Subscribe & Follow
Advertise your job vacancies
Trending
Show more
Jobs
- Content Creator Cape Town
How video editing has changed through the ages
Video editing has always been viewed as a niche skill that only those who are in the movie industry would have any notion of how to edit a video, but thanks to social media and video sharing platforms, video editing platforms have run rampant, from professional tools to easy-to-use online video creators that require no more skill than the ability to drag and drop. Mobile apps and even social media platforms themselves have jumped on the bandwagon and created their own simplified video editors and smartphones now have their own in-built video editing software. This has followed the advent of the online film and video industry, such as on-demand video services. It has gone from an extremely niche skill set to something that everyone, including your father, preschool teacher, grocer, and minister can use. The ability to edit and produce a video isn't something that is elusive anymore, but a skill that is as common as the ability to read or write.
The dawn of motion picture and editing
Back in the day when motion pictures became possible, editing wasn’t even necessary as they basically recorded day-to-day imagery. It wasn’t until the late 1800s when the Lumiere Brothers created their own camera, which spawned other inventions to follow suit. In 1908, D.W Griffiths made the first movie featuring a scene cut and the rest, as they say, was history. Many of the editing techniques that Griffiths featured in his films went on to be part and parcel of Hollywood.
The Golden Age of Hollywood
While everyone knows Hollywood and how they revolutionised not only an entire industry, but the technology that went along with it, very little is known about digital editing which only came around in 1924. The first device that allowed people to view their video during post-production video editing, which includes the common transitions that we see today - fading, scene swipe, etc, all of which were impossible with the linear editing methods of the past. The device, named Moviola, is an invention by Iwan Serrurier. While it is a far cry from the technology that we have today, it was an innovation of its time, using motorised disks or plates which allowed both picture and sound to be synchronised.
Today’s video editing software
Video editing is done through a computer or - as mentioned earlier - through a mobile device. With modern applications, editing has gotten much more convenient as compared to the editing technology of days past. The software is intuitive and makes analogue video tape-to-tape editing a thing of the past. The intuitive softwares of video editing in our mobile devices is able to edit as you record, spawning lots of creative new ways to create transitions and edit videos. To be fair, editing has always been a show of creativity and a keen eye for detail - how can you make something look cool and engaging without having the big budget of Hollywood studios? These trends of organic transitions have caught on with Hollywood, and instead of using fancy CGI or special effects, consumers are much more invested in color scheme and overall mise en scene or content.
