HISTORY OF FILM - I
KEY FIGURES – KEY MOVEMENTS
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WHAT YOU
WILL LEARN IN
THIS
LECTURE?
• PERSISTENCE OF VISION
• EARLY ATTEMPTS AT FILMMAKING
• THREE IMPORTANT FIGURES: EDISON;
LUMIERE & MELIES
• HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYSTEM
• GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
• THE BIG FIVE
RECAP
PREVIOUS LECTURE ON ‘THE ART OF
WATCHING FILMS’
Across cultures –
Timeless Films
• Audiences expectations concerning “reality” change over time and across cultures, of
course.
• A MOVIE MADE IN GERMANY IN 1930S MAY HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED THOROUGHLY
VERISIMILAR BY THOSE GERMANS WHO VIEWED IT AT THE TIME
• BUT MAY SEEM UTTERLY UNFAMILIAR AND PERHAPS EVEN UNBELIEVABLE TO
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN VIEWERS
• Films that succeed in seeming verisimilar across cultures and times often enjoy the
sort of critical and popular success that prompts people to call them timeless
What are the
accepted systems,
methods or
conventions by
which the movies
communicate with
the viewer
SHOT, SCENE,
SEQUENCE
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS
“CONTINUITY?” and how
it affects our viewing
THE ‘JOHN DOE’ EXAMPLE
How it all began?
The Lumiere Cinematographe
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In 1832 , Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and Austrian geometry professor Simon Stampfer
independently created the optical device that came to be called the Phenakistoscope also spelled
phenakistiscope
The Zoetrope, invented in 1833, contained a series of drawings on a narrow strip of paper inside
a revolving drum
https://youtu.be/5khDGKGv088
Zoetrope
• Moving picture projection was developed almost at
the same time in the US, France, England, Germany
and other countries around the world.
Early Attempts
to Filmmaking
• Three key figures were Thomas Alva Edison, Lumiere
brothers and George Melies.
• The Edison company’s early attempt at filmmaking
were of single, staged events: a co-worker sneezing, a
couple kissing
HUGO
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1.
WHAT IS THE KEY MESSAGE IN
THE FILM??
2.
WHO IS THE MAIN
CHARACTER/PROTAGONIST IN
THE FILM?
3.
LIST SOME KEY FACTS YOU
HAVE NOTICED IN THE FILM
ABOUT FILM HISTORY – THE
WAY FILMS WERE MADE IN
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF
CINEMA
WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT
MELIES FROM THE FILM ‘HUGO’?
• Méliès Made Over 500 Films
• Méliès was a silent movie-making machine. He
directed over 500 films (most of which he starred
in, or at least made a cameo in). Sadly, many of
these films were lost to time and misfortune.
• His Studio Was Made Entirely Out Of Glass
• In order to catch all the light necessary to make
his films, Méliès build a glass-enclosed stage
outside Paris in 1897. At one point, Méliès was
rumored to have housed over 20,000 costumes.
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WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT MELIES FROM THE FILM
‘HUGO’?
• Méliès' Color Films Were Hand Painted
• In order to add color to his movies, Méliès and his crew hand painted every
single frame.
• Méliès Was The Original FX Guy
• In fact he came across the "stop trick" cut — where he stopped filming and
removed someone from the scene, so they seemed to disappear when filming
started up — accidentally!
• He Is Responsible for the First Science Fiction Film
• Released in 1902, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is the first ever
science fiction film.
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A trip to the moon
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Few editing techniques created by Georges
Melies
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Breakout Session
3 minutes recess
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Who were the lumiere brothers?
• A three-in-one device that could record, develop and project motion
pictures, the Cinématographe would go down in history as the first
viable film camera.
• Using it, the Lumière brothers shot footage of workers at their factory
leaving at the end of the day. They showed the resulting film, “La
Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière” (“Workers Leaving the Lumière
Factory”) at an industrial meeting in Paris in March 1895;
• it is considered to be the very first motion picture.
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Lumiere, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory
(1895)
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https://youtu.be/TIuU8TRAZz8
Lumièare Brothers
Thomas Alva
Edison
• In the United States, Thomas
Alva Edison enthralled an
audience with astounding images
of dancers, a comic boxing
match, and even a seaside scene
using his Vitascope in the year
1896. Around the same time, the
Lumière Brothers also created
films of one minute duration in
France
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WHAT ALL THIS
LEAD TO?
THREE FUNDAMENTAL
CONVENTIONS OF
FILMMAKING EMERGED
FORM THEIR WORK
• From the Edison factory came both the Hollywood
studio system, with its division of labor, and
classical Hollywood or classical narrative style,
based on character and action. The first move
towards a consolidated, modernized, and
standardized movie industry came in 1908 when
Edison formed the Motion Pictures Patents
Company (MPPC) trust , a collusive movie industry
cartel.
• The Lumiere pointed the direction to the
documentary, to film’s power to record events the
would occur anyway, even if camera were not
present
• From George Melies magic trick films came the
cinema of fantasy, of science fiction, which later
became an important part of Hollywood
filmmaking
https://youtu.be/L8is28gAOTc
Georges Melies - Master of Illusion
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https://youtu.be/24AH2d6sGmA
As cinema developed, came the
economic impulse, the urge to
treat the images as commodity, to
own it, rent it, sell it, profit from it
The economics of scale
 Hollywood studio system produced filmmaking factories –
with employees who included everyone from Writers,
Directors, actors, set decorators and electricians – the
studio created an economy of the visible, and organized,
commodity driven form of production
Studio
streamlining
work
 Manufacturing process got more streamlined as demand
grew
 By the time shooting begun, everyone’s role was laid out:
shots were sketched on storyboards, sets were built, the
script,
usually a product of several hands, was largely finished
 Creating an image itself becomes a staged process
 Shot – Sets – selective elements in the shot
 Economics of the image takes over
• Hollywood's position as the film capital of the world
was made possible partly by the
• advent of the First World War in 1914.
THE GLOBAL
FACTORY
• The war temporarily destroyed European
competition, particularly in France and Italy. For the
next four years Hollywood dominated the film world,
establishing an impressive global distribution
network.
• IT HAS BEEN ESTIMATED THAT IN 1914 HOLLYWOOD
PRODUCED 50 PER CENT OF THE WORLD'S FILMS
During the 'golden age' of hollywood, the studios produced one film
each per week per year.
At its height, the studio system released 350 films in a single year.
The studios were able to achieve such remarkable production figures
through rationalization of working practices
At Warner Brothers, for example, as many as 20 writers would work
on a single script.
The script was prepared to an extremely detailed standard and the
writers were usually present on set.
END OF
LECTURE
HISTORY OF FILM – I
• NEXT LECTURE WE WILL COVER:
• THE BIG FIVE OF HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS
• EVOLUTION OF THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM IN
HOLLYWOOD
• RUSSIAN MONTAGE
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