Film editing entails choosing, organising, and modifying visuals and audio to form a unified story. Film editing has a long and illustrious history that dates back to the beginning of cinema when films were shot and presented in real time without any opportunity for editing. This article will highlight its evolution and its types.
The History of Editing
During the decade of the 1910s, the first methods of film editing emerged thanks to advancements in the production and distribution of moving pictures. The cut was the simplest editing, consisting of substituting one shot for another. Likewise, the dissolve and fade were developed to facilitate the cutting between two pictures.
During the 1920s, a new school of thought formed in the Soviet Union called Montage Theory. Soviet montage theorists like Sergei Eisenstein held that juxtaposing pictures with little to no connection to one another might cause the spectator to form a new interpretation. Popular examples of films that made effective use of this method include Battleship Potemkin and October.
Many of the Soviet montage techniques were adopted by Hollywood in the 1930s. The goal of continuity editing, a staple of the Hollywood editing technique, was to provide an uninterrupted storyline that seemed authentic to the audience.
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