Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton were two film faces that became quite popular shortly after.
Charlie Chaplin was known for his close ups, and detail. Chaplin would never cut to a close up for a comic effect, rather he’d do it for an emotional effect. Also His films touched more on sentimental things. Here is one of earlier films called “The Immigrant” made in 1917.
Buster Keaton is famous for his expressionless face, his own stunts, body language, and film technique. Such elements would take up time and space in his films. One of my favorite movies from Keaton is called “Cops” which he made in 1922. Enjoy…
D W Griffith pushed the length of films further and had cuts and other elements within his films. He was fired for making a movie more than 1 hour long. Their thinking was that people will not sit to see a movie for that long.
It’s said that Griffith himself was a very racist man (considering he was a confederate). He made a film, “Birth of a Nation” which by most viewers was glorifying the KKK. As a result of that film, the membership of the KKK grew.
He worked with Billy Bitzer who was his cinematographer. He was able to help with the style and edit of the film. The studio that they worked with was American Biography Company.
The films that they made consisted of parallel editing, which is a form of cross cutting where the two scenes that shown via cutting have a thematic relationship, and are contrasting one another. For example a scene showing poor people standing in line for bread, which then cuts to people sitting in a lavish dining hall eating like kings would be parallel cutting.
The films also consisted of POV editing, aka Point of View editing. An example of this is where they would show the face of the character, then cut to a letter the character is looking at, then cut back to the face. A film that shows examples of this is “A Corner in Wheat”
Edwin Porter pushed the narrative genre further. He was able to do more types of shots such as vehicle shot, pan, tilt, and his films had the first signs of color. One of the films he’s very well known for is “The Great Train Robbery” which he made in 1903. It was one of the first westerns. It featured cross cutting between scenes while the previous films did not.
