The Great Train Robbery

Directed by Edwin S Porter, "The Great Train Robbery", a simple story purely about the accounts of a robbery on a train, was filmed in November 1903 at Edison's New York studio. His studio was at Essex County Park in New Jersey, and the movie was also filmed along the Lackawanna railroad and then released in December 1903. It is considered to be one of the first significant early US narrative films. It was greatly influenced by the British film "Daring Daylight Robbery" (1903) and it introduced many new cinematic techniques such as cross cutting, camera movement, location shooting, and more to American audiences. It is easy for one to tell that the techniques are new because of the quality unto which the cuts were made. For example, the transition between scenes at time 8:56 is not very smooth.However, at the time at which the movie took place, the new techniques seemed truly amazing and later transformed to be used in every movie out today.