Early Editing in Movies

The movie was finally becoming its own entity when it commented on itself in Uncle Josh at the Morning Picture Show. During this time, the narrative film was having commercial success, allowing filmmakers to explore a variety of techniques and storylines. The value of making edits was just beginning to be known as shown in A Trip to the Moon where fades were used to show the passage of time and jump cuts in Great Train Robbery allowed the audience to clearly follow the action. When Uncle Josh was made, the movie was aware of its effect on its audience and showed how the emotion and entertainment could be switched up through the editing. One after another of different Lumiere shorts appears on the fake movie screen while the actor reacts to the scenes. This can be seen as a primitive form of awareness of the effect editing has upon the viewing audience.