The Art of Editing!

Editing films is truly an art, and it has evolved over many years. The Lumiere brothers who were from France, started making movies around 1895 and they were known as the fathers of documentaries. In the earlier days, single extended wide angled shots were used to film the footage, this did not allow for much variety of shots in the film. This did not change for quite a while because filmmakers were afraid of confusing audiences by re-positioning the view of an angle. Continuity editing was used to achieve logic, smoothness, sequentiality and temporal and spatial orientation of viewers to what they see on screen. A very significant film was The Great Train Robbery, it was an important step in the documentary world because there was a part where the footage zoomed in on a man and he shot the screen, which was unreal and never done before in history. There are many different ways to edit a film. Montage editing which was pioneered by the Russians around 1920 is the juxtaposition of images to create meaning not found in either individual shot by itself. In other words, one meaning plus a second meaning equals a third meaning. Another way to edit is to do parallel editing; this is when you go back and forth between people. Then there is discontinuity editing which is when the cuts are more like a collision that a smooth transition. It drags out the shot by shooting the people in a variety of different shots and the finally pieces everyone together at the end.