Chapter 1: The History & Developments Of Post-Production

The editing process is one of the most important parts of any movie and it constructs the film together. It's been around for many years and there are so many ways that editing can create different meanings in films. It takes 200 hours to edit a proper piece of film and 8 months to a year as there are alot of cuts which have to be pieced together and throughly looked at before going into the public. D W Griffiths was a pionerring American director who was the first to use different camera techniques and editing styles which have made his films famous including the birth of a nation which was a silent but controversial film showing the civil war. Many films used different ways to create film and in the early 1900's films were becoming produced there have been various examples such as:

Life of an american fireman - this was produced in 1903 and was the early usage of the editing process, they used various scenes such as having linked two scenes together, one scene shows fireman getting themselves ready and trying to put the fire out. Whilst another shows inside the house at the same time but as a completly different scenerio. Juxtaposition is used to link scenes togther which have a meaning but are shown in different ways something that is used in the "life of an american fireman".



Continuity Editing - This is an editing style which is made to look natural to the viewer.

Montage is one of these and has 3 different senses which are used in many films to date, they are:

French - For example in the french film Practises it has a very literal french meaning and this simply identifies the editing on show.

Soviet - The soviet montage is when shots are juxtaposing to derive a new meaning that didn't exist in either shots alone, so for example the film Oktober showed the storming of a royal palace and shots of people stamping on the crown/throne on gates it symbolises this in the shots that are produced.

Classical Hollywood Cinema - A brilliant example of this style is through the film Rocky. There are two different scenes which take place, between America and Russia. One is a normal human being who trains through pure hard work and determination and also using the environment around him symbolising him as a hero, whilst the Russian is more a robot with his training being given to him by other people and also he's the bad guy to the story.