Chronicles of Editing (I): The Birth of Film and Editing (Georges Méliès and the Brighton School)

Chronicles of Editing (I): The Birth of Film and Editing (Georges Méliès and the Brighton School), video version >

On December 28, 1895, at the Grand Café in Paris, France, the Lumière brothers publicly screened a moving picture titled Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (La sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon, 1895) using a machine they had developed called the “cinematograph.” From today’s perspective, we can only call it a piece of footage, because it is far too short—just over one minute.

In Workers Leaving the Factory, the image shows a group of workers getting off work and walking out of the factory gate—some on bicycles, some on foot, in all sorts of everyday states. It is a natural and realistic scene, and these workers look as ordinary as people today. But for audiences at the time this was overwhelmingly shocking, as if a door to a new world had been opened—because they had never imagined that such ordinary images from daily life could one day come alive on a screen.

Right after that, the Lumière brothers screened another film, titled The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat, 1896). The impact of this piece was even more dramatic than the previous one. On screen, the roaring train seemed as if it was going to burst out of the frame for real. Contemporary audiences thought they would actually be run over by the train, and some were so frightened that they panicked and scattered. This day is regarded as the birth of cinema.

The Arrival of a Train is also defined in most contemporary sources as the first film in the world. Of course, there is still debate even now as to which of these two “films” is truly the first movie in the strict sense. But the debate is not particularly meaningful, especially in terms of editing, because neither of these films contains any editing. In essence they are just long takes, simple recordings, with no narrative or plot.

While the Lumière brothers were blazing a trail and achieving great success with public film screenings in France, the very next year the British filmmaker Robert Paul developed his own camera, called the “Animatograph,” as a counterpart to the Lumières’ projection system. The preserved device, known as the “No. 1 film camera,” was the first camera capable of reverse motion. It allowed multiple exposures on the same strip of film. In fact, as early as April 1895, Robert Paul had consciously begun producing “films” with a hint of “narrative” flavor (such as The Derby 1895 (1895), Footpad (1895), The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race (1895), etc.). Yet these works, too, were limited to long takes and pure documentation. The difference from the Lumière brothers is that Paul’s images were not only consciously “narrative,” but also more deliberate in composition. At the time, film exhibition unquestionably set off a technological craze that quickly spread to other countries. But before long, the novelty wore off and audiences began to grow bored, because they started to question why they should pay to watch scenes they could already see in everyday life. This questioning, coupled with the stagnation of the long-take form, hastened the emergence of editing.

In 1898, Paul made Come Along Do! (1898), the first film in cinema history to feature the splicing of shots—that is, two shots joined together to tell a story.

In the first shot, an elderly couple eat lunch outside an art exhibition and then follow others through the entrance. The second shot is a still image showing what they are doing inside. This marks the early appearance of film editing. Although the film only has two shots, it shows that the creator had begun to develop a sense of “continuous narrative.” Paul’s use of a still image for this splice was highly avant-garde.

Let’s rewind to the day The Arrival of a Train was screened. Among the audience members was someone who seemed to perceive far more creative possibilities in cinema. This man was Georges Méliès, later hailed as the world’s first film director.

Georges Méliès led a life of wide-ranging interests. While working at his family’s factory, he maintained an ongoing passion for stage magic. After his father retired, Méliès sold his shares in the family business to his two brothers, then used the money, together with his wife’s dowry, to purchase the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. After some modest renovation, Méliès officially embarked on his career as a magician. This identity as a stage magician would later, in an invisible way, help him transform film editing from a mere technical process into a genuine art form.

After watching the Lumière brothers’ premiere from the audience, Méliès immediately tried to offer 10,000 francs to buy one of their machines, believing his magic acts urgently needed such a device. Naturally, in order to monopolize the projection technology of the time and protect their patents, the Lumières refused. They also turned down even higher offers from a wax museum and a cabaret in Paris. Méliès then began searching everywhere for a “projector.” One day, his mistress at the time—later his second wife—the French actress Jehanne D’Alcy, casually mentioned that she had seen Robert Paul’s Animatograph camera while touring in Britain. Méliès promptly hurried off to London, found Paul, and bought a machine from him. He also purchased an animated film and several shorts. From then on, film screenings became part of the regular program at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, and Méliès formally launched his filmmaking career.

After studying the design of the Animatograph, Méliès modified the device so it could be used as a motion picture camera.

Left: the cinematograph camera invented by the Lumière brothers; right: the No. 1 Ainematograph camera developed by Robert Paul

In the autumn of 1896, Méliès was filming a bus emerging from a tunnel in Paris when the camera suddenly jammed. When he started it again, the bus had already gone, replaced by a hearse. Méliès discovered that this “stop-camera” technique could create a “special effect.” Today we might call it something akin to a “jump cut.” It was exactly the sort of device a magician’s performance could exploit. Méliès immediately put this discovery into practice, using it frequently in his films. By keeping the camera fixed and changing the objects within the frame, he created marvelous scenes in which things disappear or transform. Because Méliès was a magician by trade, almost all his cinematic ideas sprang from concepts used in magic. He would later invent such foundational visual transitions as fade-out, fade-in, and dissolve. However, because his thinking was rooted in stage performance, all his narratives were shot from a single, fixed angle. No matter how many shots he used or how he joined them in post-production, it was always the same viewpoint. At that time there was no concept of shot scale. Interestingly, in the more than 500 films Méliès made in his lifetime, he never once moved the camera. This again shows how his creative thinking was completely constrained by stage conventions. Take, for example, his pioneering science-fiction film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune, 1902). Méliès devoted enormous energy to designing sets and onstage changes within the frame, but never considered moving the camera or using post-production editing in that way—something that, from today’s perspective, would have made the process far more efficient.

Even though Méliès kept pushing film forward with his editing-based special effects, these works did not contain complete narratives; they were essentially visual pieces. While Méliès was laying the groundwork for the visual dimension of film editing, the Brighton School in England was gradually refining the idea of continuity editing—what we now call narrative consciousness. Two key figures in this group were George Albert Smith and James Williamson.

In 1900, Smith made As Seen Through a Telescope (1900). The main shot is a street scene. An old man uses a telescope to observe a young man in the distance tying his girlfriend’s shoelaces. Then we see a close-up of the girl’s feet through a round black mask, followed by a return to the original scene. In this film, editing introduces changes in shot scale and reveals an awareness of shot breakdown.

The vaguely voyeuristic element and the appearance of the close-up shot in As Seen Through a Telescope later became embedded in Alfred Hitchcock’s creative thinking.

Even more notable is James Williamson’s Attack on a China Mission (1900), made around the same time. The story shows an armed unit of British sailors in a garden defeating the Boxers and rescuing the missionary’s family.

In film history, this is the first work to feature shot–reverse shot editing. At the same time, the 180-degree rule began to draw attention.

In 1901, Williamson’s films Stop Thief! (1901) and Fire! (1901) already displayed much more obvious signs of editing. In The Big Swallow (1901), he even experimented with extremely close-up shots and editing tricks to strengthen narrative impact.

In The Big Swallow, Williamson experimented with close-ups and extreme close-ups and their effect on storytelling. This extreme use of shot scale reflects a highly avant-garde editing consciousness.

The Brighton School’s ongoing exploration of how editing and shot scale influence narrative makes it an important driving force in the development of film editing.

— Across the Atlantic, another key figure was also beginning to advance editing: the American director Edwin S. Porter. Porter’s emergence marks the point at which editing formally entered the narrative stage.