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.