As early films were not edited, audiences soon became bored, leaving them eager for something new and exciting. The subject matter of these early films were everyday activities, which were also uninteresting to the viewer.
On February 13th 1895 the Lumière Borthers invented their own device combining a camera, a printer and a projector, called the Cinématographe. The inventor/s of the Cinématographe is highly debated. Some claim that the Cinématographe Léon Bouly was invented by French inventor Léon Bouly on February 12, 1892. It is said that Bouly was not able to pay for his patent the following year, and Auguste and Louis Lumière's bought the license. The first commercial public screening of cinematographic films happened in Paris on 28 December 1895 and it was organised by the Lumière brothers. The Cinématographe was also exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. At the Exhibition, films made by the Lumiere Brothers were projected onto a large screen measuring 16 by 21 meters.
In 1895 the Lumière Brothers created the first comedy film, The Sprinkler Sprinkled. Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean were the earliest filmmakers in history.
As you can see (and hear) the film was filmed in black and white and had no sound.
Cecil Hepworth was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was one of the founders of the British Film Industry. He owned the Walton Film Studio, which would produce about three films a week.
In 1905 he co-directed Rescued By Rover with Lewin Fitzhamon. It starred a collie dog in the title role. This film was a huge financial success and the film is now regarded as an important development in film grammar with shots being effectively combined to emphasise the action. Hepworth was one of the first to recognize the potential of film stars, both animal and human, with several recurring characters appearing in his films.
George Albert Smith attended The Lumière programme in Leicester Square on March 1896, after which he and local chemist James Williamson acquired a prototype cine camera from a local engineer. In 1897, with the technical assistance and chemicals purchased from Williamson, Smith turned the pump house into a film factory for developing and printing and developed into a successful commercial film processor as well as patenting a camera and projector system of his own.
George Albert Smith was a stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, astronomer, inventor and one of the pioneers of British cinema. He is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research. His short films from 1897 to 1903, pioneered film editing and close-ups.
The Miller and the Sweep, released in 1897, was George Albert Smith's first film created with his newly acquired camera.
The Miller and the Sweep is a short black and white film that features a miller carrying a bag of flour fighting with a chimney sweep, also carrying a bag containing soot in front of a windmill, before a crowd comes and chases them away.
After this film release The Kiss in the Tunnel followed in 1899. It shows a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel, which is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing as it follows a clear order.
Grandma’s Reading Glass, a short silent film, was released in 1900. It features a young man who borrows a huge magnifying glass to focus on various objects, which was shot to demonstrate the new film technique of close up. This film is said to be one of the first films to cut between medium shot and point-of-view close-up.
The Sick Kitten was released in 1903, another silent comedy film. It features two young children tending to a sick kitten. This short film is said to continue the editing technique that Smith first explored in Grandma's Reading Glasses' (1900) but "without the circular black mask to differentiate it," as "Smith believed that his audience would have grown more sophisticated and would be able to tell the difference between a medium shot and close-up without prompting."
Cecil Hepworth was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was one of the founders of the British Film Industry. He owned the Walton Film Studio, which would produce about three films a week.
In 1905 he co-directed Rescued By Rover with Lewin Fitzhamon. It starred a collie dog in the title role. This film was a huge financial success and the film is now regarded as an important development in film grammar with shots being effectively combined to emphasise the action. Hepworth was one of the first to recognize the potential of film stars, both animal and human, with several recurring characters appearing in his films.
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company. In 1899 he joined Thomas Edison's manufacturing company and he soon took charge of motion picture production at Edison's New York Studios, operating the camera, directing the actors, and assembling the final print.
Edwin directed the film, The Great Train Robbery in 1903. The one-reel film, with a running time of twelve minutes, was assembled in twenty separate shots, along with a startling close-up of a bandit firing at the camera. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was groundbreaking in its use of cross cutting editing to show simultaneous action in different places. No earlier film had created such swift movement or has used such a variety of scenes. The Great Train Robbery was enormously popular up on its release. Its success firmly established motion pictures as commercial entertainment in the United States.
David Wark Griffith, better known as D. W. Griffith, was a premier pioneering American film director. He is often considered the most important figure of American cinema for his command of film techniques and expressive skills. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation, from 1914, made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature length films, instead of the common short films. This film is very controversial for its negative depiction of African Americans and its positive portrayal of slavery.The film was widely criticized and subject to boycotts by anti-racist organizations. Griffith responded to his critics with his next film Intolerance, intended to show the history of prejudiced thought and behavior. The film was not a financial success but was praised by critics.
The Birth of a Nation began filming in 1914 and pioneered camera techniques such as the use of panoramic long shots, the iris effects, still-shots, night photography, panning camera shots and a carefully staged battle sequence featuring hundreds of extras to make it look like thousands. It also contained many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra. The 190 minute long film was the longest film of its time.
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School, in 1919. For Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Experiment. In this now-famous editing exercise, shots of an actor were intercut with various meaningful images in order to show how editing changes viewers' interpretations of images, known as The Association of Ideas.
Edwin directed the film, The Great Train Robbery in 1903. The one-reel film, with a running time of twelve minutes, was assembled in twenty separate shots, along with a startling close-up of a bandit firing at the camera. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was groundbreaking in its use of cross cutting editing to show simultaneous action in different places. No earlier film had created such swift movement or has used such a variety of scenes. The Great Train Robbery was enormously popular up on its release. Its success firmly established motion pictures as commercial entertainment in the United States.
David Wark Griffith, better known as D. W. Griffith, was a premier pioneering American film director. He is often considered the most important figure of American cinema for his command of film techniques and expressive skills. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation, from 1914, made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature length films, instead of the common short films. This film is very controversial for its negative depiction of African Americans and its positive portrayal of slavery.The film was widely criticized and subject to boycotts by anti-racist organizations. Griffith responded to his critics with his next film Intolerance, intended to show the history of prejudiced thought and behavior. The film was not a financial success but was praised by critics.
The Birth of a Nation began filming in 1914 and pioneered camera techniques such as the use of panoramic long shots, the iris effects, still-shots, night photography, panning camera shots and a carefully staged battle sequence featuring hundreds of extras to make it look like thousands. It also contained many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra. The 190 minute long film was the longest film of its time.
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School, in 1919. For Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Experiment. In this now-famous editing exercise, shots of an actor were intercut with various meaningful images in order to show how editing changes viewers' interpretations of images, known as The Association of Ideas.
Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist who is often called the 'father of montage'. Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage. Both Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov argued that montage was the essence of the cinema. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film, known as Intellectual Montage.
Sergei Eisenstein directed a film called Strike in 1925, his first full length film. It ran for 82 minutes and was black and white. The film depicts a strike in 1903 by the workers of a factory in Russia and their subsequent suppression. The film is most famous for a sequence near the end in which the violent suppression of the strike is cross cut with footage of cattle being slaughtered, although there are several other points in the movie where animals are used as metaphors for the conditions of various individuals.
Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British Cinema in both silent films and early films with speech Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939. He is billed as England's best director. Although Hitchcock directed many other films his most famous film was horror film Psycho, released in 1960. The most famous scene is the shower scene, below.
This sequence of moving images is edited using the technique Intellectual Montage to add suspense. It is seen here in a single frame.
A shot-reverse shot is used to show when one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is looking back at the first character. An example of this is below, taken from the 1966 film The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. It is used to add tension as the camera uses long shots, close up and extreme close ups to show the characters faces guns. The viewer knows that somebody will be shot but they do not know who and when the will be shot.
This sequence of moving images is edited using the technique Intellectual Montage to add suspense. It is seen here in a single frame.
The purpose of film editing is to improve the filmed footage and to make sure all of the scenes are in the right order ready for viewing. Editing also helps get rid of unnecessary footage and allows the producer to select the best scenes. This also stops films from being monogamous as editing allows the producer to add in different scenes, such as scenery and a range of different shots, such as close ups of the characters faces.
Editing can create a sense of time and place for the viewer, for example Fast Motion can be used to show time passing rapidly. Fast motion editing is when a scene is sped up to make it move rapidly. To do this a producer will speed up the frame to make it move faster than the rest of the sequence. This is used to build suspense and it adds tension to a scene. Below is a clip from the film 2 Fast 2 Furious from 2003. The reason fast motion editing is used on this scene is to make it more dramatic and to add tension, meaning the viewer will be captivated by what is happening. It also adds an element of danger to the scene as the viewer feels as though they are in the car driving at such a fast pace as well as the characters.
Slow motion can be used to show when something awful is happening or when a character is unwell, for example if somebody is about to be hit by a car it could be shown in slow motion to add tension. Or if a character is unwell the scene could be edited to show the viewer how the character is feeling and to show their POV. Slow motion editing is when a scene is slowed down to make it slower than the rest of the sequence. The clip below is from 2004 film Mean Girls. it features a group of girls walking down a school corridor and it is shown in slow motion. The reason for this is to make it appear that when they walk down the corridor people stop and stare. This scene is also mixed with jump cuts to mix different scenes with this scene, to make it more interesting for the viewer.
Transitions are used to disguise when one scene merges with another. A dissolve fade is used in the film Die Hard 2, from 1990. This can be seen in this clip at 0:53 to 0:54 where Bruce Willis's face is seen fading from one expression to the other. This was used to disguise a cut in the scenes as one clip merges with the other.
Parallel editing (cross cutting) is the technique of alternating two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. If the scenes are simultaneous, they occasionally culminate in a single place, where the relevant parties confront each other. This type of film editing is used to add suspense to a scene as we can see what both characters are doing but they cannot. For example this scene taken from 2012 James Bond film Skyfall shows James Bond's family home being invaded. We see him defending his house and the enemy invading it.
The most basic and common type of transition is a straight cut. A straight cut happens when one shot instantly replaces the other. Cuts are so widely used that feature length movies normally contain thousands of them. Cuts are essential for the effects of juxtaposition, especially as demonstrated by the Kuleshov Experiment. Although most cuts exist simply for a technical need, the abrupt replacement of one shot by the other often demands a certain interpretation from the viewer. A cut is seen in this clip below, taken from 2008 James Bond film Quantum Of Solace. The very start of this clip features a straight cup, one second it is showing the female lead shivering and the next it cuts straight to James Bond. This is used to switch characters easily.
A shot-reverse shot is used to show when one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is looking back at the first character. An example of this is below, taken from the 1966 film The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. It is used to add tension as the camera uses long shots, close up and extreme close ups to show the characters faces guns. The viewer knows that somebody will be shot but they do not know who and when the will be shot.
