This is a rather ordinary actuality film from early cinema, but I want to comment on it because it's well photographed and made. Edwin S. Porter produced it for the Edison Company, and the film is very similar to other subjects they made: the nighttime panorama views "Pan-American Exposition by Night" and "Panorama of Esplanade by Night" (both 1901), for example. Additionally, early American filmmakers made many films featuring Coney Island; since most of the studios were then located in New York and New Jersey, the amusement park was nearby. For instance, if one wants to see what Coney Island looked like in the daytime, they may watch Porter's "Rube and Mandy at Coney Island" (1903). By 1905, with the prevalence of story films and the nickelodeon era beginning, actuality films such as this one (proto-documentaries and generally non-narrative and non-staged films) became significantly less popular, after years of having been the most popular type of motion picture. Nevertheless, the best photography and sometimes even the most advanced editing and other techniques in early cinema are found in these actualities.
"Coney Island at Night" consists of three shots within four minutes. All three scenes are nighttime views of Coney Island's attractions, with the main effect being that only the lights register on film. The first scene is an establishing shot, skyline panorama (panning shot) leftward. The second shot has the camera tilting down and then up for a view of a tower. The third view a closer, rightward panorama. Panning and tilting were nothing new; actually, they were numbingly used in just about every actuality subject, but the arrangement in this one has a good flow. One novel trick Porter added to this and other films around the same time was the animated titles, which congruously resemble the Coney Island lights and move around before forming the letters and words of the descriptive title cards.