A major Hollywood production
typically shoots over 200 hours of film. An editor can spend several months to
several years analyzing and crafting the raw footage into a two hour movie. This is the life of a typical film editor. The
history of editing and the developments of editing are explained in the
documentary “The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing.”
Sean Penn said at the beginning of
the film, “Great editing skill will protect the director from suicide.” In
order to get a point across in a film you need to have quality cuts and without
them a film won’t make sense. At the beginning of cinema, filmmakers held shots
until they got bored or the film ran out. It wasn’t until a man named Edwin
Porter who worked for Thomas Edison discovered that cutting certain shots
together could make a story. Porter
showed off his editing skills in his films “The Life of a Fireman” and “The Great Train
Robbery.” The invention of editing is the reason cinema grew and continues to grow
today. The documentary interviewed
several professional editors and directors. It also showed not only how to edit
but also all of the different techniques and styles of editing through examples
in cinema history. As an editor you must always know that every single frame is
important. Too many frames or too little
can either make or break a film. There needs to be the right amount frames to
either scare or amuse the audience.
I was really fascinated with the documentary
as I got to witness the secrets of the editing process. It was also really
interesting to see the many different styles of editing for a wide variety of
films like Psycho, Jaws, and Gladiator. These were just three out of the many
that were shown throughout the movie. As
someone who wants to one day become a professional editor I was overall fascinated
with the world of editing and how much work is put into it.
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