Film HistoryEM 101:

Lecture 6

• The ability of the brain to retain an image a split second longer than the eye actually sees it.

• If we see 16 individual images in rapid succession the brain connects them to make a fluid sequence of movement.

Persistence of Vision

• Circular drumwith slits.

• allows momentsof darkness.

• creates illusionof movement.

• 1834 by William Horner.

Zoetrope

• 18721872 - Set up 12 cameras along a track, tied strings to the shutters which were tripped as the horse ran down the track.

• Created movement with photography.

Eadweard Muybridge

• 18841884

• Developed celluloid film.

• Originally created for the still camera, it made motion pictures possible.

• Flexible and allows light to pass through.

George Eastman

• October 18891889 Dickson shows Edison projection with sound.

• Quality is poor.

• Edison opts for silent, individual showings of films.

• Invents Kinetoscope.Kinetoscope Open

Kinetoscope

• 18941894

• Tinker with Edison’s Kinetoscope.

• Designed their own machine within a year.

Auguste and Louis

Lumiere Brothers

• 18941894

• William Dickson (working for Thomas Edison) begins using celluloid film.

• First film in America.

Fred Ott’s Sneeze

• Camera could only move forward and backward.

• Roof opened to allow sunlight in.

• Building rotated to catch sun’s rays.

• Camera used electricity.

Black Maria

• Machine shot the pictures, printed them, and projected them.

• The camera was portable.

• A hand crank provided the power.

Cinematographe

• First theater opens to the paying public.

• Basement of a Paris café.

• Lumieres’ show:

• Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory.

• Arrival at Lyon.

• A Baby’s Meal.

December 28, 1895

• Biograph & Vitagraph enter the movie industry

• Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC)

• Hollywood was “created” as a way of escaping the MPPC control.

Studio Beginnings

• Developed “parallel editing” (jump cuts) and our editing techniques.

• Created long films with “deep story lines.”

• Best known for “Birth of a Nation.” (1915)

D.W. Griffith

• Early movies included sight gags and other visual points of humor (Mark Sennett).

• Later, developed into a more “serious” actor with character-driven comedy.

• Was a “blacklisted” actor.

Charlie Chaplin

• George Creel place filmed in the Committee on Public Information.

• Became a important part in America’s Propaganda Campaign at that time.

• MPPC was outlawed in the courts in 1917, thus moving the focus to California.

World War I

• Defined by studio control over the entire process.

• The technology improved the quality of the final product.

• The Hays Office Code controlled what content could be shown in a movie.

“Golden Years”

• Alfred Hitchcock was a horror director that survived in the time of the Hays Office Code by using effective editing techniques.

Hitchcock

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Orson Welles

• Orson Welles was famous for his shot composition during “Citizen Kane.”

• A stable color system allowed for most film to be shot in color.

• The movie houses lost control of their vertical integration (US v. Paramount, 1938)

• 3-D, Cinerama and CinemaScope were the technological attempts to regain mindshare with the US Public

1950’s and 1960’s

• MPAA introduced the film rating system.

• The independent filmmaker became the auteur (author) of their films.

• George Lucas and Steven Spielberg introduced a mythos to the content of films

Changes in the 1970’s & 1980’s

• Personnel for each film is contracted film to film.

• The aftermarket is a centerpoint to a movie studios revenue stream.

• Direct-to-DVD allows for a by-pass of the theater system.

Moviemaking Today

• Digital distribution models are being worked out.

• Content will still be repurposed from past media content.

• The issues of piracy remain in the forefront of the movie industry.

The Future of Moviemaking