Monday, 24 March 2014

Unit 16 - Development of the Principles of Editing



Development of the Principles of Editing

How Editing has developed over time


Early Development in Editing - 1895 - 1910s
Antoine Lumere was father to Auguste and Louis, the Lumiere brothers, both of the boys were technically minded and went to Techical School. Their father owned a business which manufactured photographic equipment. Louis and Auguste worked for the company and began experimenting with their father's photographic equipment. They both helped the business develope and become sucessful. By 1894 Antoine was a well known businessman and was invited to Paris to watch a demonstration of Thomas Edison's Peephole Kinetoscope. The kinetoscope was a large box with a viewfinder. The box would have a 40ft long film reel which would move past the view finder to give the illusion of movement. 

Returning back for Paris Antoine asked the brother to experiment with film. The brothers identified two key prolems; the size of the kinetoscope and the camera used to film the footaged was massive as well. Secondly only one person could watch the film. With this in mind they set out to make their Invention. In 1895 made a device which comined the camera, Printer and Projector and it was called the Cinematographe. It weighed around 5kg and this was down to it's clever design which was enharsed by Louis's idea of using a device similar to a sewing machine. The Lumere brothers keep this secret and had private screenings. 


Brighton Pioneer
George Albert Smith was a British film pioneer and he played a very important role in the development of film editing. George saw the Lumere brother's camera in London after seeing it he got a camera of his own. In 1896 he acquired his first film camera and in 1903 he made a short film called “The Sick Kitten” in this George cuts to a close up of the kitten, which helped the development of film narrative by showing details and emotion. Geogre developed early edting techniques we use today. 



Edwin S Porter
In one of this short films “Life of an American Fireman” in 1904. He use cuts between to scenes to link them into one story. This is know as crosscutting. In one shot we see firemen rushing around and then in the next we see a scared women trapped in a room. With these shots next to each other it looks like the firemen are coming to help the woman. This evokes the audience to be concerned for this women’s safety.   



Hollywood Style

File:180 degree rule.svg
Pioneers like D.W. Griffits and Edwin Porter all helped establish Continuity Editing 'Hollywood Style. This Hollywood style focuses on a character that has a goal which to achieve they go on a journey which will involve problems for the character. At the end they will meet their goal but they would be slightly changed by the experience. To help the audience understand the story the film will be edited with rules and techniques to help the flow of the film. Techniques like starting the scene with an establishing shot so the audience knows where the scene is set. Also when people are in a room together the 180° rule is used. This is when the camera never goes across an imaginary line between the characters. This means that the characters are on the right side of the screen looking the right way, meaning the viewer is not confused. They used shot reverse shot when people were talking and close ups to highlight emotion.
 
Soviet Montage Theory / Discontinuity editing - 1910s - 1930s


Kuleshov Effect
In Russia Lev Kuleshov worked at VGIK (Moscow Film School), which used film not to entertain but to get their audience to support political parties.  It also looked at the sociology of film and how film can make people react by moving around shots. The Kuleshov workshop (Kuleshov’s class) looked at D.W Griffiths’ Intolerance and broke it down shot by shot and rearranged them to see the effect that different edits have. This let to the Kuleshov Effect, this was a test where he use a shot of a man with a plank face and then put a different image after to see the effect.















The French New Wave - 1950s - 1960s


Nouvelle Vague was a term given to new French filmmakers of the 1950s and 60s. Some of the most prominent filmmakers were: Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard.

They promoted the idea of auteur theory. The director is the author of his films and they put their personal signature visible from film to film.

New wave film were linked by their self-consious rejection of the literary period pieces being made in Paris. These directors did not want to use the same old actors. They wanted young actors. These filmmakers had smaller 16mm camera, this allowed them to film on the street. The directors would also use long takes which involved the actors improvise dialogue.The filmming was more about the image rather than the storyline development like in Hollywood.

Because of these changes towards filming it allowed for the editior to became a big part of the production. Editors would have long pieces of footage that would not link to other pieces. This meant that the editor would create the story.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) was directed by Alain Resnais and edited by three people. It was a French New Wave film that used this type of editing style.

New wave outside of france
New Hollywood - Robert Altman, Martin Scorcese, John Cassavetes, Francis Ford Coppola

Key Films - Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight cowboy, Easy rider, Eog day afternoon, Chinatown

New Wave / New Hollywood
In the 1960’s young filmmakers were graduating around the world and they learnt all about the early pioneers, continuity and discontinuity editing. Directors like Martin Scorcese, John Cassavetes and Robert Altman were making films which used everything that they had learnt. Their lower budget films used styles and tecniques like the Russian discontinuity style, French new wave and old Hollywood style. This lead to them having a younger audience.    

Increased use of Computer

Since the birth of the computer it has helped editors work, save and store work easier. Also with the increase of technology editing is cheaper. Avid was the first editing software and it was a breakthrough in the way a editor works. It replaced the need for tools like the Moviola, Steenbeck, and KEM flatbed editors. Other companies like Apple introduced Final Cut and Adobe released Premiere Pro. The development of Premiere has allowed professionals and consumers to edit cinema HD footage at home with the use of computers. Editors can start projects can be saved online at home and can be accessed by people around the world with Adobe Creative Cloud. Before computers editor would work in a linear style where they would have to stich the footage in order by hand. Now they use non-linear where they can move footage around the project timeline freely. They can also copy and paste footage and effects easily. A modern editor will now have to edit greenscreen, sound, fxs, backup data and export different formats. This would have been done by a group of people before the increase use of computer editing. After the project is finished it can be exported to be uploaded online on a website or shown at a cinema. 

Monday, 10 March 2014

Unit 8 - Developing Technologies


Developing Technologies

The television is one of the fastest expanding rapidly in recent years and it is getting quicker. At the moment there is lots of talk about 4K televisions, this is still new and expensive technology and already there is talk about 8K. This means 4K TVs are going down in price. Samsung only make three 4K TVs and their biggest 85’’ comes in at £34,999, which is a lot but their smallest 55’’ cost £2,799 which is a lot less money and still a big 4K television. 
But this is the talk of today lets go back to the start. 
In the mid 1930s, there had been inventors around the world all making serious attempts at making the first television. Eleven different countries competing, many of these pioneers had no success; a few however were able to produce a TV image and were hailed as the 'inventors' of television within their own countries. 
In 1936 Britain had one channel and that was BBC, at this point televisions were expensive and it was not until after the 2nd world war when family across Britain had a television like the Decca or a Pye. In 1955 ITV started and nine years later BBC 2 launched. Families stayed three channels until 1982 when channel 4 started. Four years later in 1986 there was 24 hour TV. This meant that people wanted to consume more and more TV. 

Terrestrial TV
Analogue terrestrial broadcasting was upgraded to analogue digital terrestrial. HDTV broadcasting began 2006. 

Satellite 

Satellite technology was developed in the 1960's. BSkyB started subscription services in 1990 at £8 per month. It now has 1000 channels, plus IPTV services.

Internet
At the end of the 1990’s the Internet was all around the world in every building. British inventor Tim Berners Lee developed the idea for linking scientists’ computers together so they could communicate to each other and share information.  It was so effective it spread around the world. From 1994 to 199 web users increased from 3 million to 200 million. In 1993 Mosaic, the first web browser was developed, Netscape and Internet Explorer followed. The Internet is developing all the time, as it has now become a daily necessity in the modern world. Emailing and using Skype are very fast useful tools for commentating compared letters, which takes a lot more time to get a reply.  The Internet is very helpful because of the time it safe for people like doctors and other professionals.  

IPTV 


Internet Protocol Television is a TV systems uses a household Internet connection to was "catch-up" and "on demand". This lets people with a Skybox connect it to their broadband to watch programs, which they have missed or want to watch. Viewers can also store their favourite shows to their Skybox. This merges the modern world's two addiction televisions and the Internet.  Smart TVs also allow an Internet connection to easily watch BBC iPlayer; 4OD and they also have TV Internet services like LoveFilm from Amazon and Netflix.


Netflix are using this rapidly pushing for 4K shows, which is confusing people because 4K televisions are still not that accessible but because of this push it will make Netflix’s competitors also feel a need for 4K and this should help make 4K more affordable. 

So Whats Next?..


Well the development of IPTV will continue and the price of 4K should get lower because there will be more shows in 4K. Also the development of OLED and curved TVs that will allow viewers to watch two shows at once from Samsung. Then Sony has a head mounted display, which gives the illusion of a 750" screen. And of course there are rumors of an Apple resealing their own TV. 


In this interview Apple CEO Tim Cook talks about how he wants to improve the TV and that he thinks people are not happy with the TV experience and he asks "can we control the key technology". 

When looking for evidence of the development on this product i read a Yahoo News report saying... "A company with expertise in high-resolution display technology that could be used for big screen TVs was forced to admit that one of its largest clients is Apple".


In the interview they talk about how many people use the IPad to consume Television. So we could also be seeing an IPad Pro with a larger screen than the current IPad Air. 



Apple is also in partnership with many car manufactures such as Volvo, Ferrari, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and more companies joining like Ford, BMW, Jaguar and others. This touch screen interface will be called CarPlay and will let you use features from your IPhone safety.