Country: United States
"A Winter Straw Ride" by Thomas Edison Motion Pictures
a.k.a. The Edison Manufacturing Co. and Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
"I
am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the
phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of
things in motion..." --Thomas A. Edison, 1888
This simple short
feature, pleasant and fun to watch, includes great outdoor photography
by Edwin S. Porter. With plenty of energy, and the actors clearly had a
good time being part of the film. Two groups of young women going on a
'straw ride' in the snow, with things gradually becoming increasingly
boisterous as numerous other persons join in. Except perhaps for the
clothing styles and the horse-drawn vehicles, it could have been filmed
today, since these kinds of antics in the snow are common in pretty much
any time and place that has a cold winter.
Edison's laboratory
was responsible for the invention of the Kinetograph (a motion picture
camera) and the Kinetoscope (a peep-hole motion picture viewer). Most of
this work was performed by Edison's assistant, William Kennedy Laurie
Dickson, beginning in 1888. Motion pictures became a successful
entertainment industry in less than a decade, with single-viewer
Kinetoscopes giving way to films projected for mass audiences. The
Edison Manufacturing Co. (later known as Thomas A. Edison, Inc.) not
only built the apparatus for filming and projecting motion pictures, but
also produced films for public consumption. Most early examples were
actualities showing famous people, news events, disasters, people at
work, new modes of travel and technology, scenic views, expositions, and
other leisure activities. As actualities declined in popularity, the
company's production emphasis shifted to comedies and dramas.
Edison
Studios was an American motion picture production company owned by the
Edison Company of inventor Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200
films as the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894--1911) and Thomas A.
Edison, Inc. (1911--1918) until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that
number, 54 were feature length, the remainder were shorts.
Its
first production facility, Edison's Black Maria studios in West Orange,
New Jersey, was built in the winter of 1892--93. The second facility, a
glass-enclosed rooftop studio built at 41 East 21st Street in
Manhattan's entertainment district, opened in 1901. In 1907, Edison had
new facilities built on Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place in the Bronx.
Edison
himself played no direct part in the making of his studio's films
beyond being the owner, and appointing William Gilmore as vice-president
and general manager. Edison's assistant William Kennedy Dickson, who
supervised the development of Edison's motion picture system, produced
the first Edison films intended for public exhibition, 1893--95. After
Dickson's departure for Biograph in 1895, he was replaced as director of
production by cameraman William Heise, then from 1896 to 1903 by James
H. White. When White left to supervise Edison's European interests in
1903, he was replaced by William Markgraf (1903--1904), then Alex T.
Moore (1904--1909), and Horace G. Plimpton (1909--1915).
The
first commercially exhibited motion pictures in the United States were
from Edison, and premiered at a Kinetoscope parlor in New York City on
April 14, 1894. The program consisted of ten short films, each less than
a minute long, of athletes, dancers, and other performers. After
competitors began exhibiting films on screens, Edison introduced its own
Projecting Kinetoscope in late 1896.
The earliest productions
were brief "actualities" showing everything from acrobats to parades to
fire calls. But competition from French and British story films in the
early 1900s rapidly changed the market. By 1904, 85% of Edison's sales
were from story films.
In December 1908, Edison led the formation
of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the
industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust," as it was
nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios, Kalem
Company, George Kleine Productions, Lubin Studios, Georges Méliès,
Pathé, Selig Studios, and Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution
through the General Film Company.
