The History and Developments of Post-Production

Editing has always been an important aspect of the film industry. Without the techniques of editing, a film would just not simply flow. Auguste Lumiere (one half of the Lumiere Brothers) said that despite being one of the pioneers of the film industry he thought that cinema was becoming an invention without a future. This was untrue as 1903 became a pivotal year for film. The release of 'The Life of an American Fireman' saw the introduction of one of the now most well known editing techniques, intercutting.

Intercutting is one of the most well known edits used in the film industry. 'The Life of an American Fireman' was the first ever motion picture to use the process of intercutting. This film showed to seperate shots together of a women stuck in her house which is on fire and then showed a shot of the firemen leaving the fire station.

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Perhaps one of the greatest editing techniques is the use of 'montage'. The French meaning for the word 'montage' is simply "putting together" or "assembly". There three different sense of the term:

1. In the practice of French film, montage uses it's literal French meaning and simply identifies editng.

2. Soviet film production used the powers of montage as a method of juxtaposing shots so that they derived a new meaning which was not originally intended in either shot alone. This was a big form of propaganda, something which would go on to be used by Germany in World War II. The often cited Kuleshov Experiment established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. US director D.W. Griffiths was not part of the montage scene when it came to film editing, however, his work in the teens was highly regarded by Lev Kuleshov and many other Soviet filmmakers which helped with their understanding of film editing as a medium.

3. Classical Hollywood cinema sees a different meaning to the use of montage. A montage sequence is a short segment in a film in which the narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.