video coding formats. They are normally capable of capturing still-images to JPEG formats.


Early Editing

Early filmmakers were afraid to edit film shots together, this was because they assumed that splicing different shots together would confuse their audiences. They quickly discovered that editing shots into a sequence enabled them to tell more complex stories and helped the audience have a better understanding. ‘Primitive’ editing can be seen in movies like Rescued By Rover (1904) and The Great Train Robbery (1903). Cuts were made in camera to begin with, so the cameraman would stop filming at the end of a shot, and begin again when it was moved or at the start of the next scene. This could allow for early special effects, including George Méliès who stopped the camera after detonating a puff of smoke in front of the actor, who was moved and then the camera began recording again, creating the special effect of magically vanishing characters.

Moviola



Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view a film while editing, and was the first one for motion picture editing. Invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924, the company is still in existence and located in Hollywood. Originally marketed as a home movie projector, though this was too expensive for home use and was later developed into an editing machine. The machine itself allowed editors to study individual frames in their cutting room, this way they could decide more precisely where the best cut would be. Moviolas were the standard for editing, until the 1970s when Flatbed Edit Suites became more popular. Moviola Machines are still used by very high profile filmmakers, including Michael Kahn, who edited Steven Spielberg’sMunich on the Moviola.

Flatbed Edit Suite



A Flatbed Edit suite is type of editing machine used with motion picture. Images and sound rolls are loaded onto separate plates. Each set of plates moves individually, or they can be locked together to maintain synchronisation between the images and the sound. A prism reflects the images onto a screen, and a magnetic playback head reads the audio tracks. The most common flatbed editors are the six-plate which has one picture transport, two sound transports, and the eight-plate, which has two picture and two sound transports. Most films are shot on a double-system, which is where the sound and picture are recorded on separate machines. The sound is then transferred to a magnetic track (filmstock coated with magnetic oxide). The editor must then synchronize the picture and sound. The rolls are loaded onto the plates and the film and sound is advanced to find when the clapperboard came together. Once both have been located, a mark is made on both of the strips and the flatbed is switched into interlock mode, so both picture and sound rolls move at the same pace to keep them synchronized. When the editor sees a point to cut one shot away to another, he marks is on both strips and makes a cut in both and adds in the next shot. Steenbeck and K-E-M (Keller-Elektro-Mechanik) are the two most common brands of flatbed editors, and both invented in Germany in the 1930s.

Linear and Non-Linear Editing

Linear editing is a post-production process of selecting, arranging and modifying images and sound in a predetermined sequence, (also known as tape-to-tape) it was the only way to edit video tapes to begin with and was used a lot in live TV. In the 1990s, Non-Linear editing (NLE) computers became available and gave a new way of editing. This allowed the original content to not be modified, but the edits themselves are edited by editing software. Each time the audio, video or image is rendered or played back it is copied from the original and editing steps, keeping the original copy safe.

Online and Offline Editing

Offline editing is very similar to Non Linear editing in that it doesn’t modify the original raw footage, it is copied and then edited. The digital revolution has made the process a lot quicker for the editor, as they moved from video tape editing to computer hardware and editing software like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas. Online editing is the next step, online editors allow an editor to edit video tape recordings using computer software. The protocol used supports different devices like one inch reel-to-reel type C videotapes and videocassette recorders.

The Digital Era:

CMX 600

CMX 600: The first Non-Linear editing system, it was introduced in 1971 by CMX Systems, a joint company of CBS and Memorex, it was referred to as RAVE, or Random Access Video Editor. The 600 had a console with two black and white monitors, as well as a light pen which was used to control the system. The right monitor played the preview video, and was used by the editor to make cuts and to edit decisions by using the light pen to select options, which were over-laid on the image, while the left screen played the edited video. It recorded and played back video in analogue on disk packs the size of washing machines.

Edit Droid

The Edit Droid is a computerised analogue NLE system which was developed by Lucasfilm spin-off company, the Droid Works and Convergence Corporation who formed a joint company. It existed through the mid 80’s to the early 90’s. Edit Droid debuted at the National Association of Broadcasters 62nd Annual meeting in 1984, alongside the Montage Picture Processor which would be its competitor for many years. Edit Droid has three screens, one Sun-1 computer display, one small preview video monitor and a large rear-projected monitor containing the cut. It pioneered the use of graphical display for editing introducing the timeline as well as picture icons to identify raw video clips.

Avid 1

Avid/1 was based on an Apple Macintosh II computer with special hardware and software designed by Avid installed. By the early 1990s, Avid/1 began replacing machines like the Moviola and Steenbeck flatbed editors, allowing editors to edit easier. The first feature film edited using Avid/1 was Let’s Kill All The Lawyers (1992) directed by Ron Senkowski. By 1994, only three feature films had been edited using Avid/1, by 1995, dozens had made the switch, showing its popularity.

Modern Editing Software

Premier Pro

A timeline based video editing software app, used by BBC and CNN for feature films such as Gone Girl, Captain Abu Raed, and Monsters. Premier Pro’s Plug-ins allows for importing and exporting formats not supported by QuickTime and others, and supports a wide variety of video and audio files.
Final Cut Pro

A series of non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and later by Apple, the most recent version runs on Mac OS computers. The software allows the editor to transfer video onto a hard drive to be edited, processed and rendered to a variety of formats.

Bibliography -
constantinou.S. (2012) History and Development of Editing. Available at https://www.slideshare.net/stefan-constantinou/history-and-development-of-editing-14850912 (accessed: 8 september 2019)

Images sourced from :
Avid/1 - screenshot of video Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac1J1bLMucw (accessed: 23rd October 2019)
image available at: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/avid-editing-machine.htm (accessed: 23rd October 2019
Cmx600 - available at: http://www.vtoldboys.com/editingmuseum/offline.htm (accessed: 23rd October 2019)
David griffith - available at:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._W._Griffith (accessed: 23rd October 2019)
Edit droid - available at: http://belowthelinefilm.blogspot.com/2014/07/confessions-of-editor.html (accessed:23rd October 2019)
Eisenstein - available athttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Eisenstein (accessed 23rd October 2019)
Flatbed edit suite - available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steenbeck (accessed 23rd October 2019)
Lev Kuleshov - available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Kuleshov (accessed 23rd October 2019)
Premiere pro - Available at : https://larryjordan.com/store/229-adobe-premiere-pro-cc-the-lumetri-color-panel/ (accessed: 23rd October 2019)
Tapeless editing Camera - Available at:https://multimediaevangelist.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/new-sony-hvrz5u-tapeless-hd-video-camera/ (accessed: 23rd October 2019)
The great train robbery - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Train-Robbery-Poster-Movie/dp/B003SMABOC (accessed: 23rd October 2019)