Task 1 - Editing in Early Cinema

Editing in Early Cinema

Early films were filmed on a crank camera and were filmed at 24 frames per second. In the beginning of the filming industry directors usually produced their films within one location and used one angle. Due to the new technology people were easily amused by the simple motion of the actors.

       120 years ago editing wasn't as complex as it is in the 21st century. They didn't have the privilege of editing software such as 'Adobe After Effects' and computers and because of the discovery of simple editing, this lead to further developments of filming.

Thomas Edison

Edison was one of the first film makers and he ran a film laboratory where the kinetographic camera and kinetoscope were invented. He also developed the 35mm film strip that came to be the industry standard and later on developed the projector to play it.

Kinetoscope                  Kinetographic Camera     

       

The Lumiere Brothers

The lumiere brothers worked with Edison to produce short films that were one long, static, locked-down shot. Motion movement in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse the audience as this was the first time humans has ever encountered such an act that was out of their daily routine. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse the audiences that watched the movies. The first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street.This can be seen in the film 'Sortie D'usine' in 1895.

George Melies

Melies was a magician that has witnessed the works of the lumiere brothers and he found that there were more possibilities of a novelty more than what was known to man at the time (motion). Melies built himself a studio for him to use, wrote scripts and acquired a camera and which he then exploited the basic camera tricks that we still use in this present time. Rumour has it that he discovered the art of stop motion by accident when his camera had a faulty time shortage, no more than a second. Using a technique known as in-camera editing he made a movie called 'The Vanishing Lady' in 1896. Sadly, although he made remarkable history due to the commercial growth within the industry forced him out of business in 1913 where he later died in poverty.

Elements of his life's discovery were used later in the 2011 cinema 'Hugo'.

George Melies 'The Impossible Voyage' was made in 1904. This was one of the first films in colour which was able by the process of hand painting each twenty four frames per second. The film's runtime was 20 minutes and it made a break through because the audience of the 19th century were amazed to see a movie developed from black and white to colour.

G.A Smith

Before the entire in-camera editing discovery was made, directors initially ran the camera as long as their was film in the camera, there weren't any editing techniques in these days or story lines. This is what G.A Smith showed in the films 'The Miller and The Sweep'. 

Later in 1899 Smith made 'The Kiss in the Tunnel' this film was said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing. Smith wanted to add "some extra spice" to the then popular 'phantom genre' so to Smiths advantage he took his opportunity of the brief onset of darkness as they went into the tunnel to splice (cut and stick two pieces of film together) in the shot of the couple. 

Porter & Edison

Edwin S. Porter prior to him joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1890's was an electrician. He and Edison worked together to make longer and more interesting films.

Edwin S. Porter

Porter made the blockbuster film 'Life Of an American Fireman' in 1903. This was one of the first films that had an action plot and it also had a close of a hand pulling a fire alarm. Porter's 'Life Of an American Fireman' moved the art of film making forward because it used builds a continuous narrative over 7 scenes rendered in a total of 9 shots. Up until the 20th century, this is still used.

Porter discovered important aspects of motion picture language. Them being: you don't need to show a persons full profile from head-to-toe and that splicing together two shots creates in the viewers mind a contextual relationship. These discoveries made all narrative motion pictures and television possible. 

    Porter then went on to make the ground breaking film 'The Great Train Robbery' in 1903 which is an excellent example of how early films began to resemble the types of films we see today. This film moved film making forward because it was the first coherent film ever made.

Charles Pathe

Pathe made a film that cut between two story lines. The film was called 'The Horse That Bolted' and where he introduced the technique known as parallel editing. Those story lines were: the horse and the delivery man. Both of the story lines are showed in the video below:

D.W Griffith

Griffith is the director of one of the most controversial movies made in history. That being 'The Birth of A Nation' in 1915. He was a US film directors and one of the early supporters of the powers of editing who used cross-cutting to show parallel action from different locations. Griffith was one of the first of the early directors to use editing techniques in the production of "feature" length films.