role of the editor

1. The editor often regarded as the unsummon hero of film making it is the editors job to meticulously
go through the individual shots to create a motion picture. Film editing is sometimes referred to as
the "invisible art" because when it is well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he
or she is not even aware of the editor's work. The job of an editor isn’t simply to mechanically put
pieces of a film together, cut off film slates, or edit dialogue scenes. A film editor must creatively
work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors' performances
to effectively "re-imagine" and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole.The role of the editor

2. First prepare for the editing by analyzing all shots
Cutting on the action
Or Cutting on cross frame movement
Cutting to empty frame and letting subject come in
Cutting to secondary action by tilting to main subject
Cutting on an emphatic part of dialogue

Editing techniques

3. Story telling
Before sound came into film silent movies used cut to
subtitle pages narrating what was going on.
The major milestone that brought about ‘’talkies’’ and
an end to the silent era was the 1927 ‘’the jazz
singer’’ essentially the first musical. Was the first
motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequence.
The film was based on day of atonement which was
a play written by Samson Raphnelson. However was
met with much controversy because of its blatantly
racist content.

4. The impact of sound
 The location mixing: is the editing of all the live sound. The mixer tends to record what is really
only a mixed reference track for the editors, while simultaneously recording separate tracks
of each isolated microphone to be used in the actual post production mix.
 ADR – automatic dialogue replacement or “looping”. ADR is the recording of replacement
dialogue in sync with the picture.
 Walla or “group loop” – Additional audio is recorded for groups of people. This is usually for
background sounds, like guests in a restaurant.
 Dialogue editing: The dialogue editor will take this cut and break out all individual mic tracks.
They will make sure all director’s cues are removed and they will often add room tone and
ambience to smooth out the recording.
 Sound effects editing/sound design: For example, the villain’s lair might always feature certain
sounds that are identifiable with that character – e.g. dripping water, rats squeaking, a
distant clock chiming, etc.
 Foley – Foley is the art of live sound effects recording.
 Music – In an ideal film scenario, a composer creates all the music for a film.
 Laugh tracks – This is usually a part of sitcom TV production and not feature films. When laugh
tracks are added, the laughs are usually placed by sound effects editors who specialize in
adding laughs
 Re-recording mix – Since location recording is called location mixing, the final, post production
mix is called a re-recording mix. This is the point at which divergent sound elements –
dialogue, ADR, sound effects, Foley and music – all meet and are mixed in sync to the final
picture. On a large film, these various elements can easily take up 150 or more tracks and
require two or three mixers to man the console


5. Important people in the development of
editing:
Dw Griffith one of the more controversial names
in the history of editing for having made the film
‘’birth of a nation’’, he also introduced
techniques such as parallel editing (an editing
technique whereby cutting occurs between
two or more related actions occurring at the
same time in different places) he influenced
other famous directors such as kuleshov and
ended up coining what came to be known as
‘’classic Hollywood editing’’.

6. In Russia Kulshov one of the first editors in the
1920s saw editing as a the essence of cinema
and could be duplicated by no other medium.
He argued that putting a film together was like
making a building brick by brick, he is also
clamed to have established the montage
which would become popular as far away as
Hollywood. He went on to establish the worlds
first film school ‘’Moscow school of film’’.

7. The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, were sons of
well known Lyons based portrait painter Antoine
Lumière. They were both technically minded and
excelled in science subjects and were sent to
Technical School. Louis developed a new 'dry plate'
process in 1881 at the age of seventeen, it became
known as the 'Etiquette Bleue‘ after taking ideas
from Edison's kinetescope in 1895 the two made
there own device patenting it on February 13th
1895, the Cinématographe.

8. Sergei Einstein was another Soviet film maker
who was a former student of kulshov however
they disagreed on the ideas of montage. He
went on to direct Battleship Piptemkin which
was a dramatic version of the mutiny aboard
the Piptemkin in 1905 under the Tsar regime. It
was considered one of the greatest films in
history thanks to its use of montage editing, it
went one to inspire an entire style of editing.