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

Editing Chronicles (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, the Lumière brothers publicly screened a film made with a machine they had invented called the “cinématographe.” 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 is too short—just over one minute long.

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

Right after that, the Lumière brothers screened another film, The 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 screen, a roaring train seemed as if it were about to burst out of the frame. Audiences at the time thought they were really going to be run over by a train; some were so frightened that they panicked and scattered. That day is regarded as the birth of cinema.

The Arrival of a Train is also defined in mainstream accounts today as the first film in the world. Of course, there is still debate over which of these two “films” is the truly first film in the full sense of the word, but this debate is not very meaningful—especially from the perspective of editing—because neither of them contains editing. In essence, they are just single long takes, mere recordings with no narrative or plot.

While the Lumière brothers were pioneering film projection and enjoying great success in France, the very next year the British filmmaker Robert W. Paul developed a camera called the “Animatograph,” built to rival the Lumières’ projection system. The surviving machine, known as “No. 1 Film Camera,” was the first camera capable of reverse movement of the film, allowing multiple exposures on the same strip of film. In fact, as early as April 1895, Robert Paul had already consciously started making “films” with narrative elements (such as The Derby (1895), Footpad (1895), The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race (1895), etc.). But these works also remained at the level of a single long shot and simple recording. Unlike the Lumière brothers, Paul’s images not only showed an intentional sense of “narrative,” but were also more sophisticated in composition. At the time, film projection undoubtedly triggered a technological craze and began to spread to other countries. But soon the novelty wore off and audiences grew tired; they began to question why they should pay to watch images they could see in their daily lives. This doubt, combined with the stagnation of the long-take approach, 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 others through the entrance. The second shot is an image showing what they are doing inside. This was a precursor to film editing. Although there are only two shots, it shows that the creator had begun to develop an awareness of “continuity editing” for storytelling. Paul’s use of a cut to a still image here was highly avant-garde.

Let’s rewind to the day The Arrival of a Train was screened. Among the audience watching the film, there was one person who seemed to see far more potential for creating with this new medium. He would later be called the world’s first film director: Georges Méliès.

Georges Méliès led a life of wide-ranging interests. While working in the family factory, he never stopped pursuing his passion for stage magic. After his father retired, Méliès sold his shares in the family business to his two brothers and used that money, along with his wife’s dowry, to buy the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. After some simple renovations, he officially embarked on his career as a magician. His identity as a magician would later 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 act urgently needed such a device. The Lumière brothers, seeking to monopolize projection technology and protect their patent, turned him down. They likewise refused even higher offers from a wax museum and a music hall in Paris. Méliès then began looking everywhere for a projector. One day, his mistress at the time—French actress Jehanne d’Alcy, who later became his second wife—happened to mention that while touring in Britain she had seen Robert Paul’s “Animatograph.” Méliès promptly went to London, found Paul, and bought a machine. Incidentally, he also purchased an animated film and several short films from Paul. From then on, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin made “film screenings” part of its regular program, and Méliès formally began his own filmmaking.

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

Left: the cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers; right: 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 started it again, the bus was gone, replaced by a hearse. Méliès discovered that this method of “stop the camera and start again” could create the effect of a “special effect.” Today we would call it akin to a jump cut—exactly the kind of technique ideal for magic tricks. Méliès immediately put this discovery into practice in his films. He often kept the camera fixed while changing the objects within the frame to create wonderful illusions of things disappearing or transforming. Since Méliès’s profession at the time was as a magician, almost all his film ideas were based on magical concepts. He later invented the earliest versions of visual transition techniques like fade-ins, fade-outs, and dissolves. However, because Méliès’s thinking was rooted in stage performance, all of his storytelling was done from a single fixed camera position at the same angle. No matter how many shots he filmed or how many cuts he made in post-production, the angle never changed, because the concept of different shot scales had not yet emerged. Interestingly, over the course of more than 500 films, Méliès is said to have never once moved the camera’s position. This once again shows how his creative thinking was completely confined by stage conventions. For example, in his groundbreaking 1902 science fiction film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune, 1902), Méliès devoted enormous effort to designing sets and changes within the frame. He never considered moving the camera and then editing in post; from today’s perspective, the latter would have been far more efficient.

Although Méliès kept pushing film forward through his use of editing-based special effects, his works still did not contain complete narratives; they were primarily visual pieces. While Méliès was laying the groundwork for visual editing in cinema, the Brighton School in England was gradually refining continuity in editing—in other words, narrative awareness. 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 the film cuts to a close-up of the girl’s foot within a black circular matte, followed by a return to the continuation of the original wide scene. In this film, editing begins to show changes in shot scale and an awareness of breaking a scene into multiple shots.

The faintly voyeuristic plot and the appearance of close-ups in As Seen Through a Telescope would later become embedded in Alfred Hitchcock’s creative thinking.

Even more noteworthy 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 axis rule began to attract attention.

In 1901, Williamson’s films Stop Thief! (1901) and Fire! (1901) showed even more pronounced traces of editing. In The Big Swallow (1901), he even experimented with extreme close-ups and editing tricks to enhance narrative power.

In The Big Swallow, Williamson experimented with close-ups and extreme close-ups and their effect on storytelling. His use of such extreme shot scales revealed a highly avant-garde editing consciousness.

Thus the Brighton School, through their continued exploration of how editing and shot scale affect narrative, became important pioneers in the development of film editing.

— Across the Atlantic, another key figure was also beginning to advance editing: American director Edwin S. Porter. With Porter’s arrival, editing truly entered the narrative stage.