Machines in my field: Editing and Post Production

I would like to discuss the overall influence of the machines on editing over the years. This craft used to be carried out by hand, physical rolls of film carefully rolled out and cut then stuck back together to be later played on a projector with the small frames scrolling rapidly past an opening where a light shines the image through the film projecting a larger version on the wall. Back then the edit had to be very carefully planned out as reversing a cut or any mistake was not as easy as it is now. And if anything happened to the physical film that was it.

Then came along editing machines. They took some of the work away from the humans hands. But fast forwarding to computers and its software. Once cameras became digital and the film was now stored on a small card that could be connected easily onto a laptop, that changed the way people edit. Editing on a portable digital device makes the whole process much faster and less labour heavy as you can do a cut and reverse it within a second now, while back then it would take minutes. The fact the film is now digitally stored makes it much easier to share projects with other editors and even have multiple editors working on one project at the same time which can then be exported and distributed easily.

The digitalisation of the craft has certainly made things more efficient as all the information you need can be stored on a small portable disk instead of many boxes of tapes. Everything can easily be organised in the software and the expectation in terms of quality and speed keeps growing with every new update and development. Projects that used to take years now are expected to be completed in months. This puts more pressure on the editing team, however it also ensures more content can be created faster which also saves companies money which they would have to pay for the editors time.