Editing In Early Cinema

Thomas Edison 

Thomas Edison ran a film laboratory where the Cinematographic camera and the cinetoscope were invented. He developed  the 35mm film strip that came to be the industry standard.He also eventually developed the projector to play it!

The Lumiere Brothers

Edison worked with the Lumiere Brothers and produced short films that were one long, static, locked-down shot. Motion in the shot was all that was necessary to amuse an audience, so the first films simply showed activity such as traffic moving on a city street. This can be seen in the film Sortie D'usine (1895) -  by the Lumiere  Brothers.

G.A Smith 

Initially, there was no story and no editing. Each film ran as long as there was film in the camera. An example of which is The Miller and The Sweep (1898) by G.A Smith. In 1899, G.A Smith made The Kiss In The Tunnel. This film is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing (creating a story). Smith felt that some 'extra spice' was called for in the then popular Phantom Ride genre. He took advantage of the brief onset of darkness as they went into the tunnel to splice (cut and then stick two pieces of film together) in the shot of the couple.

George Méliés 

 George Méliés was a magician who had seen the films made by the Lumiere Brothers. Méliés saw at once the possibilities of a novelty more than just motion its self. He acquired  a camera, built a studio, wrote scripts, designed sets and soon he discovered and exploited the basic camera tricks we know so well today. In 1886, he made The Vanishing Lady using a technique known as in-camera editing.