beginnings of film

Beginnings of Film Chapters 1-2

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“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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