Edwin S. Porter's Contributions to Cinema

 What was Porter's contribution to cinema? What was so significant about his work?

Early on, when film was first starting off, people gathered to watch actualities: films in which normal, everyday actions would be on screen. But, following Edwin S. Porter's narrative films like "Life of an American Firefighter" and "The Great Train Robbery," this shifted over time. Porter was good at taking ideas, and transforming them into something better. He tried new things, and did cross-cutting for the first time, proving that audiences could follow two different perspectives at once, something people thought would confuse the audience. "The Great Train Robbery" was also the first film we can observe that has camera movements such as panning, and includes a medium shot as well.