In this blog post I will be going through the detail and plan of my presentation as well as going through some thoughts of my chosen profession: Editor.
Before editing, storytellers had their own way of mixing and cutting stories together. Novelists had flashbacks, Live theatre had narration and comics could splice scenes together whenever they pleased. But filmmakers were afraid of cutting and splicing film together because they felt that it would just confuse the audience. But by doing so, they realised they could now tell much more complex pieces of story, such as 'The Great Train Robbery' (1903). The earliest form of cutting would be when the cameraman stopped cranking at the end of a shot and then started cranking at the start of a new one, with a different angle. This also allowed for special effects such as George Melies who had his character detonate a smoke bomb at the end of one cut and started filming after the actor left the stage. Giving the illusion that the man disappeared.
Editing has progressed significantly over the years. To get a job as an editor you must have great knowledge in various kinds of editing software and the post production process. You must understand narrative and the ways to create dramatic stroytelling in film as well as the ability to create tension, pace, rhythm and manipulate the audiences emotions. You need to be creative even whilst under pressure and have good imagination. Have excellent communication skills and be able to lead a team. Not to forget, patience, attention to detail and good organisation skills. As well a few other things...
Normally for a standard feature film there would be an Editor and an Assistant Editor. However for big budget films there would also be Second Assistant Editors and Trainees. Normally a good entry point into this field would be to get a job as a Runner (the guy that gets tea and coffee and does little errands for people). Then you can work your way up to being a Trainee, Second Assistant Editor, First Assistant Editor and then eventually - Editor. However, depending on your degree or access point, you could start of as an Assistant Editor or even straight into being an Editor. But don't expect to be hired for any big budget films without any good experience under your belt.
At the moment any further advances in technology would end up helping the editor and making it easier to create films. However, with IMAX in theaters and 4K resolution TV's becoming standard
home items, an editors attention to detail is now more important than ever. It's very easy for an audience to see a tiny mistake and post it all across the internet so the world can laugh at how crap your movie is for not noticing a little thing. A great example of an editors mistake would be at the very end of the Pirate of the Caribbean movie where you can see a crew member in the background of the ship, wearing a cowboy hat, white shirt and jeans. Clothing that is entirely inappropriate to the timeline of the movie.
Even further, news came out not too long ago where engineers and filmmakers created a computer AI that was able to edit together a scene all by itself. Now before editors all around the world start to pack in their job, it should be noted that there was still a human process in this. First of all a human had to input the style, action and genre for the scene as well as organise all the files together. Then the AI scanned thousands of movies for similar scenes and cut the files into the way the AI thought was best. That being said, it still may not have been the director or the editors vision, and they would still have to make a good few changes to the cuts that the AI have made.
Maybe in the future, AI's can help organising standard film ideas or cuts where the director isn't looking for anything special in a particular scene and just wants the scene done. Or maybe the AI can organise a rough cut/box car cut for the editor and then they can start on the more detailed edits.
That is my prediction.
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