2. What Were Edward Stanton Porter Contributions To The Invention of Motion Pictures?

Edwin Stanton Porter was born in April 21^st, 1870 in Connellsvile, Pennsylvania.  He is considered the American early film pioneer.  There were not many interesting facts to unveil his life and work before he began as a fulltime employee at Edison Manufacturing Company in 1899.  We can consider his triumph in the cinematography world began when he took charge of motion picture production at Edison’s New York studios where he mostly direct, operate camera and assemble the final print.

Life of an American Fireman

His past experience as touring projectionist makes him aware what would please the crowd.  Porter than began to produce trick and comedy films for Edison that sparked his name in the industry as one of the most influential filmmaker in the United States.  One of his technique inventions in film making is the dissolve technique, gradual transitions from one image to another.  This technique was embedded into his film Life of an American Fireman where the technique helps his audiences to follow complex outdoor movement.  The Great Train Robbery is another film where Porter uses cross cutting technique to show simultaneous actions in different places.  The movie was assembled in twenty separate shots covering both indoors and outdoors that gave a sweet twelve minutes remarkable movie watching experience.  The film was a huge financial success and its mythic power has yet to dim.

The Great Train Robbery

Throughout his carrier with Edison’s company (1899-1909), Porter portrayed side lighting, close-ups, and changed shots within a scene technique in his movie called The Seven Ages (1905).  Porter had developed the modern concept of continuity editing, and is often credited with discovering that the basic unit of structure in film

The Seven Ages

 was the shot rather than the scene which is labeled by many as the basic unit on the stage.  Between 1903 and 1905 he successfully demonstrated most of the techniques that were to become the basic modes of visual communication through film.

He died in 1941 at the Hotel Taft in New York at an aged 71.  Although his innovation in film technique is undeniable, he had never repeated or maintained a consistent directorial style. To many of his industry friends, they regarded Porter as artistic mechanic rather than dramatic artist due to his fond deals with machine better than people.