M.Z.ZULFI

‘The motion picture today is the greatest medium of expression the world has ever known. It is capable of giving life and form to all ideas, practical and emotional ...Its only limitation is human ingenuity.’- John Seitz,

I am not personally interested in writing or knowing about the films or story behind the scenes but a request from one of my friends Mr. Imran Khan (well known actor of small screen) persuaded me.

It was an employee of Thomas Edison, Edwin Porter, who in 1903, created the first U.S. narrative film, The Great Train Robbery. With this film, a real story line involving crosscutting between different narrative sequences and different camera positions and distances were all introduced. Porter's film had 14 scenes and lasted 12 minutes, a real epic by the standards of the day. Before that, films were shot from a single wide-shot camera position while actors paraded in front of the camera — a stage play on film, only you couldn't hear the actors speak, and the whole thing was in black and white. (It would be many years before color film would be introduced.)Before The Great Train Robbery people were starting to get bored with films. The novelty of the short films was wearing off, plus audiences could see things — not to mention hear them — much better in stage plays. Using a motion picture camera like the one on the left, Porter not only introduced the western as a film genre (which subsequently spawned a few thousand films of the same ilk), he also demonstrated that suspense could be introduced into films by alternating shots of “the bad guys" doing their illegal thing and "the good guys" trying to bring them to justice. In this regard not much has changed in the last century. Actually, Porter had stolen some of his ideas from European films — primarily from a Frenchman named Georges Méliès, a man credited with virtually inventing special effects with his film, Trip to the Moon. The film editor's job in those days was simple; just take out the blank film leader at the beginning and ends of reels and splice the whole thing together. Strangely, during the early days of film, some producers resisted the use of close-ups, arguing that they had paid for the whole actor, so they wanted to see the whole actor at all times. (With their eyes focused squarely on money, maybe they should have reasoned that if close-ups were used, they should only have to pay about 1/4th the full actor's wages.)

The Dawn of Film Censorship

One of the very first films produced in the United States, called The Kiss, was based on a scene from the stage play, "The Widow Jones." Groups tried to get the film banned because it showed a man and a woman kissing — something that moralists of the time thought was obscene. Later, kisses were deemed okay, as long as they didn't exceed a few, brief seconds — after which they were seen as inappropriate and had to be censored. Interestingly, these same censors didn't seem to mind that in The Great Train Robbery several men were shot and one was even thrown off the top of a moving train. So are we left to assume that kissing people was immoral, but killing them was okay?

Responding largely to the public and political pressure of the day, the U.S. Supreme Court officially denied motion pictures the same First Amendment freedom that was being given to the press, literature, and the theater. In deciding against the Mutual Film Corporation, they used the argument that films were amusements and not artistic works, a decision that would seem to instantly elevate the theater and the press to art forms! As a result of the Supreme Court decision film censorship boards sprung up in most states to make sure those films shown in their area adhered to their particular view of morality.

Almost 50 years later, the Supreme Court reversed itself, finally allowing films the same First Amendment protection as the other mass media. Even so, for several decades after this decision many state censorship boards hung on to their power over film content. Many would later redefine their purpose as being "advisory."

The Accidental Beginnings of Editing

In the early days, film action resembled a, simple, short stage play —continuous and not interrupted. This allowed a new film to be churned out every few days. It is said that the whole idea of instantly cutting from one scene to a different scene resulted from desperation on the part of a director one day when he had to stick to a very tight schedule. A mishap occurred while filming a particular scene and he didn't have time to start the scene all over again from the beginning — the normal price you had to pay for such problems in those days.

To keep from falling behind on the schedule the director just ordered the camera to stop until things were sorted out and then to start the camera and action again. Afterwards, the two scenes were spliced together. The director apparently hoped that no one would notice, or at least not complain too much. But after viewing "the mistake," it was concluded that the "lost" footage wasn't really necessary, and the jump in action actually speeded things along. By the late 1800s, it had become accepted practice to stop and reposition the camera and even to cut directly to a totally different scene in telling a story.

At this point there still wasn't sound or color. Dialogue initially appeared as full-frame text on the screen after actors spoke their lines. Later, the dialogue was superimposed over the picture. There was one major advantage of this "silent" approach: it was easy to change the dialogue into any language, which meant that the films could readily be exported to other countries. As we will see, this issue represented a major stumbling block when sound was introduced.