The history of an editor
since my report will be on how to get a job in the industry of editing, i wanted to take a look into the history of the profession and how it has changed through the years, including the changing of technology and what the role has also changed from cutting bad takes to visually creating things through editing.
editing started almost at the same time at the creation of film, with a man named Edwin S. Porter, who had theorised that you could invoke the emotion of the audience through cutting and removing parts of the film reel. For example, one of his more infamous films, The Great Train Robbery (1903) was edited entirely through cuts . What is also surprising about The Great Train Robbery is that the entire film consists of 14 shots. Porter had introduced to the film industry the idea of "shots" including panning shots, tilts and the first use of the close-up shot. the leader of the bandits actually appears in medium close-up as he fires his gun at the camera.
technology of editing of the time, editors would use a device called the movila, invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924 which would help view the film stock as the film was edited by hand, by having physical film reels cut and taped back together to edit, unfortunately editing was more seen as a technical job rather than a creative one so the people that were hired for the job weren't considered creators. Unfortunately. women could not even break into any form of creative role in the film industry such as directors or cinematographers because they were considered roles for men sadly enough, however creative women used the platform as an editor to put their mark into the creation of the project. other editing machines such as a flatbed editor which had a monitor to help view the film reel and the steenbeck editors which also work the same way as the flatbed, however with the advent of sound, which was made through a magnetic track. Once the editing sequence is finished the reels are then sent off to the lab to be processed
Present day editors have the luxury of having access to multiple forms of editing software such as final cut pro, avid and adobe premier to make the editing process run alot smoother and to digitally send the projects through a USB and emails