Script

Narration visuals
Introduction:
Importance
History Rolling photos of the lumiere brothers
Two of the earliest film makers in
history were brothers, The Lumière
brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière. The school the lumiere brothers
Both of which were born in France in attended
1862 and 1864. During the time in
which the brothers were developing
their film camera, they both patented
a number of significant processes,
such as perforations as a means of
advancing the film through the Show the first film they made
camera and projector. The
cinematograph, a film camera which
acts as a film projector and developer,
was patented by the brothers on the
13th of February in 1895, the first
footage to be recorded using it was
recorded on March the 19th in 1895.
On the 28th of December in 1895, the
Lumiere brothers showed their work
on a 17 metre piece of film, this would
last around 50 seconds when run
through a crank camera. The footage
shown was of a workers leaving a Show pictures of George and clips
factory. The video below is the entire from his films
film of the workers leaving a factory.
After seeing the Lumiere Brothers
sensational moving picture camera in
action in 1895, Melies rushed out to
establish his own studio and began
making films that featured clever
illusions and tricks created by
experimenting with double exposure,
cutting and rewinding, building on his
theatrical innovations. Using elaborate
painted sets akin to those of Paris's
music halls, Melies was a true pioneer
who played a key role in the evolution
of cinematic technique and the
medium's storytelling grammar. He
also had an acute sensitivity for the
sort of blockbuster spectacle
audiences would be attracted
to. Specialising in horror and steam
punk science fiction, his most famous
film remains A Trip To The Moon,
Georges Méliès's The Fours
 Troublesome Heads from 1898. The
Four Troublesome Heads is, quite
clearly, a one-shot film simply
showcasing an “illusion” by Méliès
himself. As you know, he was a stage
magician for quite a few years and his
interest in stage magic really excited
him about the possibilities of film. At
last, he could perform illusions far
more elaborate and surreal than was
possible on the stage–such as making
talking duplicates of his own head and
trying to make them sing. Nowadays
it’s pretty easy to guess the
techniques he used. He used
substitution splicing, a.k.a. stop-
substitutions a.k.a. stop-tricks, every
time he takes off his “head.” This
meant stopping the camera and
placing a dummy head in his hands
and what appears to be a dark cloth
or bag over his real head. The multiple
“heads” were photographed using the
wonders of the multiple exposure and
split-screen techniques.
D.W. Griffith
was responsible for many innovations
in the film industry including:
Classical Cutting- also known as
continuity editing is a style of editing
that is characterised by the sequence
of shots is determined by a scene’s
dramatic and emotional emphasis
rather than physical action. In other
words it was the basis for modern
editing that we see in all our films
today. A classic example would be the
scene in the Good, the Bad and the
Ugly when the 3 main characters are
preparing to shoot one another and
the camera cuts between the 3 of
them to heighten tension.
Close-up- first used for psychological
reasons. These shots contain the
actors shoulders and head in the
frame and not much else of their body.
An example of this would be the
infamous scene in the silence of the
lambs when Hannibal Lector is being
interviewed in his cell by detective
Starling and he tells her that he ate
someone’s liver.
Parallel Editing– Multiple scenes
taking place at the same time in the
 film’s continuity but in different
locations, this technique is used to
heighten tension and creative
emotional responses with the
audience. An example of Parallel
Editing (or Cross cutting as it is also
called) is in the DW Griffith film “Birth
of a Nation” when the black Union
soldiers are raiding a house and there
are some women and children are
hiding in the basement, the
Confederate army has been warned of
the raid and they are on their way to
save them. It constantly cuts between
scenes to heighten tension as the
Union troops get ever closer to
discovering the women and children
and you don’t know how far away the
Confederate troops are. Another few
examples include: “Star Wars:
Revenge of Sith” when Order 66 is
given and all the Jedi are slaughtered
across the Galaxy.

Alfred Hitchcock was the director who

really experimented with montage
editing. It is best shown in this clip
from his film called Psycho. In this
scene a women is having a shower
when she is attacked and stabbed by
a man. The scene took a week to film
and is put together using very fast cut
clips, the piece contain 78 pieces of
film, 70 camera setups in a 45-second
of impressionistic montage sequence.
Apparently after the audience
watched this film they complained
about the gruesome images that they
were being shown, when in fact the
knife never actually pierced or came
in contact with the skin of the woman
in the shower. But because of the
quick cuts and music, the audience’s
minds almost imagined that she was
being stabbed on camera.

“With Star Wars I want to do an action

picture,” George Lucas said, repeating
his original intentions for the iconic
film in Creating the Impossible.“I want
to do something where I can pan with
the space ship. I want to do quick
 cuts. There’s a lot of rhythm, a lot of
pace. There’s a lot of movement on
the screen. I want it to be very
cinematic, and at that point in time
that was impossible.”
To complete this monumental task,
Lucas founded his own special effects
company to complete the difficult
scenes needed in Star Wars. The
company was named Industrial Light
and Magic, better known as ILM. Over
300 films later, ILM has proven to be
the industry leader in special effects,
one of the first purveyors of computer
generated imagery and
the original parent company of
animation giant Pixar. From Jurassic
Park to Avatar, the company has put
their stamp on some of the biggest
films of all time.

For example, the pod race scene

in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom
Menace required new techniques to
figure out how to replicate the terrain
of Tatooine. In the movie, the
filmmakers would need gigantic
miniatures if they wanted to shoot in a
real location and make it look like the
characters were moving really fast.
Using matte paintings and models
would make travelling through the
desert look unrealistic. Instead they
used a method that combined real
photography and computer graphics,
which was later utilised in Avatar to
give Pandora its look.

The very earliest filmmakers were

afraid to edit film shots together
because they assumed that splicing
together different shots of different
things from different positions would
simply confuse audiences. However,
filmmakers quickly discovered that
editing shots into a sequence not only
contributed to the audience's sense of
tale, but also enabled them to tell
more complex stories as a result. You
can see primitive instances of editing
in films like Rescued by Rover (Great
Britain, 1904) and The Great Train
Robbery (1903).
Early on the cuts were made in the
camera, so that the cameraman would
simply stop cranking at the exact end
of a shot, and begin cranking again
when it was moved somewhere else,
or when something else was put in
front of it. This kind of editing could
allow for some early special effects. In
movies he is making at the turn of the
century, Georges Méliès stops the
camera after detonating a magic puff
of smoke in front of his actor, then
begins the camera again after the
actor has left the stage, making it
seem as if the actor has magically
vanished.

Technically this isn't video editing, it's

film editing. But it is worth a mention
as it was the first way to edit moving
pictures and conceptually it forms the
basis of all video editing.
Traditionally, film is edited by cutting
sections of the film and rearranging or
discarding them. The process is very
straightforward and mechanical. In
theory a film could be edited with a
pair of scissors and some splicing
tape, although in reality a splicing
machine is the only practical solution.
A splicing machine allows film footage
to be lined up and held in place while
it is cut or spliced together.

Nowadys we have multiple

programmes that are used in order to
create the amazing looking films we
get

 Avid Media Composer: This is

by far the most popular. Avid
was one of the first digital
NLE systems and managed
to survive longer than most
of the other options. Thanks
to that, it's an industry
standard.

 EditShare Lightworks:
Lightworks was one of the
original players alongside
Avid, but it isn't quite as
popular anymore as it used
 to be.

 Adobe Premiere: Premiere is

more common for non-
Hollywood productions, but
some notable films such as
2016's Deadpool movie are
edited using Premiere.

 Apple Final Cut: This one

used to be bigger, but it fell
out of favor. It's been
becoming more popular
recently among indie
productions.
Compositing:

 The Foundry Nuke: Nuke is

the industry standard for 3D
compositing. You'll see it at
use in virtually every
Hollywood film, as well as in
many TV shows.

 Adobe After Effects: After

Effects is more common in
the indie and broadcast
world, but it is at use in
minor ways in a lot of films.

 Blackmagic Fusion: Fusion

used to be very popular as a
3D compositor in the
broadcast industry, and it
still is, but thanks to its
acquisition by Blackmagic it's
becoming more popular
among Hollywood films.
Color Grading:

 Blackmagic Davinci Resolve

and FilmLight Baselight:
Everyone uses Resolve or
Baselight, period. If ever
there was an industry
standard with an
indestructible hold on
 Hollywood, it's those two.
Maybe a couple major films
ever have used SpeedGrade,
other than that it's all
Resolve or Baselight.
3D:

 Autodesk Maya: Maya is the

most popular 3D tool in
Hollywood. Most 3D artists
are trained with Maya, and
it's very commonly taught as
a primary tool.

 Autodesk 3Ds Max: 3Ds Max

is more common among
smaller productions and in
game production, but it is at
use in many Hollywood films.

 Cinema 4D: Cinema 4D is

more common in broadcast,
but I'm sure it's at use in
some Hollywood films. It's
more stripped down than
Maya or 3Ds Max though.

 Side Effects Houdini: Houdini

is really good at modeling
explosions and destruction.
Odds are if you see buildings
crumble on screen, Houdini
is at work.

 The Foundry Modo: Modo is

more of an obscure tool
despite being the cousin of
Nuke, but a lot of productions
still make use of it.
Rendering:

 Pixar Renderman:
Renderman was originally
developed for fully 3D
animation by Pixar, but it's
pretty common for live action
 work as well.

 V-Ray: This is a popular GPU

accelerated renderer.

 Mental Ray: Another popular

renderer.

 A lot of VFX houses have

their own in-house renderer
at work; programming a
render machine isn't actually
that difficult (compared to,
say, programming a 3D
application).