The first filmmakers had a lot to learn, but they learnt quickly, driven by their own creative ambitions and by audiences' hunger for novelty. Most of the techniques we know today were in place by the end of the Victorian period. 

It was the Victorian pioneers who developed the essential building blocks of film; close-ups, pans and travelling shots; editing and principles of continuity. And their ambition spurred them to innovate numerous tricks and effects, from jump-cuts, to double-exposure and even split screen. Generations of later filmmakers would refine these methods, but the groundwork had already been done.