Histroy of Editing

Lumier Brothers(sh)



The Lumiere Brothers invented the first photographic equipment, they also made the first ever motion picture camera, in France. Their equipment consisted of photographing and it project 16 frames per second. Their first public screening was in 1895. Each film strip was 17 meters long. In the film above the Lumiere Brothers filmed simple long shots and the cuts are very simple.

Edwin Porter (sh)

Edwin Porter was one of the first American Film pioneers in the early 90s. He introduced cross cutting and narrative to his films. His Most famous film are The Great Train Robbery and The Life of an American Fireman. All techniques Edwin has used, are used today. He tended to take ideas from other people and adapted upon them.




DW Griffith (Birth of a Nation) (km)

D.W Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He was born January 22, 1875 and died July 23, 1948. He is well known for directing the film The Birth of a Nation in 1915, and the subsequent film Intolerance 1916.  Griffith’s film ‘The Birth of a Nation’ made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques. He is generally considered one of the most important figures of early cinema for his command of film techniques and expressive skills.

Flashbacks (sh)

Flashbacks are parts of a story similar to cutaways in which a character remembers an event on screen, whereas cutaways are often off screen.


Parallel action (sh)

This is where the character does something and the different shots show it simultaniously. This gives the effect that the shots are taken at the same time.


Alfred Hitchcock (sh)

Alfred Hitchcock was born 13th August 1899 and died 29th April 1980. Hitchcock introduced editing that built suspence and enjoyed working an the genre of thriller. In his films he made the camera move in a way that mimics a person's gaze. Many of his films featured; crime, violence and murder. He created 50 feature films in his career. He made shots designed to scare the audience at the time. The film below is one of Hitchcock's best films, The 39 Steps.






Used editing to build up suspense (km)

Using editing to build up suspense in a film is where you make the editing seamless and make the shots simultaneously appear one after another. This builds suspense because the shots get shorter and faster making the audience wonder whats going to happen.



Eisenstein (sh)

Sergei Eisenstein was born 23rd January 1898 in Russia and died 11th February 1948. He was a film pioneer who directed film and had many theories about film. Sergei first worked in theatre and then went on to working in cinema. He travelled through Europe, Mexico and America collaborating and making films. He concentrated on camera angles and montages within his films.

Jean Luc Gordard

Jean Luc Gordard was born in France 3^rd December 1930. Jean is a film critic, director, actor, screenwriter, editor and producer. In Gordard’s films he used jump cuts and character asides, these techniques were somewhat new to the film industry. In his films he was very political and tried to keep with new cultures. His ideas were to redefine film and change people’s views about making films.  Breathless (1960) was one of Jean’s first feature films and it attracted a lot of attention in that year.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was born August 6th 1928 - February 22nd 1987. He was an American artist who was a leading figure in the Visual Art Movement also known as Pop Art. After a successful career as a commerical illustrator, he became a renowned controversial artist.