Iman Ahad Professor Kuntz T.A. Aruna Ekanayake FTV 106A 29 October 2014 Edwin S. Porter’s Narrative Side Cinema is a relatively new and highly creative medium. Since its coming, the variety of films yielded have been remarkable. In the early stages of film, there were many things to learn and many paths to go down. Given these circumstances, film most indubitable necessity was to have some pioneers working to perfect the ever-changing art form. One of the greatest and most notable of these pioneers is the great Edwin S. Porter. Porter was well known for his treasured contributions in American cinema. Many, including the great Adolph Zukor, have classified Porter 's work as artistic mechanics. Zukor, the founder of Paramount Pictures and one …show more content…
This is the film that leads Porter to be called the “father of the story film" and the "inventor of editing" (“The Innovators”). This landmark narrative film has deep roots in story and truly changed the way American cinema would move forward. As mentioned earlier, Porter’s use of ellipses to go from space to space showcased his technical talents, but also allowed stories to be told in a new fashion, one that made sense and was very intriguing. The Great Train Robbery was twelve minutes long, with a higher number of scenes than most other short films. This allows the narrative to be told thoroughly so that audiences can fully understand the story and its narrative. The Great Train Robbery has great narrative elements with the chase scene and even the last shot (sometimes placed at the beginning or middle). Porter breaks the viewer’s fourth wall and poses the bandit looking character straight into the eyes of the audience. This shot completely shows how “artistic mechanics” link with narrative story. By making the clip look as if the audience was being shot at, Porter gives the audience a sense of what it would like to be inside the film, to live in that time, or be one of the characters. Through this technique, Porter influences the way audiences perceive narrative as well as the …show more content…
Mechanical techniques, like those used by Edwin S. Porter, not only enhance story, but also make it more understandable and therefore more effective. He has inherent storytelling ability thanks to those advancements with technology. His editing techniques and story lines are often mimicked today and have since changed American cinema for the long haul. By created things like editing continuity, to better tell narrative stories, and using effective fourth wall shots, Porter influenced cinema by imploring mechanical techniques to create well-developed and original narratives. Works Cited Gazetas, Aristides. An Introduction to World Cinema. 2nd ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. PDF. The Great Train Robbery. Dir. Edwin S. Porter. Edison Maufacturing Co., 1903. DVD. Jack and the Beanstalk. Dir. Edwin S. Porter and George S. Fleming. Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902. DVD. Life of an American Fireman. Dir. Edwin S. Porter. Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902. McBride, Joseph. "THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY." American Film (Archive: 1975-1992) Jan 01 1976: 52,55, 78. ProQuest. Web. 29 Oct. 2014 . Musser, Charles. Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company. Berkeley: U of California, 1991. Print. Musser, Charles. "The Innovators 1900-1910: Time After Time." Sight and Sound 03 1999: 16-8. ProQuest. Web. 29 Oct.
Brubaker. Dir. Stuart Rosenberg. Perf. Robert Redford, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Alexander ,Murray Hamilton, David Keith, Morgan Freeman. Twentieth Century Fox, 1980. Film.
What new Thomas Edison invention fools Fievel into thinking he has found his Papa? What year was it invented? (4 pts)
Meet John Doe. Dir. Frank Capra Perfs. Richard Connell, Robert Presnell Sr. DVD Triad Productions, 1941
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Traxel, David. 1898: The Birth of the American Century. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1998. Print.
The American film industry’s early attempts at the narrative Western were limited and in the early years were produced mainly in the east. During this early time in the film industry the...
John Ford was an American motion-picture director. Winner of four Academy Awards, and is known as one of America’s great film directors. He began his career in the film industry around 1913. According to Ellis, Ford’s style is evident in both the themes he is drawn toward and the visual treatment of those themes, in his direction of the camera and in what’s in front of it. Although he began his career in the silent film area and continued to work fruitfully for decades after the thirties, Ford reached creative maturity in the thirties. Ford, unlike other directors continued to do some of his finest work after the nineteen thirties. Nevertheless, he shaped his art into personal and full expression during those precedent-setting years. (Pg.200)
Gilbert. M.,(1997), A history of the twentieth century: Volume one: 1900-1933, Bath Press, Great Britain.
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.
I am reading the book Shooter by Walter Dean Myers. In my book the main character's name is Cameron Porter. He is a seventeen-year-old boy that attended a school called Madison High. There one of his closest companions Leonard, Len for short, has killed someone and maybe himself. I have only read about half of the book and only two of the five sections, so I don’t know exactly what led up to everything. But from what I’ve read, It seems like both Cameron and Len came from troubled backgrounds. Like both of Cameron’s parents are well off people and have lot’s of money but he doesn’t have a good relationship with his father because his father doesn’t treat him well and his mother doesn’t really notice him either. Cameron is bullied in school
Phillips, Charles. "December 29, 1890." American History 40.5 (2005): 16. MAS Ultra - School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
The highly acclaimed Citizen Kane creates drama and suspense to the viewer. Orson Welles designed this film to enhance the viewer’s opinion about light and darkness, staging, proxemics, personal theme development, and materialism. Creating one of the most astounding films to the cinematography world, Welles conveys many stylistic features as well as fundamentals of cinematography. It is an amazing film and will have an everlasting impact on the world of film.
The 1920’s and 1930’s was considered the golden age for movie production. In the 1920’s the production code started censoring the film makers. This stated that any movie written had to pass a certain criteria examples included: if containing sex, violence, and killing. Early silent movies were often accompanied by live piano or organ music. Films were black and white. According to A Short Stories of the Movies, D.W Griffith, never had the intention to make movies, accidentally writing and reporting for a Louisville newspaper led him to become a movie producer, and writer. He is known as the inventor of Hollywood for using close-up shots, which tightly frames an object; today is known as “zooming”. He also used cross-cutting, in order to make
Porter had 2 big movies he worked on does 2 where (life of an American fire man) and (the great train robbery). On The great train robbery Porter used cross-cutting editing method to show simultaneous action in different places. And the great train robbery had a running time of twelve minutes, with twenty separate shots and ten different indoor and outdoor locations. In the movie Life of an American Fireman Porter presents the same narratives where the fireman rescues a woman from a burning building as seen first from inside the building and then from camera setup outside the building. This duplication of event was a deviant use of editing, although other early films feature this kind of overlapping action. Porter also used parallel editing styles in the great train robber.
Head, F. B. Stokers and Pokers (or the London and North Western Railway, The Electric Telegraph and The Railway Clearing-House. Augustus M. Kelley, New York. 1969