Preceding the emergence of the documentary, the single-shot actuality, unedited and unstructured film usually lasting less than a minute or two, brought newsworthy events to audiences from the 1890s, dating from the earliest days of commercial public screenings by the likes of The Lumière Brothers. With the first issue of the weekly Pathe's Animated Gazette in June 1910, the silent newsreel was born, using the event-based actuality as a building block. Its success with modern audiences...

Preceding the emergence of the documentary, the single-shot actuality, unedited and unstructured film usually lasting less than a minute or two, brought newsworthy events to audiences from the 1890s, dating from the earliest days of commercial public screenings by the likes of The Lumière Brothers. With the first issue of the weekly Pathe's Animated Gazette in June 1910, the silent newsreel was born, using the event-based actuality as a building block. Its success with modern audiences drawn to novelty led to rival companies Warwick Bioscope Chronicle and Gaumont Graphic also launching in 1910. Early cinematographic entertainment had primarily been shown in peep-show parlours, by touring exhibitors at travelling fairs, in music halls, local village halls or other temporary venues, continuing the tradition of the magic lantern show. The subject matter of the actualities would also have been very familiar to their audiences as early movie-makers drew on the themes and conventions of nineteenth century photography including panoramic views, civic events and parades or other public spectacles, sometimes everyday events such as workers leaving their factories, or a ship launch. The different actuality genres would also find their way into the newsreel.

The weekly or semi-weekly newsreels consisted of unrelated news footage edited together as five to eight stories, which usually adopted a non-controversial, entertaining tone. The American pianist and TV humourist Oscar Levant described the format as ‘a series of catastrophes, ended by a fashion show’. The newsreel suited the rise of the cinema as a settled venue for audiences and succeeded as a moving image form of tabloid, with cameramen taking on the role of journalists. In its first year, the Manager of the Gaumont Graphic ruminated on the future for the newsreel: ‘The Gaumont Graphic is quite ready to appear daily … The complete paper could be turned out in four hours. The early special trains which now leave the great cities at express speed for the delivery of printed newspapers may yet be called upon to carry small boxes of daily newsfilms for similar distribution.’

The loss of most international markets for newsreel distribution during World War One seriously affected the film industry. But Gaumont Graphic survived along with Pathé Gazette and Topical Budget, all capturing the run-up to the war, as in this short extract filmed by Gaumont cameramen. As an item of local topical interest, the departure of a Tyne-built floating dock would obviously have had great appeal to the Tyneside cinema-goers, slotted in to content with a wider national and international focus for public cinema programmes. Between 30% and 70% of the total content of each newsreel issue covered foreign news, which created a cosmopolitan outlook that increased its potential audience reach, but was also to the detriment of offering more in depth coverage of a topic, for instance, the wave of strikes in the year that preceded the HMS Medway footage. The struggling Topical Budget was commandeered by the War Office in May 1917, renamed as War Office Official Topical Budget, and later the Pictorial News (Official), and was used as a propaganda tool featuring exclusive footage shot at various war fronts.

Gaumont Graphic newsreels were produced until 29 December 1932. From 1913 the newsreel was edited by Alec Braid. In 1915 Alexander Victor became editor but was replaced the following year by Louis Behr, who remained in editorial control until it ceased production. In November 1929 the Gaumont Sound News had been launched, which relegated Graphic silent newsreels to smaller cinemas until its demise.

The 32,000-ton-capacity HMS Medway (AFD-4) floating dock was built for the British Admiralty amid growing war fears. Construction started at Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson’s Wallsend shipyard on 28 May 1910. It was launched on the 4th January 1912, just a few months before disaster struck RMS Titanic after the steamship collided with an iceberg and over 1,500 passengers and crew lost their lives. Swan Hunter also built the RMS Carpathia, which was involved in the rescue attempt. Two years later World War One began following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. One of the shipyard’s other great achievements, the famous Mauretania ocean liner launched for Cunard, ‘queen of the ocean’ and a transport marvel at the time, was requisitioned by the Admiralty to fit out as an armed transport ship.

At an estimated cost of £267,000, the Medway was constructed to a ‘box type’ design by the firm Clark and Standfield, who devoted themselves to the development of floating-docks and hydraulic canal-lifts for companies around the world. (Amongst his many inventions, Josiah Latimer Clark created a single camera for taking stereoscopic pictures.) This Gaumont newsreel records the start of the giant dock’s journey to Saltpan Reach in the River Medway, about six miles from Chatham docks and two or three miles from Sheerness, with complaints surfacing that the location was not ideal for the Chatham workers. During wartime, in 1915, it was relocated to Jarrow Slake, an area of tidal mudflats on the Tyne, which were dredged to accommodate the mooring in readiness for the repair of warships stationed off the coast in the North Sea. Following its Tyneside operation the AFD 4 travelled to Portland, then Devonport, before being moved to the River Clyde, Scotland, in September 1941. It worked at shipyards in Sweden and Norway, surviving in service for over a century, before sinking at Aagotnes, west of Bergen, in 2018.

Other Gaumont Graphic newsreels at NEFA
Scenes on the Moor (1912)
Scenes in Jesmond Dene Race Sunday (1912)
Taken Under Protest (1912)
References:
Tyne Built Ships
http://www.tynebuiltships.co.uk/M-Ships/medwaydock1912.html

“A History of the British Newsreels”, Learning on Screen
https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/newsreels/about/a-history-of-the-british-newsreels/
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Swan,_Hunter_and_Wigham_Richardson
‘Medway Floating Dock’ HC Deb vol 41, 16 July 1912, cc208-9
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1912/jul/16/medway-floating-dock

The Historian and Film Edited by Paul Smith. Cambridge University Press, November 2019