Documentary Script
Documentary Script
December 28th 1895. It all started in the Basement Show an image of the grand cafe
of the Grand Café, the Lumiere Brothers organised Show image of Lumiere Brothers
a screening for the first ever film. The name of the
film is called ‘Leaving the Lumiere Factory’. -Show a section of ‘Leaving the Lumiere Factory’-
Especially for us modern film viewers this is
nothing special, in fact it’s just a video of people
leaving a factory, but back then, this was
revolutionary and is what started the film industry
itself. Although the Lumiere Brothers started this,
there was someone in the audience who would
change the industry and actually invent the art of
Film Editing. That person was Georges Melies, at Show image of Georges Melies
the time Georges was a magician, but after seeing
this show, he was inspired to create films of his
own. Georges actually tried to purchase a Show image of a cinematograph
Cinematographe from the Lumiere Brothers, but
they saw him as competition, so they refused. This
wouldn’t hold back Melies though, as he ended up
buying an Animatograph for a lot cheaper than he Show Melies Animatograph
was requesting to purchase for the
Cinematographe. Melies had a mechanic
background, so he was actually able to craft his
own camera from the Animatograph. In the
autumn of 1896 Melies was filming a bus when his Show a bus with someone taking a video and it
camera suddenly jammed. By the time he actually jamming and being replaced by a car
fixed the camera, the bus was long gone, and a car
ended up taking the buses place. When he
processed the film he saw that it jumped from the
bus to the car, which in turn was the creation of
the first ever piece of edited film. Melies carried on -Show clip of Melies using editing to make
using this technique in his film, usually to create a someone disappear-
magic trick, making someone disappear and
reappear. In Melies run, he invented three iconic
effects that are still used today; Fade, Overlapping List of the three techniques he invented (possible
Dissolves and Stop Motion Photography. Melies is clip example of each)
definitely one of the most important people in the
industry and is the person who invented the idea
of video editing. Across the Atlantic we were
introduced to Edwin S. Porter, the person who Show image of Edwin porter
helped create the first Edison projector the Show image of projector
Vitascope. He worked in this industry until the
early 1900’s at which he decided to join the Edison
Production Company. He was appointed the go-to
Cameraman or Director due to the vast knowledge
he had in the field. Porter decided that he would
make his very own narrative production what was -Show extract from ‘The life of a Fireman’-
later titled ‘The life of an American Fireman’. This
production was created in 1903 and was created
by Compiling staged scenes and Stock footage -Show extract of the stock footage used-
together to create an interesting narrative for the
audience. One of Porters most important films ‘The -Show extract of ‘Great Train Robbery’-
Great Train Robbery’ which is the movie that
pushed the idea of a narrative based film further
and truly help mould film production to where it is
now. This movies importance to editing is very
substantial as he created film without using the
most common edits such as fades and dissolves
and that editing can be used to compress time to
go through a longer story with more content. In Show image of D.W. Griffith
1908 porter hired an Actor by the name of D.W -Show extract of ‘Rescued from an eagle’-
Griffith for the film ‘Rescued from an Eagle’. After
this Griffith started to instead write scenarios for
Porter under the name Lawrence Griffith. Griffith
eventually found work at a failing company called Show image of biograph
Biograph. They needed a Director and Griffith was
more than happy to fill the role. This job was quite
important for Griffith and the evolution of Film as
he ended up making more than 450 Films in his run
from 1908-1911. The reason he is so important is
because he created a lot of the modern techniques
used today but one of his most important
techniques that he invented, is ‘continuous
editing’. This effectively means that your edit
creates a sense of time throughout the film that
the audience can understand. He invented a few
more things which were quite important such as Show Cut in and 180 degree rule
the ‘Cut in’ and the ‘180 Degree rule’ which has
changed the way create and edit films. Griffith then
left Biograph so that he could create his own
independent film. This film was very important in
the timeline of editing as this film was a
culmination of all of the editing techniques Griffith
had invented incorporated to make a revolutionary
film. The film was called ‘Birth of a Nation’. It was a -Show extract of ‘Birth of a Nation’-
huge hit, but had a lot of backlash. The story was
seen as racist and was actually banned in a few
countries. Griffith didn’t make the subject any
better as he took offence as he thought people
were attacking him. Although it was a monumental
film, this was the beginning of the end of his
career, the backlash he got from this was too
severe.
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