Development: 6. Film

Alyx Entwistle

Although always being an incredibly integral part of the film industry, film editing has grown in importance over the years as the technology has developed. The use of camera shots, angles and techniques play a huge part in helping a film express a story in order to interpret certain sections of the film clearly.  The process of film editing takes an awful long time, much longer than video editing because generally a film lasts about an hour and a half so there is a lot more of footage to edit. On a film, a team, rather than one individual, will edit the film as there is so much to do. The main purpose of video editing though is basically to speed up the film. For example, if a character leaves his house, goes to a florist, picks out some flowers, queues, buys the flowers, heads to the train station, arrive at the train station, waits, boards a train, travels on one, departs the train, heads over to his girlfriend's house, knocks on, waits, she answers, he gives her the flowers and then both walk inside - that scene would take a very long time to play out if every single part was shown. So the editor could then use cuts and show the man leave his house, cut to him walking into the florists, cut to him walking out of the shop with flowers, cut to him arriving at the train station,  cut to him look at his watch, cut to him on get on the train, cut to him getting off the train, cut to him at his girlfriend's door, cuts to him giving her the flowers, cuts to the door shutting. This would chop off a substancial amount of unneccessary footage and then make the film flow a lot easier.