Editing Substitution splice

{{Short description|Cinematic special effect}}
[[File:The Execution of Mary Stuart, 1895.ogv|thumbtime=1|thumb|The earliest known use of the effect, in the 1895 film ''[[The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots]]'']]
[[File:Sherlock Holmes Baffled.ogv|thumb|thumbtime=16|alt=Complete 30 second Mutoscope reel of Sherlock Holmes Baffled. Sherlock Holmes enters a parlour to find it being burgled. When confronted, the villain disappears. Holmes attempts to ignore the event by lighting a cigar, but upon the thief's reappearance tries to reclaim the sack of stolen goods, using a pistol stored in his dressing gown pocket. After Holmes collects his property, the bag vanishes from his hand into the grasp of the thief, who promptly disappears through a window. At this point the film ends abruptly with Holmes looking "baffled".|''[[Sherlock Holmes Baffled]]'', an early silent film employing the effect for comic purposes]]

The '''substitution splice'''<ref name=Moen>{{citation|last=Moen|first=Kristian|title=Film and Fairy Tales: The Birth of Modern Fantasy|location=London|publisher=I.B. Tauris & Co|year=2012|page=41|isbn=9781780762517 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_jw2W5utmqIC&pg=PA41}}</ref><ref name=Williams/> or '''stop trick'''<ref>{{citation|last=Weinstock|first=Jeffrey Andrew|title=The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema|location=London|publisher=Wallflower|year=2012|page=76|isbn=9780231850032 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pSnwAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA76}}</ref> is a cinematic [[special effect]] in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation<ref name=Williams>{{citation|last=Williams|first=Alan Larson|title=Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking|location=Cambridge, MA|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1992|page=36|isbn=9780674762688 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ESVZOghoi6kC&pg=PA36}}</ref> by altering one or more selected aspects of the [[mise-en-scène]] between two shots
while maintaining the same framing and other aspects of the scene in both shots. The effect is usually polished by careful [[film editing|editing]] to establish a seamless cut and optimal moment of change.<ref name=Lim/> It has also been referred to as '''stop motion substitution''' or '''stop-action'''.

The pioneering French filmmaker [[Georges Méliès]] claimed to have accidentally developed the stop trick, as he wrote in ''Les Vues Cinématographiques'' in 1907<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/articles/les-vues-cinematographiques/|title=Les vues cinématographiques {{!}} La Cinémathèque québécoise|language=fr-FR|access-date=2019-11-05}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/larevued01gall|title=La Revue du cinéma (1928 - 1929)|last=Gallimard|date=1928–1929|publisher=Paris, Gallimard|others=New York The Museum of Modern Art Library}}</ref> (translated from French):
{{Blockquote|An obstruction of the apparatus that I used in the beginning (a rudimentary apparatus in which the film would often tear or get stuck and refuse to advance) produced an unexpected effect, one day when I was prosaically filming the Place de L'Opéra; I had to stop for a minute to free the film and to get the machine going again. During this time passersby, omnibuses, cars, had all changed places, of course. When I later projected the film, reattached at the point of the rupture, I suddenly saw the Madeleine-Bastille bus changed into a hearse, and men changed into women. The trick-by-substitution, called the stop trick, had been invented and two days later I performed the first metamorphosis of men into women and the first sudden disappearances that had, at the beginning, such a great success.}}

According to the film scholar Jacques Deslandes, it is more likely that Méliès discovered the trick by carefully examining a print of the [[Edison Manufacturing Company]]'s 1895 film ''[[The Execution of Mary Stuart]]'', in which a primitive version of the trick appears. In any case, the substitution splice was both the first special effect Méliès perfected, and the most important in his body of work.<ref name=Williams/>

Film historians such as [[Richard Abel (cultural historian)|Richard Abel]] and Elizabeth Ezra established that much of the effect was the result of Méliès's careful frame matching during the editing process, creating a seamless [[match cut]] out of two separately staged shots.<ref name=Lim>{{citation|last=Lim|first=Bliss Cua|title=Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique|location=Durham|publisher=Duke University Press|year=2009|pages=279–80|isbn=9780822390992 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t0Dhmm50HicC&pg=PA279}}</ref> Indeed, Méliès often used substitution splicing not as an obvious special effect, but as an inconspicuous editing technique, matching and combining short [[take]]s into one apparently seamless longer shot.<ref>{{citation|last=Solomon|first=Matthew|title=Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Méliès's Trip to the Moon|chapter-url=https://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/62110.pdf|pages=6–7|year=2011|editor-last=Solomon|editor-first=Matthew|chapter=Introduction|publication-place=Albany|publisher=State University of New York Press|chapter-format=[[PDF]]}}</ref> Substitution splicing could become even more seamless when the film was [[Film colorization|colored by hand]], as many of Méliès's films were; the addition of painted color acts as a [[sleight of hand]] technique allowing the cuts to pass by unnoticed.<ref name=Yumibe>{{citation|last=Yumibe|first=Joshua|title=Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism|location=New Brunswick, NJ|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2012|pages=71–2|isbn=9780813552989 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cpvymkXtt1AC&pg=PR71}}</ref>

The substitution splice was the most popular cinematic special effect in [[trick film]]s and early film fantasies, especially those that evolved from the stage tradition of the ''[[féerie]]''.<ref name=Moen/> [[Segundo de Chomón]] is among the other filmmakers who used substitution splicing to create elaborate fantasy effects.<ref name=Moen/> [[D.W. Griffith]]'s 1909 film ''[[The Curtain Pole]]'', starring [[Mack Sennett]], used substitution splices for comedic effect.<ref>{{citation|last=Gunning|first=Tom|title=D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph|location=Urbana|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=1991|page=132|isbn=9780252063664 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rb0vYtqmLJYC&pg=PA132}}</ref> The transformations made possible by the substitution splice were so central to early fantasy films that, in France, such films were often described simply as ''scènes à transformation''.<ref>{{citation|first=Frank|last=Kessler|chapter=Trick films|page=644|editor-last=Abel|editor-first=Richard|title=Encyclopedia of Early Cinema|location=Abingdon|publisher=Routledge|year=2005|isbn=9780415234405 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hFxwX-dM008C&pg=PA644}}</ref>

This technique is different from the [[stop motion]] technique, in which the entire shot is created frame by frame.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gunning |first1=Tom |title="Primitive" Cinema: A Frame-up? Or the Trick's on Us |journal=Cinema Journal |date=1989 |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=3–12 |doi=10.2307/1225114 |jstor=1225114 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1225114 |access-date=22 June 2021}}</ref>

==References==
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[[Category:Cinematic techniques]]
[[Category:Articles containing video clips]]