The History of Editing - Timeline

1895 – Louis Lumière invented the Cinematographe, an all-purpose camera, printer and projector.  Its ability to film was limited; only one static frame could be filmed and even then most reels lasted thirty to fifty seconds.  Even Lumière himself claimed, “The cinema is an invention without a future."  His first film, Sortie d’Usine (France, 1895) , was simply his workers leaving the factory he and his brother ran.  Staged to happen while the camera was rolling, the shot was filmed from when the gates opened to when the gates closed.  Le Jardinier et le Petit Espiegle (France, 1895 - Louis Lumière) is a very early comedy.  It is also one of the first films to feature a plot, and the opportunity for film to become an art form is realised.  Partie d’Ecarte (France, 1895 - Louis Lumière) is an example of the spacial restrictions in early film – it is staged to be a live-action display of a painting.  Paintings are confined to the space they are painted in, they have limits or boundaries set by the canvases they are painted on.  What Lumière hadn't discovered in his time was that one could pass through these boundaries in film.

 

1896 – Arrivée d’Un Train en Gare a la Ciotat  (France, 1896 - Louis Lumiére) is an example of a shot used often in early action films  in the primitive movie era.  The shot used is also characteristic of photography, something incorporated even today in modern films.  R.W. Paul, a scientific instrument inventor, designed a of projector named the Theatrograph that used a Maltese Cross system with intermittent movement that was projected onto a screen.

 

1898 – Elements of theatre are brought into film.  Come Along, Do! (Britain, 1898 - R.W. Paul) featured multiple constructed sets, props, two scenes and it encouraged emotional response from the audience.  In this case, the film tried to make its audience laugh.  Notably, this film containd the first ever splice.

 

1899 – The Kiss In The Tunnel (Britain, 1899 - George Albert Smith) pioneered an interesting way to connect phantom rides and drama.  It began with a phantom ride, then as the train approached and entered a tunnel, it cut to a shot of a man and a woman sitting in a carriage.  After the kiss, the action returns to the train’s phantom ride as it leaves the tunnel.  This is an early production of action continuity.

 

1900 – Grandma’s Reading Glass (Britain, 1900 - George Albert Smith) is the first film  that breaks up the scene as a device - that is, we get different shots within a scene purely for effect.  This is the first film to use POV shots.  In the same year Smith released As Seen Through A Telescope (Britain, 1900) , which includes more POV.  However, rather than being an actual shot filmed through a telescope, the photography actually was through a black card with a circular hole in the middle.

1903 – R.W. Paul produced A Chess Dispute (Britain, 1903) , which discovers leaving the “window” that formed a barrier – since then out-of-shot action has been used.  The Great Train Robbery (U.S.A, 1903 - Edwin S. Porter) was one of the first action films.  It also featured very early camera movements, on-location shooting and cross-cutting.  Life Of An American Fireman (U.S.A, 1903 - Edwin S. Porter) is an early narrative film that uses suspense and supposedly uses several pioneering edits.  It has been argued that this is not the first film to use them, however.