Edwin S. Porter and Thomas Edison

1. Edwin S. Porter and Thomas Edison

2. Edwin S. Porter-An American film pioneer • He was hired by Thomas Edison to help with the camera equipment and was soon placed in charge of one of his studios. He soon was a cameraman and director. •  In 1909, he left Edison after being demoted and went for an independent motion picture company. He became chief director of Adolph Zukor- Famous Players Film Company (later Famous Players-Lasky and then Paramount Pictures)- first American company that regularly produced feature length films (later on). • Like Méliès, he could not adapt to the linear narrative modes and assembly-line production systems that were developing. • His last film was in 1915. He retired in 1925. He lost most of his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929.

3. Edwin S. Porter’s Accomplishments • He was involved with the concept of continuity editing. (Continuity- continuous flows of the film where shot follows shot in a smooth and understandable way.) • Porter, by his own admission, was also influenced by other filmmakers—especially Georges Méliès, whose Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon [1902]) he came to know well in the process of duplicating it for illegal distribution by Edison in October 1902. Years later Porter claimed that the Méliès film had given him the notion of “telling a story in continuity form,”  • The Great Train Robbery- 1903 Edwin S. Porter: had a relatively advanced narrative at the time but interrupted by spectacle. Sequential arrangement of shots and it moves toward continuity. • His “innovative use of dramatic editing (piecing together scenes shot at different times and places) in such films as The Life of An American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1903) revolutionized filmmaking.” • He is credited with calling a shot a 'shot.'

4. The Great Train Robbery • The industry’s first major box-office success, The Great Train Robbery is credited with establishing the realistic narrative, as opposed to Méliès-style fantasy, as commercial cinema’s dominant form. The film’s popularity encouraged investors and led to the establishment of the first permanent film theatres, or nickelodeons, across the country. Running about 12 minutes, it also helped to boost standard film length toward one reel, or 1,000 feet (305 metres [about 16 minutes at the average silent speed]). 

5. History of Theaters • Vaudeville, a variety type show, was a popular form of entertainment from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Many future comedic filmmakers started in vaudeville such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. • Vaudeville was a prime film venue as well. Usually, each night they would play a few films amongst the other vaudeville acts. • Nickelodeons were the first exclusive film venue. They would play the same film all day long right after the other was finished so it was consistently dark, dirty, and a place for crude behavior. They created massive demand for films but also a bad reputation. • Christmas Closings of 1908. Christmas Eve.NYC mayor closed all Nickelodeons in the city saying they were hazardous physically and mentally. Filmmakers feared the demise of moving pictures. To save the films they needed to bring back a middle class audience to moving pictures. They started making movies with stories from stage/theater. • The New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship (later took off the New York part since it was country-wide) was created in 1909. All films across the country submitted to it. Films were not released without approval. Later National Board of Censorship eliminated 'bad morals.‘ • And theaters more like ours today opened up and brought back a middle/upper class audience (and kept all other audiences) along with good morals.

6. Looking at History • Draw/explain the line from Edison’s camera, the Lumiere Brothers, Melies, to Edwin S. Porter – all of these people affected the ones afterwards to further film innovation. http://www.cleanvideosearch.com/media/action/yt/watch?v=LlhNxHfyWTU Rescued by Rover • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville • http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/471087/Edwin-S-Porter