1895 – Lumiere Brothers invented Cinematography

Edwin S. Porter showed the film didn’t have to be one long still. He used footage to tell a different story to what the footage was originally meant to show.

D.W Griffiths used the first continuity cut in his film “For Love of God” Griffiths realised that characters emotions could be portrayed in a different way by using different camera angles and the pace of editing was changed. Griffiths was given credit for the discovery of the close-up.

“The Birth of a Nation” was a short film which was based on a 1915 novel called the “Clansman”. The film features camera techniques such as long shots, still shots, iris effects, cross cutting and many more.

Eisenstein demonstrated this with his, 1925 Battleship Potemkin- Montage. Montages were created by a Russian director called Lev Kuleshov.

Analogue editing was used before computer editing. Film was cut and pasted into a specific order then put through a machine called a Moviola or a KE.M. Things like Final Cut, or Adobe are now used as its a much faster and easier way of editing – The first truly non-linear edit was introduced. The CMX 600.

1980’s – Various approximations of non-linear editing systems were built – Ediflex introduced on an universal series. (Offline non-linear editing) Used on 80% of filmed network programs.

1991 – Non-linear editing was formalized with the publication of Michael Rubin’s: A Guide to Digital Film and Video Editing.

1993- The Avid Media Composer was used for commercial editing, however since 1989 the Avid Composer has become the dominant non-linear editing and finishing software.