Mini Doc- Pioneers Of Editing Notes

Part 1

What contribution did Edwin S. Porter have on film editing?

• He became a director-cameraman for a lot of Edison’s company work
• He started with simple one-shot films (Kansas Saloon Smashers [1901])
• He then progressed rapidly to films with special effects (The Finish of Bridget McKeen [1901]) and short multi-scene narratives based on political cartoons and contemporary events                                                       http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/471087/Edwin-S-Porter

What contribution did D.W Griffiths have on film editing?

• With the release of his first film, 'The Adventures of Dollie', in the summer of 1908, a new, decisive chapter in cinema history began.
• For the next five years, Griffith refused to publicize the names of its talents, directed hundreds of mostly one-reel films for Biograph that reshaped the very language of film. 
• He worked in partnership with his good cameraman, G. W. "Billy" Bitzer
• He then started developing previous experiments in camera effects and movement, lighting, close-ups, and editing into a coordinated cinematic technique.
  

Part 2

Quentin Tarantino

What is he most famous for?

• Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, actor, and Oscar winning screenwriter.
• He rapidly rose to fame in the early 1990s as a stylish auteur
• He is the most famous of the young directors behind the independent film revolution of the 1990s
• He's well-known for his public persona as a motor-mouthed, geeky hipster.

What was the importance of the technique he developed?

• The importance of the techniques he developed was so that he didn't have to do, the rest of the film he does, independently.

What key films did he work on and what editing techniques were used?
Reservoir Dogs (1992)

• Quentin Tarantino wrote this script in three and a half weeks and once it was complete, it got sent to a director called Monte Hellman.
• In this film two shots were used during conversations that took place. Wide shots were also used when this man was beating this man up.
• At this time in the fihen the man was going to cut off the man's ear, the camera moves around slowly and then the camera stops at an area where we are unable to see the man cut off the other man's ear.
• We only hear the sounds of the man screaming and the man cutting off the other man's ear.
• This makes the audience curious to find out how he actually cut off the man's ear.

Kill Bill (2003, 2004)

• Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed this film.
• It was released as two films, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
• Once he done these films, he was then credited as Special Guest Director for a film called Sin City.
• In this film, a lot of close-up's were used to show their facial expressions/reactions on their faces.
• In one of the fighting scenes, wide shots were used to show the surrounding's of where the person was thrown on to the ground.

Who else has been influenced/used this technique in their films?

• He has influenced Actor Steve Buscemi. Steve Buscemi described Quentin Tarantino's different style of film making as 'bursting with energy' and 'focused'.

• Edwin S. Porter influenced film making as he usef film techniques such as; cross- cutting, double exposure, camera movement and on location shooting.
• Cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique.