Task One - Editing in Early Cinema

Thomas Edison

Task One – Editing in Early Cinema

The art of cinema has changed a lot from the early beginnings to modern day from silent movies to the first simple techniques of editing. It all starts with work by people like Thomas Edison who was an intelligent scientist of his time that ran a film laboratory that had invented the kinetographic camera and kinetoscope, Thomas Edison had also invented the '35mm Film Strip' that he had used and it had quickly became industry standard of use.

Thomas Edison worked with many people such as the Lumiere Brothers, Edison and the Lumiere Brothers had produced short films that contained one long, static shot. The motion in these 'moving pictures' was all that was needed to amuse the audience, Initially the first films only contained motion and no story nor editing and each film ran as long as there was film in the camera. An example of a short film was "Sortie D'uisine" by the Lumiere Brothers which had showed factory workers leaving the factory, and just that motion of these factory workers leaving their workplace had the audience amazed.

Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès

Only a few people such as George Melies that had seen the possibilities of a film having more than just having motion in it's self. George Melies was a magician who had seen films made by the Lumiere Brothers and thought that he could do more, Melies acquired a camera, built a studio, wrote scripts, designed sets and soon he discovered and exploited the uses of basic camera tricks. It had been rumored that the way George Melies had discovered the art of stop motion was by accident when a camera he had been using had broken down for a second which looked like a cut and when he looked it over, he then realised how what he had been filming had changed and realised how people that were in the shot previously had disappeared or 'Vanished'. Soon after in 1886 George Melies had created "The Vanishing Lady" using a technique called in-camera editing, the film showed a magician moving a woman to a chair and making her turn into a skeleton and back to human form by using simple camera cutting tricks. "The Vanishing Lady" had people in shock and made people amazed.

G.A. Smith was one of the few people who saw the possibility of films and in 1899 he created "A kiss in the tunnel" which had added something new to film, story. This film is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing (Creating a story), although the story was not intense and full of detail, it had showed romance between a couple in a train. At the time a genre of film was very popular called "Phantom Ride" which shows a panoramic first person view of a train or vehicle moving; cameramen would often strap themselves in front of a train to film, the phantom ride would eventually evolve into a technique of filming something moving whilst having no visible means of propulsion. Smith took advantage of the brief onset of darkness as the train went into the tunnel to add a little 'Spice' in the shot of the the couple through editing.

Edwin S. Porter, former electrician before joining Thomas Edison's film laboratory made a film that had a breakthrough, a film which had action, a plot and close ups. The film Porter made was "Life of an American Fireman" (1903) where it had showed firemen get a fire alarm and going to the scene of the fire putting it out, this film had a plot (Firemen going to put out a fire), action (Firemen fighting the fire) and a closeup of a fireman pulling a fire alarm. This film was like anything ever seen before and gave the audience a shock and immersed them into the moving pictures, even the closeup showed that having closeups of actions performed would eventually be used in many films years after. Porter then made the popular film called "The Great Train Robbery" where it also had a plot with action and involved the robbing of a train whilst stationed at a train station. Porter showed that splicing together shots creates in the viewers mind a contextual relationship with the film.

Soon after Porter a new film expert called Charles Pathe introduced the first examples of the film technique called "Parallel Editing" which was cutting between two different storylines whilst in the film. Pathe used this technique in his film called "The Horse that Bolted" which showed two different storylines of the horse and the milkman. This had encouraged D.W. Griffiths to become of the earlier supporters of the power of editing, Griffiths made use of cross-cutting to show parallel action in different locations with his film "Birth of a Nation". D.W. Griffith's work is highly regarded by many and greatly influenced the early film makers understanding of editing.