Lecture One

Lecture One: Early short subjects and A Trip to the Moon and The Great Train Robbery

Film as a discipline is often thought of as tow linked areas: film production and film studies. The first deals with the making of films, the second with the history, analysis and criticism of films. Art can be seen as a form of communication in which there is a "sender" who is trying to communicate some idea to a "receiver" (the speaker and hearer in a conversation). In simplistic terms, the speaker codes the idea into a specific language and send the message to the hearer who decodes it. If the speaker and hearer do not share the same code there is no communication. The language of film is one which varies some from time and time and culture to culture. This often makes it harder to understand films from different time periods and different places.

Every art form has codes for sending messages. Music uses different tehniques than painting or sculpture. In most films, and especially those called "narrative films" there is a script which contains the authors ideas. These ideas are translated into other art forms as well. If we watch a film and only analyze the text, we are to a degree, analyzing a radio program. It is the visual "translation" of the ideas that are the backbone of film, so there is a need to concentrate on visuals (and to some degree the sound track which is apart from the words - including for example, background music). Motion picture films are one of the more recent forms of art to develop. Technically they develop from both still photography and early attemots to cause pictures to move. Early attemos were the sootrope, flip books and machines into which people looked and cards were flipped all giving the illusion of movement. For motion pictures, there has been an rapid development based on advances in technology. Unlike the previously mentioned "moving picture" techniques, motion pictures responded to the development of projectors, so that watching films became a group event rather than a solitary one. The first developments technically had to do with the invention of both the motion picture cameras which allowed for the photographing of a number of still shots on a single piece of film (each shot called "a frame", and of projectors.

The next development was the invention of ways to synchronize sound with the action so that people could be heard when the spoke. The Jazz Singer 1927 is generally considered the first of these, although the entire film is not synchronized. Some earlier shorts were fully synchronized. In the previous films, actors addressed the audience (breaking the fourth wall) and performed for them. In The Jazz Singer, people in the film spoke to one another without addressing the audience and so the audience in effect was "eavesdropping" on the conversation.

A third major development was the development of wide screen which alters completely the way in which shots are composed (the first film released in wide screen was The Robe in 1953, and finally the development of the use of computers and computer graphivs in film making, The first of these is Andromeda Strain (1971). Early develpments were by the Lumiere Brothers, Louis and Auguste; George Melies, and Thomas Edison. Initially, the film was moved through the camera by "hand cranking" that is turning a handle that mechanically moved the film through the camera. Similarly, projects were hand cranked and it was necessary that the operators of both the camera and the projector crank at the same speed. Later film was moved through the camera by motors assuring a more even speed.

Initially. camera were simply placed facing the event to be filmed and the camera was cranked and a spool of film was run through the camera. In a sense the camera was used basically like a still camera. Shortly thereafter however, people discovered that the camera could be moved and that film could be edited which is to say different sections of film could be put together to make a longer reel and to have the camera chance position during a single film. Early films by the Lumiere Brothers and Edison tend to be documentary types films, in which events, like workers leaving the factory were recorded on film. Melies, on the other hand noted the potential of the film in that he created a kind of "special effect" film in which characters appear and diaappear in a way that would not be possible on stage. In a sense, this is the first "creative" use of the camera.

An important concept it that of the "variable" Whenever a choice is possible it can be meaningful. Choices in photography include choice of focal length of the lens (wide angle, normal, telephoto etc), whether to move the camera or not and so on. In film studies one looks at the choices of variable. In terms of the photoraphy any reasonable director and DP (director of photography/demented person?) will be able to tell you what lens they are using, where the camera is being placed and so on. They will also be able to explain why.

In film studies the content of the films is subject to the same scrutiny; Why does the film about serial photography using Muybridge's photos ignore the shots he made of men and animals and only show women? Does this tell us something about the film maker, the time, the culture or all of these. Remember in look at a film it will have many factors involved in its making - the time, the diretor, the cultural background, and so on. It is possible to examine a film without regard for the time and place it was made but it is also possible to see the film the way the people who made it may have seen it. There is no "single" interpretation of a film. The important thing is to be able to talk about how the interpretation was arrived at "I feel that..." is not good enough.

As time went by, terminology developed to describe various aspects of films making. A list of those includes:

Writing

In watch the short films we have seen a division between those films which film real situation and those which begin to use the film for those techniques that could not appear anywhere else. In films like The Kiss or Serpentine Dances the camera simply records the events, but it films like The Cook in Trouble events happen that could not happen in any other media. In effect there is a spilt between documentary film and special effects films. The two will reunite later and many non fiction films have special effects which are not meant to be noticed.

Early films are usually one shot, no camera movement. By A Trip to the Moon there are sequences of shots and the film is clearly filmed on a stage and very much in keep with a female chorus like and so on. The camera keeps a fixed distance and remains stationary throughout.

In The Great Train Robbery the editing has become more complex although the camera remains stationary and the takes are rather long on occsasion. The scene where the robbery actually takes place is quite lengthy and no onewold shoot it that way now but they would have many shots with close ups. The film however breaks ground in the famous final shot in which one of the cowboys in medium shot fires his pistol directly at the camera.

In the film we can see an example of the use of clothing to given information ( this is known as satorial coding or using cloting to give information). A visitor from the "city" is made to dance by the cowboys suitably attired in cowboy suits. (remember color can be used on clothing as well - bad gus wear black and good guys wear white!

variable