Task 1 - Editing in Early Cinema

Thomas Edison - ran a film laboratory where the kinetographic camera and the kinetoscope were invented.

He developed the 35mm film strip that came to be the industry standard. 
He also eventually developed the projector to play it.

The Lumiere Brothers - Edison worked with the Lumiere Brothers and produced short films that were one long, static, locked down down shot.
Motion in the short was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply should 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 - Initially, there was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera.
An example of which is The Miller and the Sweep by G.A. Smith. In 1899 later Smith made The Kiss in the Tunnel.
This film is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing (creating a story). Smith "felt 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 splice (cut and then stick two pieces of film together) in the shot of the couple.

George Melies - was a magician who had seen the films made my the Lumiere Bros. 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 tricks we know so well today. It is rumoured that he discovered the art of stop motion purely by accident when a camera of his broke down for a brief second. In 1896 he made The Vanishing Lady using a technique known 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. 

Porter & Edison - 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.

Edwin S. Porter - Porter made the breakthrough film Life of an American 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 aspects 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 mind a contextual relationship. These were the key discoveries that made all narrative motion pictures and television possible. 

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 - In the film The Horse that Bolted (1907) Pathe introduces the first example of a technique known as parallel editing - cutting between two story lines: The Horse The delivery man.