Editing history and Techniques

Editing history and Techniques 


1930's
there were two machines called the Steenbeck and Moviola, these machines were used to cut up film clips to make them shorter and to fit them together and move them around, if you wanted to move a clip somewhere else you had to do something a long the lines of this.

Television 

November 2nd 1936. 
BBC started to transmit the worlds first public service but just four years later 1940, after it being public it had to be turned off due to world war II, this is because the economy had to supply for the military, this stopped the mass production of Television for five years until 1945.

1948
the first US commercial Broadcast was used on television and the media loved this, it was something that was huge

1950
Everyone could start to watch TV, News broadcasts and Programmes in their home, these shows where recorded live in the studio with lots of cameras, these cameras were hooked up to a switcher, these cameras were hooked up to this switcher, the switcher allowed them to switch between different cameras, different angles. The switcher then sent signals to different affiliates and other parts of the TV network so that they could broadcast it

But the problem with this is that everything has to be done live, so if they messed up that could not be fixed, unless they had a delay between them being live and public broadcast, like a 10 second delay or something like that.

They then turned to something called a kinescope that was focused onto a video monitor then broadcasted, sounds simple but it was far from simple, it had problems such as banding and ghosting, ghosting is when an image is still on the screen when it is indeed not supposed to be there, banding is were lodes of colours in formation contrast in lines on the screen

1951

NBC and CBC had a coast to coast network, they produced a show in New York at  8pm EST and kinescopes in Los Angeles that were 3 hours ahead of them, they would record the signal through the network which they had and they shown that 3 hours later west coast time, this was called 'hot kinescope' its called that because the film did not have a chance to cool down from the development process before it was being sent to be aired.

1954

The TV networks were using so much raw kinescope footage, more than every hollywood company combined, this was because of the demand for TV was getting higher and higher fast. The networks were desperate for a change in cost because it was costing them $4,000 per half hour and in 2013 money that is $33,000 dollars.

Videotape

Magnetic tape had been used for years before hand but it had its fair share of problems like getting video images onto a tape

Back to 1951

Ben Crosby has engineers working for him for his production company, they were first to record images onto a tape, they were the first to prove this was possible, even tho it looked terrible, it was still images on a tape

1956

After five years of hard work and a lot of problems to overcome they finally released the first commercially available video tape, it was a two 2 inch Quadruplex Video tape Recorder, sales were amazing when they showcased it at NAB convention in april of 1956, there was that many sales they had to take orders on napkins. CBS were the first ones to put the recorder to use and they did that on November 30th 1956, with a delay broadcast of "Douglas Edwards and the News"

1957

On january 2nd 1957,  NBC's game show "Truth or Consequences" produced in hollywood was the first ever  Television programme to be broadcasted in all time zones on a pre recorded tape.

1959

The videotape got bigger and was almost accepted everywhere in the TV industry, In summer america information agency did a america national exhibition to show off how far they have came to the russians, this included things such as a fully suited up kitchen and a model TV studio with a ampex video recorder.

July 24th 1959

Vice President Richard Nixon invited Nikita Khrushchev, to visit the display. he joined nixon infront the cameras for a photo opp and the video tape technology, this turned into a political argument in front of the cameras, this was soon to be known as the kitchen debate.

CUTTING TAPE. LITERALLY

Originally, video was edited by visualizing the recorded track with ferrofluid and cutting it with a razor blade or guillotine cutter and splicing with video tape, in a manner similar to film editing. This was an arduous process and avoided where possible. When it was used, the two pieces of tape to be joined were painted with a solution of extremely fine iron filings suspended in carbon tetrachloride (Reference)

and you had to do all of this without even knowing which frame you were on. because it was incapable of holding still frames.

NBC develops a work around using tried and true kinescopes, for work prints not work prints, they would edit the shows using kinescopes film print, it had audio cues which could match to the video tape when they were splicing it

ESG (Offline Editing)

editing with a lower quality version and then essembeling the original with that edit, this technique was used in Rowan and Martins LAUGH IN in 1968, it required 350 to 440 tape splices and overall over 60 hours of physical splicing just to finish one episode, this ended up being the only program to use this technique extensively.

Linear Editing

if you had two video decks you could transfer them one to the other and build up a show with lots of different cuts, before it became popular, it needed something to help it a long

1963

Ampex released the editec, an all electronic video-tape  recorder that had a micro processor that could control in and out points marked by audible tones, by this time helical scan VTR's were coming more popular, they wrapped a tape around a spinning read head so you can fit more bandwidth which allowed you to pause on frames, made editing a lot easier.

1967

SMPTE Timecode

SMPTE Timecode developed by EECO and developed by society of motion pictures TV engineers, this gave each frame an address, what time it was on, minutes, seconds and which frame it was, this made it even easier, if you wanted to edit creatively you would have to go back to film, this was because of EDL (editing decision lists) that marked in and outs to be used, if you changed the beginning then you would have to change the rest of it.

Non Linear Editing

More of a natural way of editing, you can move clips around, be more creative. For this you required a computer power and Fast Data Storage

1771

the first NLE was the CMX 600, which recorded half resolution black and white video files onto washing machine sized disk packs, the whole thing cost just a bit over $250,000 each, only six were ever produced

1984

The Editdroid, made by george lucas spinoff company, droidworks, which pulled footage off laser disks, which did not work that well at all, the company shut down in 1987

1988

EMC released the first offline non linear editor, with the data stored on optical disks

1989

the avid/1, an macintosh non linear editing which then became the most used to edit in Hollywood for editing, but storage was still an issue, they could only editing short music videos and commercials

1993

engineers added more storage to an avid system and dayviewing a 7 terabyte system (7,000 Gigabytes) capable of adding a feature length film, these were being edited offline, the reverse of NBC'S EGS method they used low quality digital files to create a work cut and used a time code from that work cut to create an EDL which was given to the film lab to assemble the original film prints

The first studio filmed cut which was filmed in avid was "lost in yonkers" in 1993,

1997

Editor,  Walter Murch received an oscar for best editing in the film the "the english patient"

unfortunately I can not write more about the history starting from where it was and where it is now because of time, I will talk about the machines they used and so on and also this.

• The purposes of editing: how we create pace and engage the viewer through editing
• The conventions of editing: continuity, jump cuts, the 180 degree rule, dissolves (uses of), shot-reverse-shot, cutting to a sound-track

when you cut something, how you make it edit it and so on has to match the story the majority of the time, what is going on, for example if there is a horror scene, someone is behind a door waiting for someone you might keep a still shot of that person waiting for the person to come up, you would not make lots of cuts, different camera angles every 3 seconds or so. this is to build the tension of what is going on in the scene, it is was attracts people to carry on watching, this is why the style of the editing is essential that you get it on point.

and for the pace you also have to have that on point with the storyline, make sure everyone knows what is going on, you can do this by the kind of shots you use, let people know what is going on,kind of guide them through the film or use hints, so they get the guide of what is going on in the movie.

as you can see in this scene from the hobbit, it has great pace, it keeps you up to date with whats going on, they show them in the barrels and them legolas fighting, they go scene to scene them in the barrels to legolas fighting, keeping you up to date, 

The 180 degree rule.

this rule is crucial, as you can see in this image it looks like they are sitting side by side from each other, which they are, but if you use but the camera on the other side of one of them, so each shot is on a different side, one of the right and one on the left, it would not look as right, like they are talking  with each other, this is called the 180 degree rule, its when you dont go the full 360 degrees with the camera, you keep the camera on one side and dont put it on the other side, it makes things look better, like they are actually interacting, this is not just used for simple interaction shots like this.

you can use it for things like this, he is getting a gun aimed aimed at him, look at their eyes, its gives the effect that they are making eye contact with each other, if you put the camera on the other side you would still get this effect but it would be a lot less effective, this is why its crucial to remember things such as this when you are angling your shots.

Dissolves

dissolves are sometimes what you use to lead one scene into another scene they are many other ways you can lead a shot into another but I will be talking about this one, in the first part you can see where it dissolves into the next scene, it does this because of the pace of the scene going on so it just leads you into the next one slowly, so editing, pace and dissolving all come together pretty much, in this video it also shows other things such as other kind of ways you can change scene to scene, you can just skip straight to it, but for this kind of thing it mostly works with a scene that is kind of fast paced, because if you get a random dissolve in a fast paced scene, it can ruin it, it just goes from fast to slow and it does not work in most cases.

Reverse Shot.

reverse shots are when you imply the 180 degree rule to a conversation or some kind of confrontation, like in this scene, you can see when the camera is over the shoulder of the person who is getting spoken to and the camera is aimed at the person who is talking, this is to show who is talking and who they are talking to, because the camera is over the shoulder of the person who is getting talked to, this is used a lot in movies, because not everyone knows a lot about film shots, they just wanna watch the film, so it indicates and hints them through who is talking and so on so they know and it also works well in movies.
                                                                                                               
                                                                                           Cutting to the soundtrack

It is important that you cut to the soundtrack, the music, for example in this trailer for the movie TAKEN 3  it has a lot of scenes which cut to the soundtrack, for example from the first minute in to 30 seconds later, you can see the cutting that is rather slow that matches the soundtrack and then it speeds up because he is fighting, this is also gotta do with pace. Lets say you have a fighting scene and you put a very slow paced song over it, it simply will not give out the right effect you want your audience to have and it simply will not work, this is why cutting to the soundtrack when you make a movie or anything such as this you need to cut to the soundtrack, if you have one, otherwise it just will not work most of the time

Pre-Production Assignment

Film Script:

A film script is the main pre-production sheet because it supplies the story its self because it has the story written on it, showing what the actors lines are and the shots for your film if you want to add that into your script or you can have a shot sheet separately.

The software that I have found that is most efficient for writing Scripts is Adobe Story , its not something you download, just simply type  in google 'Adobe Story" and simply sign up, you can make get adobe Story plus but that costs. Here

It also supplies what is going on in which scene, for example if you had a car driving past a guy waiting to cross the road, you would write something a long the lines of "Dan(17) waiting beside the road for the road to be clear for him to cross". When you first mention a Character you have to add his age next to his name like I did above, this helps people imagine what age you need for that character.

I have made a scripts but I am not sure in which mine are 100% correct, so I will provide an example of a script that I believe is correct.


Here it shows you what kind of things you need to add into a script such as, the dialogue is the characters talking, the voice over which it says, each member of the cast gets a script sheet with their lines on. It makes things more efficient if everyone gets one, everyone knows their lines, you can get that scene shot a lot faster.




But when you start a Script always add your SLUG LINE first, that is where your film is based, inside or out door, what location and time of the day, ALL IN CAPITALS

Then  the action part of the script which you might add more through out your script, this explains what is going on in the scene and the characters, you need this to let people know what you are wanting and it makes things much more organised

You add the camera action by clicking on 'shots'

Then you have your Transitions, this is when each scene changes to different scenes, there is different kind of transitions you can use, you can just fade it, you can fade it into another scene and you can fade it into one scene whilst you can see the previous one at the same time

Storyboard:

Story boards are one of the first things you do when you make a film or something like that, it helps you understand what is going on each scene, you get a piece of paper and you draw squares on it, each square is a shot, or you can simply download a storyboard template and just print it out.

Heres how its done. Lets say for example you have one scene of two people talking, having a conversation, you might have two different shots for that, if it is just two people talking, your first shot will be one persons shoulder, the camera will be aiming at the person who is talking and the opposite for when the other person is talking. The reason you have the camera at  this angle so it gives you a sense of where the person is who which they are talking


When you do your story board under it you are best off explaining what is happening so you can see it and you can also read it so you get more of a evil of what is going on in that certain scene.

Also write about what kind of shot it is, if its a close up, say its a close up and say what it is a close up of.

Also if there is any voice over, you might want to add that into it, so you also know what that person or persons is saying at the time of that shot.

mostly in companies with money to spend for example the warner bros, they will get someone else to do their story boards.

But if you do your story boards yourself, make sure you are at least okay at drawing, so people understand what is going on in that scene

Script Breakdown:

A script breakdown is pretty much a sheet that helps you identify what's in your film, it is things such as equipment like what camera that will be used, the cast members for your film and so on. Each scene has its own script breakdown in some cases

When you do a script breakdown, it makes it a lot easier if you have a copy of your script for that scene, grab one of these sheets which has  a certain colour for every element such as, cast, props and special effects, each colour represents a different element.

you should do this part first, mark out each word with the colour that is represents for example lets say a part of your script says "Andrew(21) grabs the baseball bat and lunges at Daniel" you would mark it as equipment


why do you need a script breakdown? 
you need it because it makes things much less stressful than it needs to be because you have everything marked down of what you need for your film.

Think of it like a shopping list, a shopping list helps you remember what you need, if you don't have it, you might forget something, this is the same with a script breakdown it is like a shopping list, it tells you what you need for your film.



Here is the script breakdown sheet you will be using, this is where all the information about what you identified you needed for your film. It has categories on it, from cast to special equipment, this makes things much more organised and you can identify what you need very easily.It is essential to have a script breakdown when you are write a script.











Budget:

There is different kind of budgets in the film industry, you can get big companies such as lionsgate which will have huge budgets for there films that are in the millions per a film something such as 25 million per a film sometimes even higher.

then you can get average companies or just someone not a company, there  budgets might be in the thousands, maybe £50,000 or a bit more than that.

And there is some films that were made on for example $100.  This is the low end of the film industry.

But overall I dont think it matters about your budget, but in my opinion you gotta atleast have a little bit of money such as £500, like I was saying it doesn't matter because as long as you have a great crew and directer with an amazing script you can pretty much make an amazing film and people will still love it and won't be able to tell it was made for so cheap.


For example the movie 'paranormal activity' was made for an average of £15,000 and in the movie industry that is really cheap. it was made by two companies which were Solana Films and Blumhouse productions.

Blumhouse had a first look deal with Universal Studios, below I have a reference explaining

"In the film industry, it is an agreement between a writer and an independent producer (production company) or an independent producer and a film studio in which the potential buyer (producer or studio) of a not-yet-written script or in-development movie or television project pays a development fee to the writer or producer for the right to have the first look at the new material before others in the industry get to see it, and at that time make an offer to purchase or distribute or adhere to purchase or distribution terms already stated in the agreement."(REFERENCE )

The company Blumhouse produces films such as Paranormal activity, this is what they specialise in, horror movies.

Paramount then bought this movie and the rights for it for £350,000  but they changed the ending for it.

The film earned 108 million at the box office alone and then it went international and earned an extra 85 million for a huge total of 193 million profit. It is the most profitable film ever to be made.

Risk Assessment 

One of the most important things before you make a film or something on TV as such, you always need a risk assessment, this is required by law. It covers you if you have an injury, if you do not have one of these things will be a lot worse

What is the purpose of a Risk assessment?

The purpose of a risk assessment is to keep everyone on set safe, you write down all the risks on the set that you may have, this can range to some outrageous stuff, from tripping over a wire on set to falling out of  a car.

when you write these you have to cover certain areas of it.
 Lets say we had a scene where a guy is kicking a door to get inside, it will be something like this, you will have who this will effect, what the hazard is and in this case the hazard we are going to write about him kicking that door, what measures you can put in place and how you can eliminate the problem of him getting hurt, you would write something such as use a material that brakes easily to avoid injury, When and where this is going to take place, also give it a rating of risk out of five and you have to say if this risk is applicable to this certain scene, after you have figured the hazards out, this goes without saying but put them into action.

when you have risk assessments you got to do one for each scene, figure out the risks for each scene and explain why they are risks and everything I have explained above,


and also never do your risk assessment after you make your film or that scene, because if someone gets hurt and you have no proof that you took precautions to stop that things will get much worse for you.

If you wish to find more about risk assessments check this site out, Here

Clearances for actors and locations

Clearances are very important because without them you will not be able to air your film, why? let me start at the beginning. If you hire some actors you will need a clearance for them, you need it because it is a sheet that is an agreement between you and the actor that lets you film them, If you don't have a clearance from that actor you could get sued and overall your movie will not be aloud to be aired on TV, The Movies or anywhere in general, unless you have that clearance proving that they allowed you to record them to appear in your movie.

Clearances for movies are kind of the same in a way, just a little bit different. When you go record in a place, lets say you want to record a scene in Mcdonalds, you will need a clearance from Mcdonalds that says they allow you to record in their restaurant, this goes for any place that someone owns, someones house, anything, but if you are filming in your home or somewhere you own, you should be fine to film there, this is not just for establishments, it is also for public places such as parks,

If you are filming a minor, their parent/guardian will have to sign for them to be recorded otherwise the footage is unusable .

In some cases if you record someone and the footage is blurred so you can not see their face you should be just fine, it is vital that they can not be recogn

ised, but its always better to be safe and just get their clearance anyway.

Also you need a clearance for using music but that delves into copyright also, so I will introduce that later in this post

When you are asking for clearance for a certain location the form will look something like this but you explaining what you want from them.

Unfortunately I can not find an actor clearance form but it will also be kinda like this but them signing that they agree to be on screen

I found this site extremely useful, I would recommend it. Here






Insurance

Insurance is for the actors and you need it for your equipment.

Heres an example for actors, lets say you are doing a scene when a guy jumps out of a moving car and he injures his self or worse and you don't have no insurance in place, you are hopeless, you will not get any coverage for your injuries, this is why it is important to have insurance, it covers what happens to you whilst you are acting

you need it for equipment for multiple reasons. Lets say you are filming outside and it randomly starts raining and you have your equipment is also outside with nothing covering it and it breaks, there goes thousands of pounds worth of equipment and nothing covers the cost of it, you will have to buy it all again yourself, but if this happens and your equipment is insured you will be just fine.

there are different kinds of insurance, that cover different things that you may need varying film to film.

"Employers’ liability insurance – a legal requirement. It insures employees in the event of bodily injury, disease or death arising out of their work and must be referred to in an employee’s contract.

Public liability insurance – cover for your production in respect of injury or property damage caused by the production’s activities. It is usual to have cover up to £5 million.

Negative insurance – protects against additional production costs incurred through the damage or loss of stock.

Errors and omissions insurance – covers a producer in the event that a production is sued for libel, slander, breach of copyright, invasion of privacy, unauthorised use of trademarks and slogans.

Props and sets insurance – particularly important if you are filming in an historic building or hiring props and vehicles.

Hired equipment insurance – required if you hire any equipment. Without it, you will be expected to pay for a policy arranged by the hire company." Reference

 Lets say you are  injured whilst doing a shot of running and you fall over something that really should not be there in the first place, for this you would need employers lisability insurance and you will need 'Public liability insurance.  You will need Employers liability insurance but it is legal, you got to have it and you will need public liability insurance because you were injured during production.

Public Domain

Public domain is when everyone can use it reproduce it in any way as long as someone has not already invented it, this is usually when something has expired from its copyright, anything under the name of that film like merchandise, anything pretty much under that name will also fall into the public domain. Normally how this happens is if the maker of it dies but it does not fall into public domain until 70 years after that person has died.

Why does it last after death?

From what I have read, it gives the maker a incentive to do more work and not worry about his/her work fall into public domain after they die, well not until 70 years later, but that is a very long time 

Lets use two examples.

William Shakespeare: 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616

Back then copy right was not introduced, it was introduced in  1710 april 10th, it was introduced when they built the queen anne statue, the purpose they did this for was to protect the work of authors. Overtime they have extended copy right to everything now pretty much, it has grown greatly. But when it was introduced his work fell straight into public domain because his work was not applicable because he died before it was not introduced, this given him no say in the matter anyway.

Sherlock Holmes Stories (Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle  22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930 AUTHOR) 

Sherlock Holmes is the perfect example, because in america not all of his work is in public domain yet, portions of the rest of it will enter until 2023 (In case you are curious) but here in the UK everything is in copyright already, it entered copyright in 2000 

this is because it is 70 years after his death so it fell straight in to public domain, it is different in America because Life + 70 years (works published since 1978 or unpublished works. Reference) so this added a couple more years onto his copyright.

Creative commons

Creative commons is when, lets say for an example, someone records a short video of some clouds and they want to share that to other people so they can download it and use it but leave some rights for them self's such as the ownership of it, this is used in a lot of areas of media, such as music and photography.

People do it for exposure usually, to get them self's out there, to be known, because after they get known, they may wanna put a price tag on their work, sometimes people just do it out of the kindness of their heart.

There is different areas of creative commons.

• There is attribution, you let other people copy your work and use it for their needs and also display it but to do so they have to give credit the way you request it.

• There is Share a like, you let others distribute derivative works but the only way they can do that is if if its under a licence identical and it represents yours

• There is non commercial, this is pretty much the same is attribution but the work can not be used for commercial uses.

• Also in this one people can copy your work, modify it and distribute and perform only verbatim copies of your work, but no derivative works upon it.

• lastly there is public domain dedication, people can do pretty much anything with your work, copy it, modify it and distribute it and they can do all this without your permission.

The mostly used one I can imagine would be attribution because it lets people use your work and do as they please but give you credit, I think its this because it seems like it will be less hassle and I can imagine it keeps everyone happy, it gives the author exposure and also the person who has used your work.

Copyright

copyright protects you from people using your work without your permission for them to do so, it keeps you protected from that and if they do so there will be consequences such as you could sue them, in some cases that person could go to jail. You shouldnt have to renew your copyright, unless you registered before january 1st 1978 then renewal is option after 28 years,

In september, Disney sued Deadmau5 a music artist for copying their logo, claiming it looked the same as theirs, it kinda does but it does not look exactly the same as theirs, Later throughout the week Deadmau5 sued them back for using a track that he had made without him giving permission for them to do so, this is still going on and it has been going on for a while, but surely Disney will come out of this on top because of how huge they are. If you want to know more about this. Click here