Edwin S. Porter

Edwin S. Porter was both a film pioneer and director. He was a film pioneer because he made people come back to the theaters and start watching movies. His movies also were good because they told a story by editing the move. Being a director he made some of the greatest films in 1902 and 1903. In 1902 he directed The Life of an American Fireman and in 1903 The Great Train Robbery. With these two skills he was able to direct great films and use special camera shots not know of at that present time.

Porter was born on April 21st 1870 in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. There was not really any information on his parents but they did his parents first named him Edward. Since he was pudgy people use to call him Betty. There was really no information on why they called him Betty but I am sure it meant something. In 1893 he joined United States Navy and changed his name. He changed his name to Edwin Stanton instead of Edward Stanton. He changed it after Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton before he went into the Navy. They did not go into any detail on why he did it but my guess is he did not like his name and changed it. In the resources that I found I could not find much information about the rest of his family. I could not even find any information on what he did in his early years. The earliest I could find was starting in 1893.

In 1895 he started to work for the Vitascope Marketing Company. He would use his talent of electrical engineering with the company. With Vitascope he was in the project of the first projected movie that was shown in New York. That date was April 23rd 1896. He used his skills in engineering at Edison’s Manufacturing Company’s Laboratory. He let Edison for a while and went to Eden Musee Theatre in New York where he an operator. He was in charge of getting the films and projecting them onto the screen. His duties also were kind of illegal because he took a lot of films and edited them together to make fifteen-minute films. He would also take some of Melies films and put them into the show, since he like some of Melies work. The films would range from historical Wars and news films. During this time Porter also tried to create his own camera and projector but had no luck.

In 1900 the movies were losing their popularity and people were starting to stop coming to the movies. A fire in his New York City work area also made him look for some new work. In 1900 he returned to Edison’s Company to be a producer not an engineer. Edison was also having problems with his company and almost had to sell it to American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, his rival. After Edison hired Porter back he had him try to improve the Kinetoscope projector. In New York City Edison built a glass top studio to produce films with George S. Fleming. Edison was the person who would work as a cameraman and Fleming as the scenic designer.

Since the movies were not selling out and the movie industry was getting bad, Edison had went to producing only one-minute films which were viewed in the Kinetoscope Machine. The Kinetoscope Machine was a device you looked into and watched the show. You would put a penny in and crank the machine and you could watch it. The filmstrip was usually about 50 foot long or longer and you would crank it like a jack in the box to see it move. The work that Porter did for Edison was not the mechanical part of it but the producer and directing part. He was put in charge of making the film for the Kinetoscope so they could make money that way. The Kinetoscope was a success for a while but then people were getting sick of it. They wanted something new because they were getting sick of looking through the hole and watching the film. Even when people started to get sick of it Edison still produced some films for the Knetoscope.

People were starting to look into and experimenting with film projectors. They thought if they could get it projected more people could come and see the film. If they did this more people could pay money to see it and they would make more money. Edison invented a projector years before but thought it would not help business. The though if he showed films to a bunch of people at once it would hurt business. Since the only goal was to make a profit he did not think it would be a good idea. The goal today is still to make money but back then they really had to compete with all the other people trying to steal his ideas. Since in the 1900’s they were starting to lose the people from going to see films so they had to do anything to stay in business.

Then other investors thought if they opened up small theaters they could get more people to see the films. The movie theaters would show some of the Edison’s Kinetoscope films to the bunches of people. They would