Research the development of editing technology

The earliest know films in cinema were done in one shot without any editing however cutting began to develop very quickly after this. One of the first film to have a cut in it was called 'Life of an American Fireman (1903), directed by Edwin S. Porter. With the use of a camera being inside the building and then having a camera set up outside of the building as well, this demonstrated the use of editing for the first time, cutting two shots together.

Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view a film while editing it. This machine is the first ever to be capable of showing motion picture while editing and was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924. In 1920, the machine cost around £600 so in 2019 that would be about £7,700, as a result of the price, not many moviola's were sold.

The Moviola

Flatbed Edit Suite is a type of editing machine used with motion picture. The process starts from images and sound rolls being loaded onto separate plates, each set of plates move individually or they can be locked together to maintain being in sync while as image and sound. A prism reflects the images onto a screen and then a magnet playback head reads the audio tracks. Many films are shot on double-system so the audio and sounds are separate, the flatbed edit suite allows the editor to synchronise the picture to the audio. The two most common brands of this machine are the Steenback and the K-E-M (Keller-Elektro-Mechanik) these two machine were both invented in Germany in the 1930s. This machine also give the editor a chance to highlight when a cut is needed so he is able to mark on the strips to pin point this.

Linear is a post-production process of selecting, arranging and modifying images and sound in a predetermined sequence, it was the only way to edit video tapes before and this technique was used a lot in television. Then in the 1990s, non-linear editing was created which gave a new technique of editing that allowed an editing software that allowed original copies to be saved incase the editing went wrong in any way. 

Offline editing went along the same lines as non-linear editing as it saved a copy of the original, creating a safe back up. However this editing was much faster as the video was converted to computer hardware so it was able to be edited more more updated editing software like adobe premiere or final cut pro. Online editing allows the editor to edit video tape recording using different computer softwares, softwares like videocassette recorders, letting copies being made of recording that were once a one time thing.

The Digital Era:

CMX 600 is the first non-linear editing system, it was produced in 1971 and was referred more as RAVE (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 is a computerised analogue NLE system which was developed by Lucas film 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 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 was based on an Apple Macintosh II computer with special hardware and software designed by Avid installed.

Modern Editing Software:

Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based video editing software application developed by Adobe Systems and published as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing program. First launched in 2003, Adobe Premiere Pro is a successor of Adobe Premiere (first launched in 1991) and it is geared towards professional video editing. I was used by BBC and CNN for feature films such as Gone Girl, Captain Abu Raed, and Monsters.

Final Cut Pro is 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.