Edwin S. Porter & George Melies

Edwin S. Porter

The Great Train Robbery (1903)
The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1906)

• Porter started as a projectionist and mechanic
• Became director and cameraman for Thomas Edison the Edison Manufacturing Co.
• Influenced by the story films of Georges Méliès
• Porter made important films such as Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1903). The latter was perhaps the cinema’s first Western.
• The GTR was groundbreaking for its use of "cross-cutting" in editing to show simultaneous action in different places. The film was also shot out of sequence.
• In these films and others, Porter helped to develop the modern concept of continuity editing. (The goal of continuity editing is to make the work of the editor as invisible as possible, and shots should flow together naturally to appear continuous.)
• He is often credited with discovering that the basic unit of structure in film was the shot rather than the scene (the basic unit on the stage), paving the way for D.W. Griffith's advances in editing and screen storytelling.
• Porter left Edison in 1909 to form his own production company which he eventually sold in 1912.
• He died on April 30, 1941 in New York City.

George Melies

A Trip to the Moon (1902)

• Georges Melies, a professional magician by training. In 1895, Méliès saw a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' Cinematographe in Paris, the first public display of motion pictures. After unsuccessful attempts to purchase a system from the Lumières, Méliès rushed home to build his own camera-projector.
• Little over a year later, Melies was filming his own creations. He discovered that he could use stop-motion photography to render trick visual effects. Melies was also the first to use techniques such as the fade-in, the fade-out, and the dissolve to create the first real narrative films.
• He started his own film company: The Houdin Theater.
• Melies made over 500 films, but his most famous, Voyage dans la lune, Le (1902) (Voyage to the Moon) made him a fortune.
• Melies, trained in classic theater, conceived all of his films in terms of fully played-out scenes.
• Just before WWI his film career was over. He tried briefly to revive the Theatre Houdin, but died penniless at 77.