LECTURE ONE NOTES
The idea of capturing moving images pre-dates motion pictures. The Zoetrope used a strip of paper with images on it. These are laid inside a drum with slits, When the drum spins, the viewer observes through the slits and the series of pictures appears to be something moving.
Watch a Zoetrope here::
Initially, zoetropes, flip books (books with a slightly different picture on each page which, when the person flipped rapidly through the pages, gave the illusion of movement
Pictures rely on the human eye retaining an image briefly which allows people to see motion when there is none. This is the reason one can see figures moving on lights on Broadway as well as in film. Motion picture film is a strip of celluloid with a number of still pictures on it
Eadweard Muybridge to prove whether all of a horse’s feet were off the grund at some point when it ran, rigged a series of still cameras along a race track with “trip wires” so that as the horse ran, the wires would be “pulled” and a photo would be taken. Using the string of photos it was possible to make a kind of flip book and see movement. What was lacking was projection. That came soon after.
Initially there was virtually no work done with the camera or editing. The camera stayed in one place and simply recorded what was in front of it. Early Edison films like The Kiss, Serpentine Dances, The Great Sandow and the Gilroy Brothers’ Comic Boxing all exhibit this characteristic. The film camera basically is used like a still camera except it records motion. The film runs as long as there was film in the camera.
Melies on the other hand, discovered that if the camera was stopped and restarted after the objects in the camera’s view were changed, they appeared to appear, disappear or move as if my magic. This began a split in film making between realistic films which depicted reality, and “trick” or special effects films which used the power of film making to do things which could not happen in reality.
Once people began to “cut and paste” pieces of film together (splicing) the possibility of editing became a reality. The way in which sections of film were joined together could make a difference in what people saw or how they interpreted what was on the film. Hollywood editing makes an attempt to keep the films as realistic as possible, so the edits are unnoticed, and it appears one is just watching out the window, The Russian film makers felt that the edits could call attention to things and that the film should not be as realistic as possible but that form should count. Thus the “Hollywood style” is called “realism” while the Russian forms became known as formalist. The Russian editing involes “montage” which in that context means that the film calls attention to itself to make a point. “Montage” when used by Americans generally means a set of overlapping pictures which gives a general impressions of something.
The three sequences shown (from Strike, Apocalypse Now and Bowling for Columbine) indicate how the editing has an impact on what the audience sees. The killing of the people and the slaughtering of the animals in Strike has a very different “feel” and “meaning” than the slaughther of the bull and the killing of Kurtz (Marlon Brando) by Willlard (Martin Sheen). The cuts in Bowling for Columbine show how the audience is led to believe one thing (Heston’s speech is continuous) when careful observation shows that there are 2 different speeches involved on different days and in different places.
Film communicates through the manipulation of variables. Each time a director makes a choice between several possibilities, it is possible for that choice to carry meaning. The “Language” of film is akin to the grammar of a language. How does a person (sender) send a message in a code (language, a piece of music, a film) to an audience? Since the message is a code of sorts the sender needs to code the message and the receiver needs to understand how to decode it.
The video Basic Film Terms contains a number of technical terms all of which can act as variables. A film maker has to decide in every shot many things like how to compose the shot, where will the camera be placed, how will the film be lit and so on. The video gives many terms which are found below and on a list of film terms found here
Ways to tell story