Welcome to Filmmaker IQ.com - Join me as we track the history of video and trace the journey
to our to our modern concept of film and video editing.
Since the earliest filmmakers, there was always a need for editing - cut out the boring bits
and keep the good stuff. With good old fashioned celluoid film, cutting apart and splicing
pieces of film together is a rather intuitive process. Editing Machines like the Moviola
have been around since the 1930s with Steenbeck flatbed editor becoming popular in the 1970s
and still used in specialty circle today.
So how did we move to a digital form - the computer based “non-linear editing” machines
that dominate the industry today?
To answer that question - we need to dail back the clock of history and look at the
early days of the industry that was the impetus for computerized editing: Television.
Our story begins in the era of electronic and mechanical engineers. Technologically
speaking, the capability of broadcasting live television signals started rather early in
the twentieth century. In fact November 2, 1936 was when the BBC began transmitting the
world's first public regular television broadcast service.
But it had to go off air during World War II. That war required world economies to switch
gears and produce military supplies, prevented the mass production and adoption of television.
It wasn’t until 1948, three years after the war ended, that the first commercial broadcasts
of television began in the United States - the medium caught on and exploded during the 50s.
People could now watch shows and news broadcasts in their homes... These shows were cut live
in a studio that had several cameras hooked up to a video switcher that could switch between
cameras. This signal sent over the air and through cables to affiliates in other parts
of the network for broadcast. But Everything had to be live as there was no way to electronically
record the television signal.
That was fine unless you wanted to delay the broadcast - say for a far away part of the
country that was in different time zone.
To “record” television, the networks turned to a device called a kinescope - which was
quite simply a film camera focused on a video monitor. The concept was simple but it was
anything but. This process never did result in really good image reproduction, there were
a lot of technological hurdles, like ghosting and banding - but the kinescope was an essential
tool that started connecting the world together through the medium of television.
In 1951, once CBS and NBC had a coast to coast network, they would produce a show in New
York at 8PM Eastern time. Kinescopes in Los Angeles which were 3 hours ahead would record
signal through the network, and film was rushed into development and then shown at 8PM on
west coast pacific time, a process called Hot Kinescope because the film didn’t even
had a chance to cool from the development process before it was sent to air.
The demand for TV was great and by 1954, the TV networks were actually using more raw film
stock in their kinescopes than all of the Hollywood film studios combined - spending
up to $4,000 per half hour - $33,000 in today’s money. The networks desperately needed a cheaper
alternative.
Magnetic tape had been used for audio recording for years, but there were significant technological
hurdles to actually getting a video image on tape. In 1951 Engineers working for Bing
Crosby’s production company - yep that Big Crosby, were the first to record video images
onto magnetic tape. Unfortunately they looked terrible, but it was still an image and it
proved it could be done. In 1956, after 5 years of hard work by brilliant engineers
overcoming myriad of hurdles, Ampex would release the first commercially available video
tape recorder - the 2 Inch Quadruplex video tape.
Sales of the first video tape recorder went through the roof when the company showcased
it at the NAB convention in April of 1956. Sales were so strong - they were taking orders
on napkins. CBS was the first to put it to use in a West Coast delay broadcast of “Douglas
Edwards and the News” on November 30th, 1956.
On January 22, 1957, the NBC game show “Truth or Consequences” produced in Hollywood became
the first television program to be broadcast in all time zones from a pre-recorded video
tape.
By the 1959, videotape was almost fully accepted by television industry and tape played an
interesting role in a small Cold War confrontation. That summer, the US Information Agency set
up an exhibit in Moscow to show off American progress and technology to the Russians. This
included a model American home with a fully decked out kitchen, and a model tv studio
with its own Ampex video recorder. On July 24th, 1959 then Vice President Richard Nixon
invited Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to visit the display. Khrushchev was fascinated
by the television studio and joined Nixon for what was essentially a photo op in front
of these cameras and new video tape technology. The two started chatting and before long it
turned into a full-blown debate on the merits of capitalism and communism.
Both leaders agreed that the exchange should be played in full in their own countries - Ampex
International president Philip Gundy rushed the tape back to his hotel and wrapped it
in a dirty shirt for his flight back to the United States. Before it was aired American
newspapers had reported the exchange as so icy it practically started world war three...
but when American TV networks played it the next day what viewers actually saw were two
leaders acting like politicians.
Here you can see the type of tape which will transmit this very conversation immediately
and this indicates the possibilities of increasing communication and this increase in communication
will teach us some things and it will teach you some things too. Because after all, you
don't know everything.
Certainly it will. In fact. And with the same token, same token. Everything that I say will
be recorded and translated and will be carried all over the Soviet Union - that's a fair bargain.
This Kitchen Debate as it came to be known was a milestone for video tape proving the
importance of the medium to world events.
At this point tape was only being used for archival and distribution purposes. It was
possible to edit these early 2 inch Quadruplex tapes: it was a similar process to cutting
film but extremely more cumbersome: First the tape had to be “developed” using extremely
fine iron filings suspended in toxic and carcinogentic carbon tetrachloride solution, making the
magnetic bands on the tape visible when viewed through a microscope so that they could be
aligned in a specialized splicer which had to cut the tape exactly during a vertical
retrace signal without disturbing the odd/even-field ordering... and since the video and audio
read heads were several inches apart it was not possible to make a physical edit that
would function correctly in both video and audio so the cut was made for video and a
portion of audio then re-copied into the correct relationship.
And of course, you had to do all this without actually seeing what frame you were on because
the quadruplex tape was incapable of holding still frames.
NBC developed a work around using the tried and true kinescopes - not for broadcast but
for creating work prints - shows were edited using these kinescope film prints which had
audio cues which the editor could match back when splicing the video tape. Known as ESG
it was a process similar to what would later be called Offline editing which essentially
means editing with a lower quality copy of the original raw material then assembling
the high quality originals based on that edit.
This technique would reach it’s height with Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In in 1968 which
required 350-400 tape splices and 60 hours of physical splicing to build up just one
episode. Laugh In ended up to be the only program to actually use this technique extensively.
Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me.
Sock it to yourself.
Sock it to me???
There was another technique on editing video coming into play - using two video decks,
you could transfer the video from one deck to the other and build up a show by assembling
a bunch of different cuts one after the other assembled in a linear fashion - this was linear
editing. But again, it sounds simpler than it was - for one how do you make sure the
signals between the video decks matched up? Before Linear editing became a popular solution
it would require a few technological advancements.
The first came In 1963 Ampex introduced the Editec - an all electronic videotape recorder
that had simple microprocessor that could control in and out points marked by audible
tones. Helical scan systems coming more into use, wrapped the tape around a spinning read
head. This could fit more bandwidth on the tape which allowed you to pause and see individual
frames making editing much easier.
And in 1967 - the SMPTE timecode developed by EECO and Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers was a way for a video tape player to locate any frame on the tape
as each frame was assigned “address” in terms of hours, minutes, seconds and frames..
The practice of Timecode accurate Linear Editing became common place in the 1970. We went from
TV networks spending thousands per hour on kinescope film and development fees, to now
smaller market TV affiliates having their own video editing systems to cut their own
shows.
But linear editing did nothing to advance the craft creatively. Editing became almost
a strictly technical profession - managing large EDLs - edit decision lists that marked
in and out points of clips to be used. And because a show was assembled in a linear fashion,
any changes to the beginning of a show would mean everything after would have to be reassembled
so there was no such thing as a rough cut.
There was alternative starting to emerge - almost a rejection of the strict time code rules
of linear editing and going back to the freedom of cutting actual film - a system that would
eventually be called Non-Linear editing. Non linear editing was nondestructive. You could
assemble a cut in whatever order you wanted and go back and make changes without disturbing
the rest of the assembly. There was no generation loss that you had with linear editing that
required you to copy from one tape to another. It was a much more natural way of editing.
The first NLE was the CMX 600 in 1971 -it was a beast of a machine that recorded half
resolution black and white video files onto washing machine size disk packs and cost a
little over $250,000 in 1971 dollars - which is about 1.2 million in 2013 money. Only 6
were produced.
But the idea of editing nonlinearly was too good to go to waste. Through the 80s it was
really matter of waiting for computational power and storage capability to catch up.
You had a few experiments during this time - notably the EditDroid which debuted at NAB
in 1984 from a George Lucas spin-off company, DroidWorks. This computer pulled footage stored
on LaserDisks which really didn’t work very well and the company shut down in 1987. Other
machines tried using a bank of VCRs but they were also slow and cumbersome.
Then in 1988, EMC2 introduced the first All Digital Offline NonLinear editor with data
stored on optical disks
This was followed a year later by the public release of the Avid1 - a macintosh based Non
Linear Editor in 1989. Avid would go on to become the gold standard for editing in Hollywood.
Let's start with a few fundamentals, I have a bin on this monitor organized as a list.
Much easier to see though as images. As head frames. I'm going to edit a sequence together
very quickly in assemble edit. Grab the first element, drag it to this window, the record
window, and now I've made my first edit and it shows up on this timeline. Second element
and third element. In just a few seconds, I put together the beginnings of a program.
Storage was still a issue and these machines could only edit short music videos and commercials.
But In 1993, engineers added more storage to an Avid System - debuting a 7 terabyte
system capable of handling a feature length film. Now these films were being cut “offline”
- the reverse of NBC EGS method. They used low quality tape to create a work cut and
use the timecode to create an EDL which was given to the Film Lab to assemble the original
film prints.
The first studio film cut on an Avid was Lost in Yonkers in 1993 and just a few years later
in 1996, editor Walter Murch would accept the Oscar for Best editing for the English
Patient which he cut offline on an Avid.
Harry -what's happening?
Can't see sir - over the road.
Corporal??
Tank sir, I don't know what it's about.
Stop them!
Stop!!
Harry!
What is this? A bloody carnival??
The fuse has snapped!
What's happened? Is it armed?
Hang on. I'll be right with you.
Can you see the detonator?
You've got to cut it, that frost won't last.
Stop! Stop!!
Slow down.
Go away.
Yes sir.
This is making me incredibly angry.
I know sir.
Watch out birds.
Can you feel them?
Cut it sir. You gotta cut it.
I don't even know if this is the right wire.
Choose, just choose a loop and cut it.
From clumsy kinescope film to bulky magnetic tapes which finally bring us to the first
NLE systems which proved to be an important creative tool just a few yearrs after it’s
release, the path to modern editing in this period has been dominated by some amazing
achievements by electronics engineers. But story is only half finished, as it enters
the last part of the 20th century, computer scientists, programmers, and mathematicians
would pioneer the revolution that would join film and television as more or less interchangeable
visual mediums - a medium now accessible to nearly everyone - It’s the story of digital
which we’ll pick up in part 2 as we trace the journey to modern editing.