Cutting table
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The cutting table used to work and instrument of the film editor or cutting master in the assembly of a film. With the triumph of digital media at the beginning of the 21st century, the classic film cutting table has completely disappeared from modern production processes, but is still used in archives. The related word editing suite continues to be used, now in relation to the computerized workstations of the modern editor.
A cutting table consists of:
- Film drive , lamp, condenser , optics and screen;
- a substructure with a smooth, clean worktop; thereon
- at least 2, usually 4 or more motor-driven plates on which the film and / or the magnetic film lie;
- Toothed rollers and pulleys that guide the material
- Magnetic sound heads with amplifier mixer and loudspeaker and one
- (Often) differential gears for at least one clay track.
The film is fed forward from left to right over the cutting table and, in contrast to a film projector, is moved continuously. In order to project the constantly moving film image onto the screen, a crown prism in the film drive rotates with twice the tangential speed of the film. The slight distortion of the images caused by the multiple reflections at different angles is offset by the reduced wear and tear on the film strips and the ability to view them at up to ten times the speed.
Depending on the equipment of the cutting table, up to three image or three audio strips can be played synchronously. There are cutting tables for 70 mm, 35 mm, 16 mm and Super 8 film.
Thanks to the “differential”, the synchronicity of picture and sound is easy to find, even if there are no sync marks, assuming a pilot tone process or quartz-controlled motors of the camera and sound device. A sound track can be made to run slower or faster compared to the image until one has lip-synchronic or point-synchronous impression. Once this state has been reached, image and sound are moved to a practical place in parallel and a mark is placed on each strip. Usually the first picture is given a diagonal cross and the sound is given a (double) horizontal line. The relevant numbers are written next to it, for example 15-2 for shot 15, second shot.
Brands
Horizontal cutting tables were made in Germany by the companies Klangfilm-TOBIS , Berlin (1930), Lytax, Freiburg im Breisgau, Steenbeck , Hamburg (1953), K eller- E lektronik- M echanik, Hamburg, Pentacon , Dresden, Schmid, Straubing, and Arnold & Richter, Munich, built.
The brands Prévost, Milano, De Oude Delft (Netherlands), Atlas and Moritone (France) work according to the same principle. In Switzerland there were individual editing tables for 35mm film from a Rümlang factory, probably from the environment of the producer Walter Kägi.
In America, the Moviola was used instead , which guides the film vertically and is equipped with a pulley . It was not until 1970 that the European editing table was also used in America, for example the Showcron. From 1990 onwards, mechanical cutting devices were increasingly being replaced by digital systems and video editing programs and are now rarely used anywhere in the world.
Web links
History of the Steenbeck cutting table - Filmmuseum Hamburg
