Melies – A trip to the moon

• Today I will be analysing melies’ film a trip to the moon, I will be looking at all of the special effects which were used in this film.

Introduction

Melies – A trip to the moonIn the beginning scene of the film it’s a long shot of the church and the people are in a choir. Its in black and white because this was one of the first films ever to be made. Throughout this whole scene it was taken all in one shot, this would be because it was filmed with a cinematographer, which had to be wheeled up by someone so it couldn’t be moved around.

Here as we can see they are not holding the same thing, there was a jump cut and they ended up holding different objects, now they are holding chairs, this was possible by pausing the camera, re arranging everything then playing the camera again. Melies discovered this effect when he was filming and his camera froze.

Here once again it’s a still shot, continuous rolling shot because melies was using a cinematographe, and it could not be moved. Everything in this scene was all done in one take.

Here we can see a blur, it’s a cross fade, of one shot rolling into another one. This was an effect which was constantly used to make the film look better.

In these times there were no green screens, every place where a scene was shot, it was the actual place. Melies’ wife was also included in this film

Here we see an example of editing in the early stages of film making. The moon is getting pulled closer instead of the camera going closer to the moon, also another jump cut is used to show that the ship has been crashed into the moon