Post-production, more specifically editing is a huge part of producing films, in fact without editing, films wouldn’t exist. Editing sounds fairly simple but it requires a huge amount of skill to get it right; after all, a film could be incredible but if the editing is rubbish then the film will be nothing more than bin material. Editing is just as important as all the fancy stuff like actors, sets and costumes; it can alter an audience’s perception of a film and influence them when they watch the film by using different conventions and techniques. For example, do you think jump scares in horror films would be just as scary if they didn’t use creepy music and didn’t build up any tension beforehand?

Of course, in the beginning of cinema, there wasn’t really such thing as editing, someone would just film something like a train going past and everyone would be so amazed at this moving picture that they didn’t care that nothing exciting was really happening. Eventually people cottoned on that watching a five second clip of everyday life wasn’t exciting and people lost interest in cinema, many thought cinema and video didn’t have a future, until the introduction of editing. Editing was extremely simple in the beginning, people would film a couple of scenes and then cut the film, sticking scenes together and therefore making one film with multiple scenes, eventually these turned into fully fledged stories that captivated audiences, and not just because it was a moving image. As time went on, editing developed and many editing techniques were born, often created by pioneers. Things such as in camera editing where a film would be made by just shooting in chronological order, so when filming was finished the footage would be taken out and replayed to show a story. Following the action is a widely used technique which is still heavily used, its purpose is literally to follow the action, it’s used to follow a character during an action or fast paced scene by focusing on the subjects in the scene, drawing the audience’s attention to it. Other techniques developed like multiple points of view, so that the action can be seen from multiple angles, this links in with shot variation where multiple shots are used to show the action. Pioneers such as the Lumierre brothers, who created one of the first motion picture cameras and one of the first projectors, and D.W Griffith, who created the first feature length film (more than 40 minutes) along with developing shots such as close ups and panoramic views. A pioneer named Sergei Einstein was the first to develop the technique of manipulating space and time on screen, so making time on screen speed up or slow down, not using natural progression of time. He did this by making montages, this is now a very common technique in cinema today, one of his most famous is in the film Rocky. This montage’s purpose was to show the character changing in a short period of time in real life but the audience understand that the period of time on screen is much longer. The way we record films has changed drastically too, up until about the early 00’s films were analogue meaning they would be shot on film, through the 00’s film was being used less and less and was replaced by filming digital, although many directors still prefer using analogue, as Quentin Tarantino once said “if I can’t shoot on film, I’ll stop making movies”.

  So, what is the purpose of editing? Other than the fact that it literally makes a film work. Well, these techniques enhance the film and make it a much more enjoyable viewing experience. Editing and its techniques are used to tell a story, after all, editing is used to put all the different shots (most likely not filmed in chronological order) together to tell a story, when a story is produced, that story’s purpose is to engage the viewer and attract the audience into going to see the film (bums on seats and all that jazz). However, attracting and engaging an audience isn’t always that simple, in fact it barely ever is, editing techniques like the ones previously mentioned are used to engage and interest the viewer, it makes the viewer become active consumer so that they interact with the film. For example horror movies, yes, a film can be scary in its raw form without any editing from the way it is shot and the settings, lighting and costumes used, but it will never reach it’s full potential until there’s a creepy soundtrack, jump scares left right and centre and a weird dystopian filter put over all the shots that makes the audience feel on edge. Developing drama on screen is also a purpose of editing, perhaps techniques such as following the action helps develop drama on screen think of the final fight scene between Harry and Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2, Harry and Voldemort both scramble towards their wands in slow motion, the use of close up shots and long shots build up the tension along with some pretty dramatic music in the background. I could use this scene for some other purposes, for example, relationship to genre is pretty obvious on screen there is a wand fight which uses special effects to show curses bursting from both wands towards each other and Voldemort eventually disintegrating and becoming basically dust (which may I add, doesn’t happen in the book so I’m still pretty annoyed about that – Voldemort’s horcruxes have been destroyed meaning he is nothing more than an ordinary man at this stage so why does he fly off into the atmosphere instead of dropping down dead?) This would never happen in real life so its pretty clear that it is a fantasy film. Compiling shots is key in this scene, the shots needed to be in chronological order, you couldn’t have Voldemort dying one moment and then crawling towards a wand the next, it wouldn’t male sense. The pace of the scene is also important, this also links to the manipulation of time and space, although we know the scene is probably happening very quickly it still happens in slow motion to increase the tension and to be honest, just to drag it out a little, Harry and Voldemort have been trying to kill each other for the past seven films, finally its happening, I don’t blame them for building up the tension by using slow mo and some funky music; it also makes the film more enjoyable, watching an evil dark wizard disintegrate slowly and dramatically into the atmosphere is very satisfying (unless you care about the accuracy to the book – then it’s just disappointing).  

Within editing there are a huge range of techniques, and in this paragraph, I’m going to mention as many as possible. To kick us off we have seamless continuity, continuity is important as it makes the film believable, continuity issues are not good, bad continuity is when a scene has things such as people standing is slightly different places in different shots, when in the scene they’re not supposed to be moving at all, so basically the scene looks unprofessional and very bad, the idea is to not let the audience know there’s a camera in the scene so they immerse themselves into the storyline, but when there’s shadows of cameras or a change of clothes mid scene, its hard to be fully engaged. Montages are another technique, previously mentioned, jump cutting is transitioning from one scene to another but not using effects like a fade out to make the transition more abrupt, parallel editing is when two scenes are happening at the same time, they can be related or completely unrelated, they are edited together using crosscutting (cutting away from one action to another) so that they kind of become one scene but in two different locations. The 180 rule is a big technique used on film sets, when filming an ‘invisible line’ is drawn out across the set and no cameras should cross this line, if they do, the film doesn’t look right, it feels weird – don’t ask me why, it just does. Transitions between shots like cut dissolve, fade, wipe, shot – reverse – shot, point of view shots and cutaways improve the film by making the viewer more engaged. Butting to soundtrack is also a big feature, using soundtrack is a key part of a film and editing to match the soundtrack just improves it, for example using short, sharp and fast shots with a quick piece of music and slower more smooth shots with a slow paced piece of music, this links in with the rhythm of the scene, it can aid enforcing the scenes rhythm and pace. Finally, editing can also influence how much information an audience has, it can provide or withhold information, an example of this would be in the film Truly Madly Deeply where at the very start of the film, character Nina is describing hearing her partner’s voice telling her to do things such as to walk in the middle of the road at night when she feels scared, how to brush her teeth properly and to lock the backdoor, when she describes these activities she is doing those things on screen and her voice is a voice over . A voice then interrupts Nina’s and asks “how long ago did Jamie die?”, the scene then fades into a scene where her partner, Jamie is playing the cello, it is now clear to the audience who’s the voice was telling her what to and that he has died, so Nina is hearing the voice of her late partner Jamie.

So, what is the purpose of editing? It is no longer just putting different shots together in a chronological sequence, it is so much more than that. It engages the audience and makes the film feel more believable, it makes the audience laugh, feel scared, sad and happy. Without editing the cinematic world would be a much duller place and probably would have met its end in the late 19^th century, luckily for us, some clever bloke came along and started sticking lines film together and making a story out of them, cinema was never the same again.