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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