Task One - Editing in Early Cinema

Development In Editing

In this blog I will be explaining how the development in editing has changed over the years. 

 To begin with, a person called Thomas Edison was the first person to run a film laboratory where he developed the Kinetographic camera and a Kinetscope. Edison also developed the 35mm film strip which then came to the industry standard, this means that everyone in the film industry started to use this for their new cameras which only took the 35mm strip. People were then able to share their film strips without any hassle because they were all the same size. This was when Edison developed the projector to play it on.

Next up are The Lumiere Brothers who also worked with Edison in 1895, during this time both Edison and The Lumiere Brothers produced short films that were one long, static, locked down shot. In other words it would be one scene that would be in one plot. During 1895 the audience was only amused by motion because that was all they have seen before. The film that The Lumiere Brothers created was called Sortie d'usine, this film showed a basic scene and plot where people where walking out of a factory. Whereas nowadays it takes a lot of action and drama to keep the audience amused.



Then another person came along called by the name of G.A Smith, he took upon The Lumiere Brothers of creating the film called The Miller and The Sweep. This is where G.A Smith had no story involved and also no editing involved, each film ran as long as it could as long as there was enough film in the camera. The film was based about a Miller was was coming from his windmill and started walking towards he camera but accidentally bumped into a stranger and then it caused into a fight. This was the first sign of comedy in the film industry. Then in 1899 Smith created another film called The Kiss in the tunnel which was told to be the beginning of the narrative editing.
 this is when a story is being created. Smith stated "felt that some extra spice was called for" in the film Phantom ride which was popular back then. When he created this, he used the advantage of the darkness when the train was going through the tunnel and spliced it into another scene.

Then came along George Melies who was a magician and thought he could use his skill to join the film industry. Melies skill was being a magician and doing all kinds of magic tricks, but the reason why he is important because he accidentally invented in camera editing by his camera breaking down. So then in 1896  he took upon his invention and created The Vanishing Lady using in camera editing. This was done by his camera accidentally breaking down which paused the recording, and then working again causing in camera editing. This was more than motion! But he was unable to different shots and he was soon overlooked, this meant he did not become successful and died in poverty. So a film was dedicated to him in the recent film called Hugo.



Another person who became known into the film industry was Edwin S. Porter who joint the film industry lab of Edison in the late 1890s. The reason why he is known is because he created a successful film called life of an American fireman in 1903. This is famous is because he was the first person to have a set plot and scenes. They also included close up shots of the fireman pulling the alarm, it made this so important because Porter he discovered the important aspects of motion  picture language. Then he filmed Great Train Robbery in 1903 which was also a success. This film was a perfect example of how early films began t resemble the types of films we see today.

















Then in 1907, Charles Parthe created a film called The Horse that Bolted. This film consisted of a man and a horse which had two different shots, the horse was eating food and the man going upstairs to see someone. Then the horse gets in trouble for eating the food and bolts off, causing major mayhem trying to escape. He became known in the film industry because he invented parallel editing, this is when you cut between two story lines. As an example would be going between the horse and the delivery man. He was also the first person to create a feature length which is a film about 90 minutes long.



Finally D.W Griffiths, he was a U.S film director and was a early supporter of the power of editing. He created cross-cutting editing to show parallel action in two different locations and he was also one of the first of the early directors to use all of the editing skills in the production of 'feature length film'. This is when a film in longer than 90 minutes, just like nower day films.But Griffiths is mainly known for the film The Birth of a Nation which used all of the editing skills in 1915. This film is over three hours long based on a war/conflict that happened of this nation.