Beginnings of FIlm
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Transcript of Beginnings of FIlm
Beginnings of Film Chapters 1-2
Thursday, January 30, 14
“The movies always existed; they were just waiting to be
invented.”
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• Industrial Revolution 1840-1870 (roughly)
• Wave of immigrants
Late 1800’s-Early 1900’s
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• 18th-19th centuries
• Rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban
• Shift to powered machinery, factories, mass production
• Iron and textile industries
• Steam engine
• Improved transportation
Industrial Revolution
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Industrial Revolution
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Immigration in Early 1900’s
• 9 million immigrants came to the U.S. from 1900-1910
• Escaping religious, racial, political persecution
• Seeking economic opportunity
• Contract labor
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Immigration
William Fox -- Hungary
Warner Brothers -- Poland
Adolf Zucker (Paramount) -- Hungary
Carl Laemmle (Universal) -- GermanyThursday, January 30, 14
The Industrial Revolution and Immigration
made film possible...
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• Intrigued by Muybridge’s invention (1877)
• Assigned William Dickson to invent a machine to accompany his phonograph
• Used George Eastman’s flexible film
• Kinetoscope was invented (1891)
Thomas Edison
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Kinetoscope Parlor
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What problems do you think people began to have with
Kinetoscope films?
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Problems with the Kinetoscope films
No shared experience.
Films were too short.
No story.
Needed better equipment.
Film continued to evolve...
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• Norman Raff (Entrepreneur under Edison’s name) believed putting pictures on a wall for a mass audience was the next step.
• Technical problems were fixed by inventors and a Vitascope was created (prototype for modern movie projector--1896)
• Lumiere Brothers in France had best equipment
• Hand cranked projector
• Filmed people doing what they do (inspired docs)
Shared Experience
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French Magician who saw film as a new vehicle for illusion.
Contributions to Film:
• Wrote, directed, designed scenery and acted in around 500 films.
• Childlike themes
• Increased length of film
• Added scenery
• Special Effects: Fades, Dissolves, Double exposure
George Melies (1861-1938)
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Contributions to Film
• More complicated/realistic story (although influenced by Melies)
• Movement of actors not just from stage left/right, towards and away from camera
• Matte Shot
• Camera movement
• Story telling: beginning-middle-end
• First “Blockbuster”: The Great Train Robbery
Edwin Porter
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Film evolves to Art
1908-1920
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• Prior to WWI
• 10,000 Nickelodeons
• 26 million every week
• Made $91 million in 1910
Nickelodeons were at their peak
Audience
• Immigrants, working class, unemployed
• Considered distasteful by middle and upper classes
• Converted store fronts, folding chairs, hot, smelly
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• Griffith was inspired by Charles Dickens.
• Upstanding heroes, malignant villains, flowerlike heroines.
• Characters whose actions were interrupted by each other, paralleling and crossing with furious finales.
• Griffith believed cinema could do the same as literature.
D.W. Griffith
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Griffith’s Contributions to Film:
•Building tension with camera work
• Close ups, rapid cutting
• Cross cutting/parallel editing: Alternating 2 or more scenes that happen simultaneously but in different locations
• Experimented with lighting (more realistic)
•Techniques to “reveal a human soul in his films” -- Character
•The Director is making a point, not just the actor…THIS IS KEY
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•First to direct a “story film” (a few months before Melies)
•First to experiment with sound (long before “Talkies”)
•First to use special effects (split screen, double exposure)
•First woman to own a film studio, Solax
•First director to film an all black cast (A Fool and His Money, 1912)
•Made several hundred films
•Yet, she is “forgotten”
Alice Guy-Blache
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