MIt2000
3/11/2016
FILM
HISTORY
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Sequential Photography
• Eadweard Muybridge, 1877
• Landscape photographer
• High Speed photos
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• Physician, professor of natural
science
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• Étienne-Jules Marey,
• Capture horse in motion through
trip wire shutter triggers
• Illusion of Motion through
ordered pictures
• zoopraxiscope
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W.K.L. Dickson/ Thomas
Edison
Kinetograph: moving
picture camera, 1892
Kinetoscope: peep hole
viewing machine, 1893
Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893
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Kinetograph and Kinetoscope
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1. 35mm b/w motion picture
(15 sec)
2. dancers, acrobats, prize
fighters, vaudeville
performers
3. Edison ‘studio’
4. http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=WmZ4VPmhAkw
5. disappear by 1900
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Kinetoscope
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Francis Jenkins/Thomas Armat
• basic principle, 1895
Auguste & Louis Lumière
• cinematograph in Paris, 1895
• “Workers Leaving Lumière
Factory”
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Inventing the Projector
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nj0vE
O4Q6s
• “Arrival of a Train at a Station”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLED
dFddk
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Showings: Phase One, 1895-1905
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Penny Arcades
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http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=hkC1jKa3ztY
Movies as novelty acts
Eventually used as ‘chasers’
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Vaudeville
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owners buy/rent projectors
regular film screenings
Traveling shows
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itinerant exhibitors
tent shows
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Nickelodeons (1905-1918)
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Growth:
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continuous showings
1914: 18,000 theaters (US)
7 mil daily admissions
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Films Only
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Longer films
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10-15 minutes
one-reel westerns, melodramas
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Urbanization
Industrialization
More Disposable Income
More Leisure Time
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Nickelodeon: Audience Growth
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High Culture
• parks
• libraries
• school rec. programs
• Museums
• Opera/Theatre
• church socials
• Progressive Era
Reformers
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Low Culture
• arcades
• dance halls
• vaudeville
• saloon
• pool hall
• minstrel shows
• burlesque theatre
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Leisure and Culture (early 1900s)
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poor sanitation, smells,
overcrowding
gaudy designs, outside
barkers, handbills, lights
darkness and morality
raunchy vaudeville
opening acts
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Nickelodeon/Low Culture
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Nickelodeons
Stars/Star System
Industrialization of Cinema
Studio System / Studio Control
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The Story of Film (Mark Cousins, 2001)
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Silent Films (mid-1920s)
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1927
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Aesthetic Success
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800 films/year
100 mil. weekly attendance
25,000 cinemas
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Commercial Success
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“The Tramp”
Wings (1927)
Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Clara
Bow
visual storytelling
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Experiencing Silent Films, 1920s
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Popular Art
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musical
accompaniment
Audience imagination
“subjective experience”
not passive viewing
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Elegant, ornate cinemas
Chaplin’s “The Kid”
(1921)
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http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=qNseEVlaCl
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The Jazz Singer (1927), first
sound film
primarily visual to primarily
verbal
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comedy: pantomime to dialogue
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Talkies
standardized, less individual
interpretation
writers-journalists/literati
theatre actors/directors
NY/Hollywood
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High cost sound movies
Stars as Assets
• Studios (Paramount, MGM)
• order and predictability
• 300-400 films a year; “A” & "B" movies
• proving ground for new stars
• 7-year contracts
1930s/Depression
• stability in turbulent times
• stereotypical mold for stars
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Star System/Studio System
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City
• impersonality
• normlessness
• Anomie: ‘lost in the
crowd’
• self-help manuals
• personality
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Country
• family tradition
• Religion
• framework of
purpose
• community norms
• close-knit
community
• character
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City and Social Alienation
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models: newcomers/new situations
stage, screen, playing field
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define success, attractiveness
confident behaviour
decisive; "harmonious personalities.“
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Stars as Models for Personality
whole person; well-integrated self
celebrated actors as “personalities"
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Studio investment
• lengthen stardom
Promotion
• Fan Mail
• Fan Clubs
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Star System/Star Gazing
1934: 535 clubs
750,000 members
Photography
Close-up Shot; faces
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Post-mid-1920s (MGM, Paramount, etc)
vertical integration
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production, distribution, and exhibition
Long term contracts with actors
Studio ties and feature filmmaking
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Rise of Hollywood Studio System
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Between 1939-1979, 7400 feature films produced, but only
14 directed by women.
Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”, 2010), first female
director to win Academy Award for director
Bechdel Test
Why so few women (directors/writers)?
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• Why many women novelists today but few women
filmmakers?
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Women and Film
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 Canada’s first female filmmaker
 Back to God’s Country (1919)
 Wrote, direct, act
 Critical & financial success
 http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=9B9_GRCJO9c
 Nell Shipman Productions
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Nell Shipman
 Shipman “cottage industry” vs
“industrialization” of
filmmaking
 Female characters: “active,
competent, courageous, and
self-reliant,” “rescuers”
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Early film and novelty
• popular entertainment; vaudeville; theatre
(women)
Economic Factors (post-1925)
• Filmmaking & Capital Investment
• Entrance Barriers For Newcomers
Social Factors
• Female Exclusion
• “Old Boy’s Network”
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Women Filmmakers
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Film in Canada During the Studio Era
US Branch Plants
• “quota quickies”
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• Vertical integration
• 95% of British market
• 70% of French market
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Domination of American films
Integration difficult in Canada
• Sparse population
• Geographical distance
• Preference for American film
Canadian exhibitors
• Alliances with American producers
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National Film Board (NFB)
Replaced by NFB, 1939
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• Non-commercial educational film
• Representations of Canada as “an inducement to capital to come to
this country”
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Canadian Motion Pictures Bureau, 1918
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headed by John Grierson
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assigned with “interpreting Canada to Canadians”
High Cultural Stance
• Combat American cultural product
• emphasis on documentary
• Developed by “social reformers aiming to use the medium of film
as a communications technology for consolidating middle ground
opinion in Canada” (Druick 259)
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• Nation building, Ideal citizenship