Edwin S. Porter | IMDB v2.1

Edwin S. Porter Dec 30, 2017 15:08:49 GMT

Quote

Post by Matthew the Swordsman on Dec 30, 2017 15:08:49 GMT

Dec 30, 2017 14:45:54 GMT spiderwort said:

Dec 29, 2017 6:11:50 GMT @brokedickdog said:

Compare The Great Train Robbery with Porter's Life of an American Fireman made earlier in 1903. Life of an American Fireman has choppy motion. It was the film editing perfected by Edwin S. Porter that gave The Great Train Robbery natural motion.

Yes, but Life of an American Fireman was a profoundly historically significant film, because it was the first film to employ non-linear editing, cross-cutting as it did between the burning building and the firemen racing to get to it. Nothing like that had been done before. The other watershed moment from Porter was, of course, the first close-up in a narrative film at the end of The Great Train Robbery. These two things together really laid the groundwork for the seminal films of D.W. Griffith, who forever change the landscape of cinema.

Wrong. The cross-cutting in Life of an American Fireman was added by someone years after the film was released, probably in the 1930s or 1940s, who was unfamiliar with editing of the early 1900s and was trying to "correct" the film. When originally released, the film had no cross-cutting. This is discussed by film historians on the DVD "Edison: The Invention of the Movies". As originally released, the rescue scene was shown twice, first inside and then outside. This kind of editing (showing the exact same scene but from two different perspectives) was common at the time.