What Do Editors Do?
A very brief history of film editors and editing
If you’re curious about the history of film editing and film editors, check out the clip below.* It’s from the documentary The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004). It shows how editors (previously called “cutters”) physically cut film strips and spliced them together to make the film. The film directors featured (including Scorsese, Spielberg, Tarantino, and Minghella) confirm that editing is crucial to a film’s success because it’s often where the “magic” happens.
The clip below highlights why the earliest films had no edits, how juxtaposing two clips begins to shape a story, and how the timing of a cut can elicit fear or laughter in an audience.
If you love film and want to learn more about editing, I highly recommend the entire documentary. I believe it’s available to stream on Starz and Vimeo.
*Note: the Jaws clip I posted last week is part of this longer segment.