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 an image using a machine they had developed called the “cinematograph.” The film was titled Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (La sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon, 1895). From today’s perspective, we can only call it a piece of footage, because it was so short—just over one minute long.

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, each in their own natural state. It’s a scene of unembellished reality, and these workers look as ordinary as people today. But for audiences at the time, it was overwhelmingly shocking, as if a door to a new world had been opened—because they had never imagined that everyday images they saw in real life could one day come alive on a screen.

Right after that, the Lumière brothers screened another film, titled Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat, 1896). The shock this film brought was even more dramatic. On screen, the roaring train seemed about to burst out of the frame. Audiences at the time thought they would actually be run over and were so terrified they scattered in panic. That day is considered the date of the birth of cinema.

Arrival of a Train is also commonly defined in mainstream accounts as the first film in the world. Of course, there is still debate about which of these two “films” can be called the first film in the true sense. But that debate is of limited significance—especially for editing—because neither of these films contains any editing. In essence, they are just single long takes, simple records of reality, without narrative or plot.

Just as the Lumière brothers were achieving tremendous success by pioneering film exhibition in France, the following year in Britain, Robert W. Paul developed a camera called the “Animatograph,” directly competing with the Lumières’ system. The preserved machine, known as the “No. 1 Cinematograph 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 already consciously begun producing “films” with a hint of narrative character (such as The Derby 1895 (1895), The Cushion (1895), The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race (1895), etc.). Yet their content also remained at the level of single long takes and pure recording. Different from the Lumière brothers, Paul’s images not only displayed a budding awareness of “narration,” but were also more sophisticated in composition.

At the time, film exhibition undeniably triggered a technological craze and quickly spread to other countries. But novelty soon wore off, audiences grew bored, and they began to question why they should pay to watch scenes they could see in everyday life. This skepticism, together with the stagnation of the single long-take form, accelerated the emergence of editing.

In 1898, Paul shot Come Along Do! (1898), in which, for the first time in film history, shots were assembled—two shots connected to tell a story.

In the first shot, an elderly couple eats lunch outside an art exhibition and then follows others inside. The second shot is like a “picture” showing what they are doing inside. This was a precursor to film editing. Although there are only two shots, it demonstrates that the creator had begun to develop a sense of “continuous narration.” Paul’s use of a “photo-like” cut is extremely avant-garde.

Let’s rewind to the screening of Arrival of a Train. Among the spectators in the audience that day there was one man who seemed to perceive many more possibilities for film creation. He was Georges Méliès, often called the world’s first film director.

Georges Méliès had a wide range of pursuits throughout his life. While working in the family factory, he never lost his passion for stage magic. After his father retired, Méliès sold his share in the family factory to his two brothers and used the money—plus his wife’s dowry—to buy the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. After some simple renovations, he formally began his career as a magician. His identity as a magician would later help him transform film editing from a technical device into a genuine art.

After watching the Lumière brothers’ premiere from the audience, Méliès immediately wanted to buy one of their machines for 10,000 francs, because he felt his magic performances urgently needed such a device. Naturally, the Lumières refused in order to monopolize the exhibition technology and protect their patent. They likewise turned down even higher offers from a wax museum and a music hall in Paris.

Méliès then began to look everywhere for a “projector.” One day, his mistress at the time—French actress Jehanne d’Alcy, who would later become his second wife—happened to mention that she had seen Robert Paul’s “Animatograph” camera while touring in Britain. Méliès immediately went to London, found Paul, and bought a machine. He also bought one animated film and several shorts from Paul. From then on, film projection became a regular part of the program at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, and Méliès formally embarked on his career as a filmmaker.

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

On the left is the cinematograph camera invented by the Lumière brothers; on the right is Robert Paul’s Animatograph No. 1 camera.

In the autumn of 1896, while Méliès was filming a bus coming out of a tunnel in Paris, the camera suddenly jammed. When he restarted it, the bus was long gone and had been replaced by a hearse. Méliès discovered that this “stop-camera and restart” method could be used to create “special effects.” Today we might call this a kind of “jump cut.” It was perfectly suited to magic performance. Méliès immediately put this discovery into practice, frequently using it in his films. By keeping the camera fixed while changing the objects in the frame, he could create marvelous illusions of objects disappearing or transforming.

Because Méliès was a magician by profession, his film creations almost always grew out of magical concepts. Later he also invented foundational visual transition techniques such as fade-out, fade-in, and dissolve. However, since his thinking was deeply rooted in stage performance, all of his narratives were shot from a single fixed camera position, always from the same angle, no matter how many shots he took or how many were spliced together. 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 position. This again shows how his creative thinking was completely constrained by stage practice. Take, for example, his pioneering science fiction film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune, 1902). Méliès devoted enormous effort to designing sets and rearranging positions within the frame, but never considered moving the camera and then editing afterwards—something that, from today’s point of view, would have been far more efficient.

Even though Méliès continually advanced cinema through special-effects editing, his works did not yet possess fully developed narratives; they were primarily visual pieces. While Méliès was laying the groundwork for the visual side of film editing, in England the Brighton School was gradually refining the idea of continuity editing—what we now call narrative awareness. Two key figures here were George Albert Smith and James Williamson.

In 1900, Smith shot As Seen Through a Telescope (1900). The main shot shows a street scene. An old man looks through a telescope and sees a young man in the distance tying his girlfriend’s shoelaces. We then cut to a shot framed in a black circular mask showing a close-up of the girl’s foot, and then cut back to the original scene. In this film, editing begins to introduce changes in shot scale and shows an emerging awareness of breaking down action into separate shots.

The slightly voyeuristic, mysterious element of As Seen Through a Telescope, along with the use of the close-up, would later be deeply embedded in Hitchcock’s creative thinking.

Even more notable is James Williamson’s Attack on a China Mission (1900), shot around the same time in 1900. The story depicts a group of British naval soldiers 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, and at the same time, the 180-degree rule began to attract attention.

In 1901, in his films Stop Thief! (1901) and Fire! (1901), Williamson’s editing became even more evident. In The Big Swallow (1901) he even experimented with extreme close-ups, using editing tricks to enhance narrative impact.

In The Big Swallow, Williamson experimented with close-ups and extreme close-ups to gauge their effect on storytelling; this radical use of shot scale shows a highly avant-garde editorial awareness.

Thus, the Brighton School’s continual exploration of how editing and shot scale influence narrative makes them important pioneers in the development of film editing.

— Across the Atlantic, another key figure was also beginning to push editing forward: American director Edwin S. Porter. With Porter’s emergence, editing formally entered the narrative stage.