1. The History of Editing
Throughout the years in film editing there is a major difference since the first film up on till today.
Films have been gradually getting better as the years passes by. The films are getting more creative
and more understanding to the audience and attracting a lot of attention especially when they
designed colour TV which was in the year 1954.Even before colour when it was black and white they
were still attracting a lot of people because they were used to watching films the way it was
designed back in the years but now the audience has grew because of the coloured film it is more
easier and interesting to watch. Even today I would not be able to watch a black and white film this
is because I am not used to it and it will be very tedious. It is not just the colour that has changed
through the years it is also the editing that has changed since 1877 till today back then there was no
editing at all it was just one shot throughout the whole film just. For example do you know when
you’re at a concert and you’re filming it you’re not cutting it and it’s just all in one shot throughout
the concert that was basically what films were then back in the 1800s but obviously in black and
white.
Down below us a timeline of how film/editing has changed throughout the years.
Year Name Example
1800’s Lumiere Brothers The First film ever created was
by the lumiere brothers in 1895
The film was called
L'Arriveed'un train with no edits.
1903 Edwin Porter First signs of editing are shown
in films around 1903 for
example Edwin Porters film The
Great Train robbery The edits
used were Cutting by using a
splicing machine.
1915 D.W. Griffith In 1915 D.W. Griffith was the
first person to use a range of
different shots in a film after he
used shots such as close ups in
his film ‘Birth of a nation’ This
changed film in a major way, as
the techniques are even used
today. Jimmy Edward Smith
was Griffith's film cutter.
1924 Erich von Stroheim In 1924 Editing has gone on to
add colour to certain parts of
films, the way they did this is by
individually colouring each shot
by hand.
1956 Henry Ephron By this time films were in full
colour and film makers started
introducing advanced
techniques such as flashbacks
and parallel editing etc.