Desperate Poaching Affray

Desperate Poaching Affray known in the United States as The Poachers is a 1903 British chase film by William Haggar. Three minutes long, the film is recognised as an early influence on narrative drama in American film, especially in the chase genre. The film used a number of innovative techniques including onlocation shooting, panning shots, and unconventional use of screen edges. The film, along with Frank Mottershaws film A Daring Daylight Burglary, is considered to have helped launch the chase subgenre and influenced Edwin S. Porters The Great Train Robbery.

On its release the film was very successful with audiences, and was distributed by Gaumont Film Company in both Europe and the United States. It was so popular that it was widely pirated, and is now seen as an influential film to the chase genre, inspiring Edwin S. Porters The Great Train Robbery.Desperate Poaching Affray is in turn influenced by Frank Mottershaws film A Daring Daylight Burglary, also 1903. In Haggars film similar to Mottershaws there is a cutting of action, as a character runs towards the camera to leave via the screen edge. The pursuers are nowhere to be seen in one shot, before entering dramatically onto the screen from the front. In another cut the villains exit the scene to the left, then emerge after a cut in the foreground, in a shot that suggests the chase has been continuing for longer than the screen time. Haggar continues to use different angles in the film and introduces his first panning shot, showing Haggar had a rudimentary understanding of early film grammar and conventions. Despite Haggars theatrical background, and apart from one wild overacted haymaker swing from William Haggar Jr. as he floors an opponent, the film refuses to follow theatricality or staging. ........

Source: Wikipedia