Editing

Before Editing

Like almost every basic idea about movies, the idea of editing has its precursors. Flashbacks had existed in novels; scene changes were already part of live theater; even narrated sequences had been a part of visual culture from medieval altar triptychs to late nineteenth-century comic strips.

But the very earliest filmmakers were afraid to edit film shots together because they assumed that splicing together different shots of different things from different positions would simply confuse audiences.

Even the middle ages had its version of editing, as this church altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Altarpiece (ca. 1476), shows. The piece gets you from one scene to the next via simple cuts.

"Primitive" Editing

Filmophile's Lexicon

Shot: The basic temporal unit of film photography and editing. A shot consists of the celluloid used from the moment a camera begins rolling on a scene to the moment it stops.

Sequence: A number of shots edited together and unified, either through the plot, the character(s), the time and/or space, or the theme.

However, filmmakers quickly discovered that editing shots into a sequence not only contributed to the audience's sense of tale, but also enabled them to tell more complex stories as a result. You can see primitive instances of editing in films like Rescued by Rover (Great Britain, 1904) and The Great Train Robbery (1903).

Early on the cuts were made in the camera, so that the cameraman would simply stop cranking at the exact end of a shot, and begin cranking again when it was moved somewhere else, or when something else was put in front of it. This kind of editing could allow for some early special effects. In movies he is making at the turn of the century, Georges Méliès stops the camera after detonating a magic puff of smoke in front of his actor, then begins the camera again after the actor has left the stage, making it seem as if the actor has magically vanished.

What are the purposes of editing?

At the most significant level, editing form determines meaning in a film in the same way that the sonnet form helps determine meaning in poetry. In most Hollywood films, editing helps determine at least four dimensions of film narrative: in what order you receive information about the plot, how much information you are supposed to receive about the narrative, how you are supposed to feel about events and characters at any given time, and how you are supposed to experience the pace of the narrative. In addition, as the idea of montage suggests, editing can serve an intellectual function, often making aesthetic, political, or ideological assertions about the activities you are seeing, as well as emotional appeals. This latter activity tends to belong more to the world of avant-garde and experimental films.