FILM HISTORY INTRODUCTION TO FILM CRITICISM

FILM HISTORY INTRODUCTION TO FILM CRITICISM

Before the Movies: Photography Still photography invented by Luis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851) ca. 1826 *next slide Positives; couldn't be reproduced. Live action could be simulated photographically (with Thaumatrope, Phenakistoscope, Zoetrope, etc.), but not recorded spontaneously and simultaneously as it occurred. *two slides

Daguerre s Camera

Zoetrope Development

Serial Photography In 1872 Gov. Leland Stanford of California hired Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) to determine if horses raise all their hooves at any one time while racing. Perfected technique in 1877. *next slide He tried projecting these photos serially on a "Zoopraxiscope," thus recording live action for the first time in history. But since this depended on 12 cameras (not one), it couldn't be considered cinema.

MUYBRIDGE'S RACETRACK EXPERIMENT Cameras Direction of Horse Trip Wires for Shutters

Muybridge s Horse

French Discoveries Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) first recorded live action with a chronophotographic gun (*photo), which took twelve photographs per second. He used a strip of flexible PAPER film. His 1888 camera devised a gear to stop film intermittently, in the shape of a Maltese Cross. It was a machine for the dissection of motion, not cinema.

French Discoveries

CELLULOID Hannibal Goodwin used celluloid roll film as a base for light sensitive emulsions, and sold his idea to George Eastman (1854-1932), who marketed the film in 1888 on an international scale.

Technological Requirements For motion pictures to exist, three devices are necessary: 1. Camera (*next) 2. Printer 3. Projector (see Chapter One)

THE CAMERA Camera A) a flexible and transparent film base B) a fast exposure time C) a mechanism to pull the film through the camera D) an intermittent device to stop the film (also for projector) E) a shutter to block off light (all by 1890)

THE FIRST CAMERA & PROJECTOR First perfected motion picture camera & projector: Edison Laboratories, 1889. Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (1860-1935) developed the Kinetoscope, a projector which would illustrate music from phonograph, designed for home viewing. Important also because: a) the idea of motion pictures was never divorced from sound, and b) the motion picture camera & projector were invented as accessories to a sound recording device and not for its own sake. (*photos x 2)

THE FIRST STUDIO

THE FIRST STUDIO The Black Maria, ca. 1893, from above Stage Camera

News From France Auguste and Louis Lumière (1862-1954; 1864-1948) invented a more practical portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector called the Cinematographe, three functions covered in one invention. Smaller and lighter, this unit allowed for escape from theatrical settings and hence, for documentary-style filming.

The First Commercial Exhibition On April 14, 1894, Andrew Holland opened the first Kinetoscope (a peep-show-like box in which a continuous forty- to fifty-foot film loop ran on spools between an electric lamp and a shutter) parlor at 1155 Broadway in NYC. (photos x 2)

The Kinetoscope

The Kinetoscope

THE FIRST COMMERCIAL EXHIBITION On March 22, 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière showed Le Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumiére (Workers Leaving the Lumiére factory), to the Société d Encouragement à l Industrie Nationale in Paris, the world's first projected moving picture. On December 28, 1895, the film was projected in Paris Grand Café, along with nine other films (25 minutes total). Within a month, with 20 shows a day, they were making 7 thousand francs a week, at one franc per customer.

Auguste and Louis Lumière Although the Lumières didn t wholly invent cinema, they largely determined the specific form the new medium was to take.

Another Country Heard From Max and Emile Skladanowsky (1863-1939; 1859-1945) projected films through a Bioskop at the Berlin Wintergarden on 1 November 1895.

PROJECTOR ESSENTIALS 1) the enlargement of images for simultaneous viewing by large groups, and 2) a means of ensuring the regular but intermittent motion of the developed film strip as it passed between the projection lamp and the shutter (which would correspond with the discontinuous movement of the strip through the camera).

The Latham loop: The Latham film family placed a small loop just above and below the projection lens, maintaining it with an extra set of sprockets. Without this, no film longer than 50-100 feet could be shown without breaking frequently. Without this loop film could have never evolved as an art form. *(next slide) A stop-motion device to insure the intermittent but regular motion of the film strip though the camera (the Maltese cross) allowing perforated celluloid film to pass through the lens/light elements. *(two slides)

THE LATHAM LOOP

THE MALTESE CROSS GEAR MALTESE CROSS IN MOTION

Georges Méliès (1861-1938) A Magic Lantern

Georges Méliès (1861-1938) Georges Méliès first used the camera to tell a story. In A Trip to the Moon (1902), he filmed scenes rather than shots (the only editing occurs between scenes rather than within them). Theatrical versus cinematic editing. The camera never moved once in any of his more than 500 films, nor did he alternate point of view by changing camera angles.

Edwin S. Porter (1870-1941) Porter made the first narrative film in America, The Life of an American Fireman (1902-03). It featured simultaneous and parallel action. His best was The Great Train Robbery (1903). Here for the first time, the basic cinematic unit is the shot, not the scene (cf. Méliès).

THE ESSENCE OF CINEMATIC NARRATIVE Cinematic narrative depends not upon the arrangement of objects or actors within a scene (as does the theater and, to a large extent, still photography) but upon the arrangement of shots in relation to one another.

THE END