Task one: Editing in early cinema

Task one: Editing in early cinema

Over the first 50 years of film the idea of editing has ended up being essentially more advanced. From the most punctual movies to today's most recent movies. The very first edits were things such as filming moving people and splicing parts of a film and sticking them together. Since then the art of editing has advanced and we now have easier ways of doing it.

Thomas Edison

One of the very first filmmakers was Thomas Edison, who additionally invented the light bulb. Edison was the inventor of the Kinetographic Camera and the 35mm film strip. He was a very important figure as his creation of the Kinetoscope turned into industry standard. This meant that other filmmakers could use his invention to create their own films. Eventually, Edison made the projector, which then meant that the films he created could be shown to the wider audience and be enjoyed by everyone.

Lumiere Brothers

The Lumiere Brothers also played a big part in the development of editing. they worked closely with Thomas edition and were the first people to create films of different lengths and create a moving image of real life people. motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse the audience as they had never seen anything like that before. the films they created were among the first film to show activity. In 1895 the film " sortie d'usine" by Lumiere Brothers was launched, the movement in the shot was all that was required to entertain an audience, the first film purely displayed activity such as traffic moving on a city street.

G.A. Smith

Originally there was no story or real editing in many early films, however G.A Smith was the first filmmaker that enabled editing of movies his film " A kiss in the Tunnel" in 1899 marked the beginning of narrative editing story line, they believed that some extra some extra creativity was needed, as they went into the tunnel to splice he took advantage of the brief onset darkness, he stuck the pieces of film together and then cut them during the shot of the couple. G.A Smith took advantage of the brief period of darkness as the train went in the tunnel and edited the film to change from thew front of the train to one of the inside carriages. this was the point when editing first started to advance.

G.Melies

George Melies was a magician before coming an producer. George had seen the film made by the Lumiere brothers and he saw the potential of creativity which involved more than just motion its self. George brought a camera and built a studio ,which he wrote scripts and designed sets, shortly he uncover and used to good advantage of the basic camera tricks that we know so well today. Melies unfortunately got forced off the business because he never got the idea to move the camera for close ups or long shots this cause his work to become overlooked and because of this he wasn't earning any money and he eventually died from poverty. The film "Hugo" portrays his life elements.

Edwin S porter

Edwin S Porter also played an important part in the editing of early cinema. Before joining the film laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison in the 1890s, Edwin worked as an electrician. Edwin and Edison worked together to make longer, more interesting films. Their first film was 'The Life of an American Fireman' (1903), which was the breakthrough film for Edwin S Porter. 'The Life of an American Fireman' was one of the first films that had a plot, action and even a close up, by creating this film he discovered the important aspects of motion picture language and the creation of contextual relationships by splicing. One of his most famous films was 'The Great Train Robbery' in 1903 which lasted a length of 10 minutes, making it the longest movie of his time.

Charles Pathe

Charles Pathé introduced the first example of parallel editing in his film 'The Horse that Bolted' in 1907. He made a film that cut between two different story lines so that the audience could see what the man was doing as well as the horse. The use of this parallel editing allows the audience to know that there are two different things happening at the same time as we see the man on the horse at the beginning and then we see him leave the horse outside. The shot then changes from the man to the horse outside, allowing us to see both shots alternatively. This was the first time the audience had seen a film like this and it proved to be successful. 

D.W. Griffith

Finally, D.W Griffith was the last important figure in the editing of early cinema before films were created as the ones we know today. D.W Griffith was an early supporter of the power of editing and made use of cross-cutting to show parallel locations. He was one of the first early directors to use editing techniques in feature length films, which were generally movies that lasted longer than 90 minutes. He created the movie 'The Birth of a Nation' in 1915 which lasted around 3 hours, making it one of the longest and most controversial films of early cinema and to this day it is still controversial.