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

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On December 28, 1895, at the Grand Café in Paris, France, the Lumière brothers publicly screened a film 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 Lumière Factory, what we see is a group of workers leaving the factory gate after work—some on bicycles, some walking, all in different states, forming a natural and realistic scene. These workers look as ordinary as people today. But for audiences at that time, this was overwhelmingly shocking, as if a door to a new world had been opened—because they had never imagined that such everyday images could one day come alive on a screen.

The Lumière brothers then screened another film titled Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat, 1896). The impact of this film was even more dramatic. On the screen, the train roared toward the audience as if it were about to burst out of the frame. The audience truly thought they were going to be run over by a train, and some were so frightened that they panicked and scattered. This day is regarded as the birth of cinema.

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat is widely regarded in mainstream accounts as the first film in the world. Of course, there is still debate over which of these two “films” is the first true film in the strict sense, but this debate is actually of limited significance—especially when it comes to editing. Whichever one you choose, neither of them contains editing. In essence, they are just single long takes, simple recordings, with no narrative or plot.

Just as the Lumière brothers were achieving great success in pioneering film projection in France, the following year in Britain, Robert Paul developed a camera called the “Animatograph,” a system meant to rival the Lumières’ projector. The surviving machine, known as the “No. 1 cinematograph camera,” was the first camera with a reverse movement function, allowing the same strip of film to be exposed multiple times. In fact, as early as April 1895, Robert Paul had already begun consciously making “films” with a hint of “narrative” (such as The Derby 1895 (1895), Footpad (1895), The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race (1895), etc.). But their content still remained at the level of long takes and pure recording. Unlike the Lumières, however, Paul’s images were not only consciously “narrative,” but also more carefully composed. At the time, film projection undeniably set off a technological craze and rapidly spread to other countries. But the novelty faded quickly, and audiences grew tired, starting to question why they should pay to see images they could already see in real life. This doubt, combined with the stagnation of the single long-take form, accelerated the emergence of editing.

In 1898, Paul shot Come Along Do! (1898), the first film in cinema history to feature the joining of shots—in other words, two shots connected to tell a story.

In the first shot, an elderly couple are eating lunch outside an art exhibition and then follow other people inside. The second shot is a picture showing what they are doing inside. This is a precursor to the emergence of film editing. Although there are only two shots, it shows that the creator had already begun to develop a sense of “continuity editing” and continuous storytelling. Paul’s use of splicing with a still picture here was highly avant-garde.

Let’s go back again to the day Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat was screened. Among the audience watching the film, one person seemed to see far more creative potential in cinema. This person was Georges Méliès, later known as the world’s first film director.

Georges Méliès led a life of wide-ranging interests. While working in his family’s 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, together with his wife’s dowry, to buy the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. After some simple renovations, he officially began his career as a magician. This identity as a magician would later, in an invisible way, help him transform film editing from a mere technical process into a true art.

After watching the Lumière brothers’ premiere from the audience, Méliès immediately tried to buy one of their machines for 10,000 francs, because he felt his magic performances desperately needed such a device. The Lumières refused, obviously, as they wanted to monopolize the projection technology of the time and protect their patent. They also turned down even higher offers from a wax museum and a music hall in Paris. Méliès then began searching everywhere for a “projector.” One day, his then mistress and future second wife, French actress Jehanne d’Alcy, happened to mention that she had seen Robert Paul’s “Animatograph” projector while touring in Britain. Méliès rushed to London, found Paul, and bought a machine from him. He also bought an animated film and several short films from Paul. After that, showing films became a routine part of the program at the Robert-Houdin theatre, and Méliès officially began his own film work.

After studying the design of the Animatograph, Méliès modified the machine so that 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, Méliès was filming a bus coming out of a tunnel in Paris when the camera suddenly jammed. When he restarted it, the bus had already gone, and in its place was a hearse. Méliès discovered that this “stop-camera” technique could produce “special effects.” Today, we might call this something akin to a “jump cut.” It was exactly the kind of effect that magic performance needed. Méliès immediately put this discovery into practice, frequently using it in his films: keeping the camera fixed while changing the objects within the frame to create wondrous scenes of things vanishing or transforming. Since Méliès was a magician by profession, his film creations were almost all conceived on the basis of magic. Later on, he also pioneered visual transition techniques such as fade-out/fade-in and dissolves.

However, because Méliès’s thinking was firmly rooted in stage performance, all his narratives were built from a single fixed camera position. No matter how many shots he filmed or how many cuts he made in post-production, the camera angle never changed, because there was no concept of shot scale at the time. Interestingly, across the more than 500 films Méliès made in his lifetime, he never moved the camera position even once. This again shows how completely his creative thinking was constrained by stage convention. For example, in the science-fiction landmark A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1902), Méliès spent enormous effort designing sets and arranging changes within the frame, but never considered moving the camera and then editing between different positions. From today’s perspective, the latter would obviously have been far more efficient and effective.

Even though Méliès continuously pushed cinema forward with his special-effects editing, these works did not contain fully developed narratives; they were essentially visual pieces. While Méliès was laying the foundations for visual editing, the Brighton School in England was gradually developing a sense of continuity editing—that is, narrative awareness. Two of its key figures were George Albert Smith and James Williamson.

In 1900, Smith made the film As Seen Through a Telescope (1900). The main shot is a street scene: an old man, looking through a telescope, sees a young man in the distance tying his girlfriend’s shoelaces. Then we cut to a close-up of the girl’s foot seen within a black circular mask, before returning to the continuation of the original scene. In this film, editing begins to show changes in shot scale and a conscious use of separate shots.

The slightly voyeuristic element in As Seen Through a Telescope and the use of close-ups would later take root in Alfred Hitchcock’s creative thinking.

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

In film history, this is the first work to feature “shot/reverse-shot” editing, and at the same time, the 180-degree axis rule also began to receive attention.

In 1901, Williamson’s films Stop Thief! (1901) and Fire! (1901) already show much clearer traces of editing. In The Big Swallow (1901), he even experimented with extremely close shots and editing tricks to strengthen the narrative.

In The Big Swallow, Williamson experimented with close-ups and extreme close-ups and their impact on storytelling; his bold use of extreme shot scales reveals a highly pioneering editorial awareness.

Thus, the Brighton School’s ongoing exploration of how editing affects narrative and how shot scale can be used makes them crucial figures in the development of film editing.

Across the Atlantic, another key figure was also beginning to advance the art of editing: American director Edwin S. Porter. With Porter’s arrival, editing would formally enter the narrative era.