Editing Through Film History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

In the very early days of film, the audience actually thought that the picture they were seeing was real. Film was a completely new concept for everyone and got a lot of getting used to.

It is very simple and has no editing and only consists of one wide angle camera shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk

A Trip to the Moon

In this film we can see the development of film by implementing the editing factor. The first section of editing we see the wizards turn telescopes into chairs. This looks like real magic for the people back then because editing was such a new part of film and they had never seen anything like it before. We also see a cross fade edit for a scene change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ym7-QW_GWo

Life of an American Fireman

In this film we see an example of double exposure. This is used to show that the character is thinking and we see what he is thinking of. Also this is the first time we see an example of a shot reaction shot where the fire alarm rings and we see all of the firemen jump up and react to the alarm. This film also has more shots compared to Arrival of a Train and A Trip to the Moon. For example it has some close shots of the fire alarm getting turned on. This then leads to the reaction shot, a wide angle of all of the firemen jumping out of bed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ZYhVpdXbQ

Singin’ in the Rain

In ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ most of the video is wide angle, this is because a lot of money was spent to make the set (for example all of the artificial buildings and the rain inside of the studio) and the directors and producers want to show off as much as they can. Singin’ in the Rain has 4 different wide shots which all eventually zoom in on his face, again his is to show off money. However, there is no montage and the shot choice is quite poor because there is not lots of variation, this is because again, they want to show off the background