Edwins porter biography

Sign In. Edwin Stratton Porter. In the late s Porter worked as both a projectionist and mechanic, eventually becoming director and cameraman for the Edison Manufacturing Company. In them, he helped to develop the modern concept of continuity editing, paving the way for D. Griffith who would expand on Porter's edwin porter biography that the unit of film structure was the shot rather than the scene.

For the first time, the people involved in the production of film began to control how a particular story would be presented to an audience. Rather than filming disconnected vignettes of everyday life, these early film pioneers began to construct entire narratives that would then be delivered as a single program to an exhibitor. For the first time, it became the responsibility of the film producers to decide what audiences would see.

Porter soon became indispensable to the Edison Company. He was technically adept at numerous tasks and became Edison's chief cameraman. His early experience as an exhibitor in Los Angeles helped him understand what type of films would appeal to mass audiences. He began with simple one-shot films such as The Finish of Bridget McKeen inand was soon making multi-shot films.

Kansas Saloon Smashersone of Porter's first hits, poked fun at Carrie Nation, a famous temperance advocate who had been mentioned in newspaper articles after she led a demonstration in Wichita, Kansas against the evils of alcohol. Many films from this period borrowed material from popular newspaper headlines. The story of a woman invading a Wichita saloon in order to destroy it proved to be irresistible to audiences at the time.

While at the Edison Company, Porter perfected a number of techniques that became standard film practice, including the close-up of an actor's face and the dissolve from one scene to the next. Both of these techniques, which were borrowed from the early magic lantern shows that predated cinema, became hallmarks of the Edison studios.

Magic lantern shows featured slides that portrayed famous people. Dissolving from slide to slide was a common way for exhibitors to move through a particular program. Once the projector was introduced, however, these techniques became virtually impossible for the exhibitor to execute. Porter's ability to import these techniques into the film itself established a new creative authority for the filmmaker at the same time that it reintroduced familiar forms to American audiences.

Edwins porter biography

Porter also contributed to film "actualities," a kind of precursor to today's documentary, or non-fiction film. The film consisted of four separate films that were connected by a series of dissolves. One of Porter's more startling actualities was the multi-shot Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison in which a stark series of shots depicting the execution of McKinley's assassin is preceded and followed by panoramic shots of the edwin porter biography grounds.

The following year, the Edison Company released The Life of an American Fireman, one of the first films to inter-cut footage of a fire with dramatically acted interior scenes of fire-fighters saving a woman and child from a burning building. Porter's colleague, James H. Porter was born and raised in Connellsville, Pennsylvania[ 3 ] to Thomas Richard Porter, a merchant, and Mary Clark Porter; he was the fourth of seven children with four brothers Chales W.

He developed an interest in electricity at a young age, and shared a patent at age 21 for a lamp regulator. He filed for bankruptcy on June 15 and enlisted in the United States Navy four days later on June During his three years' service he showed aptitude as an inventor of electrical devices to improve communications. Porter entered motion picture work inthe first year movies were commercially projected on large screens in the United States.

He traveled through the West Indies and South America, showing films at fairgrounds and in open fields. He later made a second tour through Canada and the United States. As an exhibitor, Porter had tremendous creative control over these programs, presenting a slate of films accompanied by a selection of music and live narration. Porter joined the Edison Manufacturing Company in November He collaborated with several other filmmakers, including George S.

During the next decade Porter became the most influential filmmaker in the United States. From his experience as a touring projectionist, Porter knew what pleased crowds, and he began by making trick films and comedies for Edison. Like all early filmmakers, he took ideas from others, but rather than simply copying films he tried to improve on what he borrowed.

Instead of using abrupt splices or cuts between shots, however, Porter created dissolvesgradual edwins porter biography from one image to another. In Life of an American Fireman particularly, the technique helped audiences follow complex outdoor movement. Uncle Tom's Cabinwas the first American film to use intertitles which helped the audience follow the story by identifying the scenes and some of the principal characters.

Porter's next film, The Great Train Robbery took the archetypal American Western story, already familiar to audiences from dime novels and stage melodramaand made it an entirely new visual experience. The one-reel film, with a running time of twelve minutes, was assembled in twenty separate shots, along with a startling close-up of a bandit firing at the camera.

It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was groundbreaking in its use of " cross-cutting " in film editing to show simultaneous action in different places. No earlier film had created such swift movement or variety of scene. The Great Train Robbery was enormously popular. For several years it toured throughout the United States, and in it was the premier attraction at the first nickelodeon.

Its success firmly established motion pictures as commercial entertainment in the United States. He presented two parallel stories in The Kleptomaniaca film of social commentary like his technically more conventional film ofThe Ex-Convict. In addition, Porter used oblique camera angles for some scenes, departing from the frontally composed, theatrical staging of some of his competitors.

As the process of film making became more mechanized and less collaborative, Porter gradually lost interest. He left Edison in to work as a producer and equipment manufacturer. He formed Rex Films inbut soon afterward was offered a position as director-general for Adolph Zukor 's Famous Players. His final film before retiring from movie-making, The Eternal City, was completed in Porter turned his attention to the production of motion picture equipment.

He founded and served as president of the Precision Machine Corporation, once again enjoying the technical aspects of filmmaking. Although his business was extremely successful, his company failed with the stock market crash of and never recovered. After the crash he reestablished a shop and spent the balance of his work-life repairing motion picture machinery.

Porter died in New York City on April 30, Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company, Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. January 8, Retrieved January 08, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.

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