The Pioneers of Film Editing

"Some time ago, it occurred to me that it might be possible to invent something that would do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, an instrument in fact that would faithfully record and reproduce practically all motion"

These where the words that Thomas Edison told a reporter in 1894. Thomas Edison was an American inventor who invented the phonograph (for recording and reproduction of sound recordings), the motion picture camera, projector and a long-lasting electric light bulb. His inventions greatly influenced the world that we live in. In 1899, Edison hired Edwin Stanton Porter and made him the manager of his New York motion picture studio. Edwin Porter is considered to be the first american filmmaker who experimented with film editing. 

Edwin Porter

The Great Train Robbery 1903

Edwin Porter was born and raised in Connellsville, Pennsylvania on the 21st of April. He began his electrical engineering at the Vitascope Marketing Company before moving on to Edison's manufacturing company whilst working as a projector. One of Porter's many duties included the duplication of Méliès films. He would take apart one act of reels and combine several of these into fifteen minute program's. In 1903, he put his talent to use when he directed 'The Great Train Robbery', one of the first major American motion picture. The eight minute feature film showcased an excellent climax, story line and boasted a cast of forty strong actors. Combined with Edison's production rights and Porter's editing talent, it became an epic Western film. 

The Lumière Brothers

The Lumière Brothers

In the other hand in France around 1895, the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, invented the Cinématographe, a combined printer, camera and projector. The cinématographe became widely known for its usage in short silent films, such as waves crashing in a shore and a gardener watering a lawn. In one of these films, a mail train appeared to rush towards the audience which made them to lurch back in their seats in fear, (sounds like a 3D film projection). The cinematograph widely spread in the US market, including many countries around the world. The invention earned them an international presence as its silent nature bridged between the    language barrier 

An early drawing of the cinematograph

D.W.' Griffith

D.W. Griffith

I've come across a book before called 'The Birth Of A Nation' by Thomas Dixon Jr. and immediately the cover intrigued me, I found later on that the same book was made into a film by David Llewelyn Wark 'D.W.' Griffith who was born on January 22nd 1875. D.W Griffith is a pioneering American film director, best know for 1915 film 'The Birth Of A Nation'and 1916 film 'Intolerance'. The Birth Of A Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its increased popularity set the stage for dominance of the feature-length film in the US. However the same film made controversy by the way its negative portrayal of African Americans, white Unionists and Reconstruction, and its positive depiction of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan tribe. The film received critics from companies such as the NAACP, however, Griffith responded his critics with the film 'Intolerance', which was intended to show the history of prejudiced thought and behavior. Unlike 'The Birth Of A Nation' film, 'Intolerance' achieved less financial success but was praised by the critics. D.W. Griffith is considered an important figure in American cinema for his command of film techniques and expressive skills. The American silent filmmaker was also considered to have developed the idea of the motion picture. He owned the Biograph Film Company and trained his company of actors. He was also the first to use the close-up shot as a means of emphasis, using the camera functionally by starting and stopping at appropriate times to create a scene development. Breaking different scenes into a series of shots , he created the first rhythm to motion pictures. 

                                                     Birth of a Nation trailer

George Albert Smith
                                                                                                                              

     George Albert Smith

George Albert Smith was born on the 4th January 1864, he was a stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, astronomer and inventor. He is one of the pioneers of British cinema, best known for his controversial work with Edward Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short films from 1897 to 1903, which pioneered film editing, close-up shots and his development of the successful colour film process, Kinemacolor. A kinemacolor was used commercially from 1908 to 1914. George Smith was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson but more directly by Edward Raymond Turner. The kinemacolor is a two-colour additive colour process, photographing and projecting a black-and-white film behind altering red and green filters. In 1897, Smith directed a short  black-and-white silent comedy film 'The Miller and the Sweep', which features a miller carrying a bag of flour while fighting with a chimney sweep who was carrying a bag of shoot in front of a windwill, before a crowd comes and chases them away. Michael Brooke from the BFI Screenonline, has said that the film "was one of the first films made by G.A. Smith, shortly after he first acquired a camera", and is also, "one of the earliest films to show a clear awareness of its visual impact when projected."

Cecil Hepworth

Cecil Hepworth

Born in Lambeth, London on the 19th of March 1874, Cecil Milton Hepworth was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was amongst the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920's at his Walton Studios. Hepworth came to moving pictures from a background of magic lanterns. His father was a popular magic lantern entertainer and it was from here where Hepworth developed his interest in projecting pictures, often touring with his father. In 1905, he co-directed 'Rescued by Rover' with Lewin Fitzhamon, starring a collie in the title role. The film became a huge financial success and is regarded as an important development in film grammar, with shots being effectively combined to emphasise the action. Cecil Hepworth was also one of the first to recognise the potential of film stars, both human and animal, with several recurring characters appearing in his films. His skill with publicity and his ability to charm his actors to appear in many of his films, made  the company the only British Film Company to compete well with the wealth of foreign imported films. 

Rescued by a Rover 1905

Lev Kuleshov

Lev Kuleshov

Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was born on the 13th January 1899. He was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught and helped to establish the world's first film school, 'The Moscow Film School'. He has also taught Sergei Eisenstain, who will later become an important figure in the film industry. Kuleshov believed that the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To show this example, he created what has come to be recognised as the 'Kuleshov Experiment'. This famous editing example, shots of an actor where intercut with various meaningful images eg (a casket, a bowl of soup etc) in reference to show how editing changes the viewers perception and interpretations of the images. Alongside his theoretical work, Lev Kuleshov was an active director of feature-length films until 1943. Since 1943, Kuleshov was serving as the academic rector of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. 

The Lev Kuleshov Experiement

Sergei Eisenstein 

                   Sergei Eisenstein

Born Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein in Russia on the 23rd of January 1898, he was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the 'father of montage'. Most notably noted for his 1924 film 'Strike' 1925 film Battleship and October (1927), including his historical epics 'Ivan The Terrible' and 'Alexander Nevsky' (1938). In 1920, Eisenstein moved to Moscow and began his career at the theatre, working for Proletkult, later working as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1923, Sergei Eisenstein began his career in film theory, by writing 'The Montage of Attractions for LEF (Left Front of the Arts) Journal. His 1927 film 'October' or Ten Days That Shook The World (about the 1917 Russian October Revolution) received critical acclaim. Critics of the outside world praised him, but in his home town, Eisenstein's main focus in this film and 'The General Line' or 'Old and New' was on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements, and montage. Two of his earliest theories written was that montage (editing) was the essence of the cinema. His books and articles, mainly Film Form and The Film Sense, explain the importance of montage in more detail.

                                                    1927 film October

Alfred Hitchcock


                                 Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE, was born on the 13th of August in 1899. He was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques used in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After having a successful career in the British cinema for both silent and early talking ones, he moved on to Hollywood in 1939, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1955. With a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock's fashioned himself to have a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in an way that mimics a person's gaze, making the viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism (the practice of spying other people during sexual activity like undressing and having a shower). He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, using innovative film editing. Many of Hitchcock's films have twisted endings and thrilling plots that show, murder, violence and crime, usually with an 'icy blonde' female character as the victim and fugitives on the run from the law, as villains. With his cameo appearances in his films, interviews, film trailers and television programs like 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', he became a cultural icons. Alfred Hitchcock has directed more than fifty feature films in a career and is regarded as one of the 'greatest British filmmaker'. In 2007, he appeared in a poll by film critics of the Daily Telagraph, which states that "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."



                                                       Alfred Hitchcock's


Information sources courtesy from wikipedia, imdb, archive.org and early cinema.com