Early Editing: Task 1A & 1B

Early Editing What was thought to be the first moving picture film? Give the name, directors, date Cinematographe Lumiere – by the Lumiere brother’s first public screening December 28, 1895 Name the early technologies used for early film making (moving pictures). How did Melies discover editing and how did he use this in his early films? The name of the first moving picture camera was the cinematographe machine and the Animatographe. George Melies discovered editing accidentally when he was filming a bus for one of his films. His camera jammed and when it started to work again the bus was gone. It was replaced with a horse carriage. This gave the effect of a jump cut. Straight after the incident, Melies used it in his film ‘The Haunted Castle’ 1896. Melies also introduced editing techniques such as fade in and fade out, overlapping dissolves and stop motion photography. How many films did Melies make? Give the name and the date of Melies’ most famous and influential film. How did he start to use special effects editing in this film? George Melies created over 500 films but one of his most famous and influential films was ‘A trip to the moon’ in 1902. Melies started to use special effects editing to put a face on a moon and to make the moon look bigger. He did this by moving a trolley and the set forward to give the effect that the moon is getting bigger as the set gets closer to the camera. What was the name and date of one of Porter’s famous films and why was it thought to be so influential? What are splicing and temporal overlap? Give some details on some of his other editing techniques Porter worked for Edison Skylight Studio which had films of everyday life, He used those films to create a scene that looks like a story by splicing a created film and factual films together. Splicing is when a director takes one scene and another scene and puts it together to make it look like one scene. Life of an American fireman, 1903 it was influential because no one had seen anything like what potter had created before by showing different perspectives in the same scene- Temporal overlaps --are shots with overlapping action. For example, where the firemen are shot getting onto the pole and the next scene is the pole itself and then the firemen came down. It gives the audience a sense of flashback and that time stopped for a short while. Porter in The Train Robbery pushed these editing abilities to show the audience that he could compress time in his use of editing. It came to Porter’s importance that it was not only about the editing but about the shot and where he places them within the film.