Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice: Looking at the Invisible

Don Fairservice

Manchester University Press, 2001 - Performing Arts - 347 pages

This comprehensive examination of the film-editor's craft traces the development of editing from the primitive forms of early cinema through the upheavals caused by the advent of sound. Don Fairservice explores the challenges to convention that began in the 1960s and which continue to the present day. New digital technologies and the dominance of the moving image have produced a radical rewriting of the rules of audio-visual address. This detailed study outlines a fascinating history, and presents the "how's" and "why's" of film editing, and its complexities in our modern age.

Contents

• Foundations: 5
• Developing forms: 38
• Identification: 58
• Patterns of visibility: 81
• Points of view: 105
• Consolidating invisibility: 119
• The eye of the beholder: 134
• Variations on a theme: 157
• Revolutionary cinema: 178
• The last silents: 203
• Sounds promising: 223
• Talking pictures: 249
• Dialogue: 263
• The final rewrite: 284
• Cinema and psychology: 299
• Beyond invisibility: 314

About the author

Don Fairservice is an award-winning freelance film editor who has taught at the National Film and Television School and the Northern School of Film and Television in Leeds.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice: Looking at the Invisible
• Author: Don Fairservice
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2001
• ISBN: 0719057779, 9780719057779
• Length: 347 pages
• Subjects: Performing Arts / Film & Video / Direction & Production; Performing Arts / Film & Video / General; Performing Arts / Film & Video / History & Criticism