Task 1 - Editing in Early Cinema

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison ran a laboratory where the Kinetographic Camera and the Kinetoscope were invented. He developed 35mm film strip that came to be the industry standard. he also eventually developed the projector to play it!

The Lumiere Brothers - Sortie d'usine

Edison worked with the Lumiere Brothers and produced short films that were one long, static, locked - down shot. Motion in the shot was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first film simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. This can be seen in the film Sortie d'usine (1895) by the Lumiere brothers.

 

G.A Smith - The Miller and the Sweep

Initially, there was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in  the camera.

 

G.A Smith - The Kiss in the Tunnel

In 1899 later G.A Smith made The Kiss in  the Tunnel . This film is said to mark the beginning of narrative editing (creating a story). Smith "felt that some extra spice was called for" in then popular "phantom ride" genre. He took advantage of the brief onset of darkness as they went into tunnel to spice (cut and then stick two pieces of film together) in the shot of the couple.

George Melies - The Vanishing Lady

 George Melies was a magician who had seen the film made by Lumiere brothers. Melies saw at once the possibilities of a novelty more than just motion its self. He acquired a camera,  built a studio, wrote scripts, designed sets and soon he discovered and exploited the basic camera trick we know so well today.

In Camera Editing

It is rumoured that he discovered the art of stop motion purely by accident when camera of his broken down for a brief second. In 1896 he made The Vanishing Lady using a technique know as In-Camera editing.
Sadly it never occurred to him to move the camera for close-ups or long shots and so his work was soon overlooked. The commercial growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913, and he died in poverty. Elements of his life are depicted in the recent film Hugo.

Edwin S Porter – The Life of an American Fireman

Edwin S. Porter worked as an electrician before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890s. He and Edison worked together to make longer more interesting films. Porter made the breakthrough film Life of an America Fireman in 1903. The film was among the first that had a plot, action, and even a close up of a hand pulling a fire alarm. Porter discovered important aspect of motion picture language: that the screen image does not need to show a complete person from head to toe. That splicing together two shots creates in the viewer's min a contextual relationship. These were the key discoveries that made all narrative motion pictures and television possible.

Edwin S Porter – The Great Train Robbery

Porter's (then) ground-breaking film, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is an excellent example of how early films began to resemble the types of films we see today. 

Charles Pathe – The Horse that Bolted

In the film The Horse that Bolted (1907) Charles Path introduces the first example of a technique known as parallel editing - cutting between two storylines:

• The Horse
• The delivery man

D.W. Griffith

D.W griffith was a U.S. film director, he was one of the early supporters of the power of editing. he made use of cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations. Griffith's was one of the first of the early directors to use editing techniques in the production of "feature" length films. one his best controversial film and the one his best remember for was The Birth of a nation (1915)