December 10, 2010

Film History again? Yes! Exam? Yes! Love

Thomas Edison

The Lumiere Bros.

Georges Melies

Post 1900

Things get more interesting

Edison’s company was making some movies and who was showing the movies?

Many people who owned shops and wanted to maximize the amount of use they got out of the buildings they were renting – many of these shopkeepers were Jewish immigrants – they were almost all from Europe, specifically Germany, Russia, Hungary, etc

These movies were low class in appearance, in exhibition, and in the way people thought about them – were they low class? No – it was just a public attitude held by upper class, white, Anglos

-     these Jewish men started needing more and more movies

-     because they wanted more audience, and more money, so they needed more product – what happened? They started focusing more on movies and less on their shops – why? Movies were making big money – lots and lots of nickels (their “theatres” were eventually called nickelodeons)

We start to see a group of people who ONLY make movies – professional filmmakers – what does this mean? It means movies get better and better after 1900

One of the early filmmakers in the US who was really important was Edwin S. Porter

Directed Life of An American Fireman 1903

-     one of the first North American movies to tell a story

-     had parallel action (two stories going on at the same time)

-     action, a rescue, drama

-     smoke effects, outdoor shot, etc

-     this was a real big step towards modern movies

-     NOTE: the acting in these old original movies is very much exaggerated because they had to really push their feelings because the movies were silent and didn’t yet have close ups

-     This is also before movie stars, which is funny – the actors were just people who were around or related to the filmmakers

The Great Train Robbery – 1903

-     also Edwin Porter

-     first Western, first action/crime movie

-     gunplay, explosion effects, fight scenes,

-     he had some moving camera (pan, tilt)

-     he coloured on the film to show colour in the B&W movie, which is creative

-     KEY – he was thinking about the audience’s response – he was going to impact on the viewer, which is very American to this day – the last shot is really interesting – a bad guy shoots into the camera – it is there ONLY to effect the viewer – to scare those early audience members

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After these years, movies get more and more popular with common folk – cheap, you can watch all day off one ticket price, and the movies were new, so they were really exciting

Problem – Edison is still taking his cut off every single movie made – he owns the patent for everything and he is strongarming everyone – remember, he is also anti-Semitic – he’s not a big fan of the Jewish guys and doesn’t care if they don’t like his greedy ways

A Strange Situation

-     a few filmmakers start to move away from Edison and his thugs and they end up about as far away as you can get and still be in the US – they end up in Los Angeles

-     at this time, LA is a small city, a rural area, farms, orange trees, cowboys, Latinos, and old school ranchers.

-     The film people show up there for a few different reasons, BUT they stay and gather there for other reasons

1. Diverse terrain and landscapes for all kinds of different movies and locations – ocean, beach, desert, foothills, woods, mountains, snow

2. Temperature is always nice – cool at night, warm in the day ALL THE TIME – they made those old movies outside or in roofless sets, so they NEEDED sunlight and nice weather – LA is always sunny and nice (almost)

3. Escape from Edison Thugs – Edison literally hired thugs and private detectives to shake down rogue moviemakers who weren’t paying his group – this is pretty rough and people didn’t want to pay this owly old racist

4. Land was cheap and available and everywhere – when these New York area people get to LA, they say “Wow!” it is so open and roomy and you can get a house and land and a yard and a garden and a quality of life –you can also get space and land for a movie set or a little studio

Interesting Tidbit – the first studio in LA was a barn rented to hold the gear while a Western movie was being made

It was out at Hollywood Farm.

5. The Jewish men who were now making big bucks showing movies were trapped in a situation in New York where they were being judged by people who expected them to live the way they were “supposed to” – ie Jews lived in X part of New York and had X and Y for their jobs and that’s the way it is

- out in LA these men could start fresh and be whatever they wanted – they had money now and could buy land (which they couldn’t in NY) and they could literally run their own towns

EG – a man named Carl Laemmle set up his family and his workers in an area, and built a town called Universal City

The Three Things That We Will Study on Film

1. History of (much of this for exam)

2. How are movies made? (exam stuff)

3. Evaluating and Reviewing

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb – so what?

The same guy invented the first movie camera in North America

He called it the Kinetoscope –

He was doing something that people had been messing with for years

Praxinoscope

Zooetrope

Phenakistascope

Etc

These are rely on a weird thing in our brains – persistence of vision

-     when you see a picture, your brain holds it in a spot like a loading doc and waits to see what the next picture is, then it tries to match them up

-     PS – you do this with everything – our brains are always trying to link and join and combine everything – that’s how we learn, grow, survive, etc

Eadweard Muybridge – an animal movement photographer

-     he was called in to settle a bet between some rich guys

-     Guy 1 said “horse’s feet hit the ground one at a time in galloping – one foot is always on the ground

-     Guy 2 said “they all come off the ground”

-     He set up a series of cameras along a racetrack and got a whole bunch of photos of a horse galloping

-     And then people said “WHAT THE HECK!?” because the photos were animation! And this idea started people going

Edison needed a couple things to make his idea work:

1. film (old cameras used plates instead of fillm strip) – George Eastman invented celluloid, which was film

2. he needed a way of moving the film through a box that would expose one frame after another (record)

3. he needed that box to also work the OTHER way, shoot light through the film onto a screen or something (project)

4. the ideas that made him shoot things – concepts and plans for what to shoot (content)

The weird thing about Edison is that he didn’t think of the movie camera as anything but a clever business idea to make money

The first thing he thought to do was to make it into a little arcade attraction – he started shooting film of strange little scenes or events that people would then pay a penny to see in a device in an arcade – it was an amusement

Edison was foremost a money grubbing monster!

So he started shooting a bunch of strange little bits that people would pay to see – a muscleman, a dancer, a guy kissing a woman, a naughty scene of getting dressed, etc

He was making money, so that was good enough

He shot the scenes in a little tar paper building called the Black Maria on a little stage – which gave him the idea that these little movies were maybe like a stage show or a play

What might this lead him into doing? Shooting a little story or sequence that was like a play.

The lighting was from a removable roof – they used sunlight to light the stage

The real idea of shooting an actual movie, didn’t come from Edison, it came from across the ocean

In France

-     at the same time, these two brothers were messing around with the same ideas as Edison

-     they owned a factory that made photographic plates and they loved experimenting with photography

-     they invented their own movie camera – it was called the cinematographe – at the SAME TIME 

-     these brothers were called the Lumiere Brothers

-     they used their camera in a TOTALLY DIFFERENT WAY

-     they took it outside and shot movies of the world

-     they shot little scenes that were of real life and were much more documentary – they didn’t care about making money or pleasing an audience, they were doing it for science

-     they made movies like “Train Entering the Station” “Workers Leaving the Factory” “Feedng the Baby”

-     people were terrified of the train arriving at the station because they thought it would hit them – their brains weren’t trained to disbelieve yet

-     also, the Lumieres were the first to show movies in a theatre

-     they had in their theatre a young magician who saw their movies and freaked out

-     his name was Georges Melies – this guy says to himself, HEY! I could make my magic with this movie camera! I could make little movies and show them in my magic show! Hey! Sell me a camera!

-     The brothers say, NO! This is for science! Not for stupid.

-     Melies says, dang. I have to buy one from someone in England.

-     And then, he invents modern movies and special effects and makeup effects and sets and miniatures and the first science fiction and the first stories in film and everything

-     He is the Father of Motion Pictures as we know them in many ways (along with many others)

-     A List of What Melies Invented

-     Superimposition

-     Turning off the camera and changing something, and turning the camera back on – looked like magic

-     Used miniatures, models, props

-     Used costumes, makeup, backdrops and perspective paintings

-     Moved set pieces to get a sense of motion

-     Used fade outs and fade ins for pother magic effects

-     Had storylines, had a sense of audience and drama

Back in the US

-     Edison hired people to make movies using his tech – he licensed out his tech and he RAN the whole idea of movies in the US – everyone who wanted to make movies HAD to pay him

-     He created some stuff and got patents, but also bought other people’s inventions and patented them too – plus he hired thugs to enforce his patents

The idea of watching movies for fun was catching on around the early 1900s – Edison started working with people who were making movies like Melies – story based scenes that were designed to interest an audience

Who Do You Think the Audience Would Be?

-     Sideline – what entertainment did wealthier people enjoy? – theatre, concerts, opera, dance, etc – these were considered “high art” and cost money and you had to dress up to go

-     Eg – Lion King musical- Jenna and Robin dressed a little nicer and it was an event

-     The people going to see the movies, which were cheap and usually in lower end places (like the back room of a fur shop or something), were low end people – often immigrants and people considered to be “the wrong people” to those higher class snobs

-     Funny thing of History – Jewish shopkeepers got into the movie industry this way

-     They were renting buildings and rooms for their shops and wanted to try and make some extra money by showing movies in them after hours

-     These few Jewish businessmen got into the movies because it was NOT considered a desirable industry by the ruling elite and higher class people

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Dec 2, 2010 - Details on TV Project

Today's TV Project Labours – 

You do realize that this HAS to be IN before we get too much further, right?
Format:
1. Title of Show
2. Logline (one sentence sum up of the show)
3. Paragraph of description – details, maybe story reference, etc)
4. Paragraph describing the Target Audience
(Rinse and repeat X 3)
Next Step:
Once you get a show okayed by me, Mr. the Lobb, then go on to the do the pattern I give you later



How I Level 4?

- surprise me by combining ideas that don't make an immediate connection - JerseyTracker - the two horsemen from Mantracker will be hunting the cast of Jersey Shore (with paintball guns)
- going for a harder type of show (sitcom or a one hour drama)
- giving more details that will go into your final when you choose one
- describing characters, settings, storyline ideas