When we think of special effects, perhaps what comes to mind is great big explosions, crazy out-of space worlds and creatures created with steadily-improving post-production, CGI effects. What about the days before this incredible technology? Imagine an important meeting of astronomers planning a voyage to the moon, in a bullet-shaped capsule. Imagine their mission as they literally shoot off into space with the help of young women in sailor attire. Imagine as they land smack-bang in the moon’s eyeball, and imagine the fantastical events occur, from comets passing to umbrella’s transforming into oversized mushrooms. This is George Melies ‘La Voyage Dans La Moon’ or ‘A Trip to the Moon’, a film made in 1902, prior to the moon landing and any …show more content…
Early 20th century cinema was fresh, young and simple, the majority of its content being unedited scenes of daily life, the most extravagant displays might depict some new technology, the train for example, or a place overseas. Melies started his films in this manner, but thanks to the discovery of the ‘substitution splice’, and a knowledge that the audiences experience the film as continuous imagery, he generated some of the first ever special effects based on magical illusions. Segundo de Chomon and D.W Griffith are two other filmmakers who used the technique, the latter playing with it for comedic moments (Griffith, 1994). The 'substitution splice' became increasingly popular in French and fantasy/magical films leading to the term ‘scènes à transformation’ being created to describe them (Abel, 664). Melies created unique stories in that they were designed for film and could only be told through this medium, thus popularising cinema to a larger extent than ever before. Melies was interested in visuals and cinema trickery, forcing the audience to suspend their disbelief through meticulous editing and ‘substitution splicing’
In the biographical film Mabo the Audience is positioned by the filmmakers to see Eddie Koiki Mabo as a hardworking, tenacious and strong man.
consider to be more modern film techniques. Montage plays a key role in this film, as
...netti, Louis, and Scott Eyman. “The Talkie Era.” Flashback: A Brief History of Film. Ed. Leah Jewell. 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001. 140-145. Print.
Paper Moon, a 1973 American tragicomedy directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The film Paper Moon dramatically depicts the Great Depression era in the Plains states of America. The artistic cinematography used throughout this film contributes to the overall historic feel. Shot in black and white with the period music, the stark settings help the viewer understand the personalities of the characters and their growing relationship with each other, plot of the movie and its setting.
The start of special effects in film is largely attributed to Georges Méliès and his process of removing a section of a moving picture to place another moving part within.
This Hispanic film titled "Under The Same Moon” makes a connection about the difficulties the Latino community must undergo without losing their values and traditions in order to provide for their families that were left behind. In addition, this film reproduces some of the complications my ancestors went through when they made the most difficult decision to migrate to the United State in a quest for a better life. It is not easy to decide to abandon your home country, customs and, most importantly, your family in a pursuit of a more stable daily pay rate. All this work hard to provide for the loved ones who stay behind waiting for their return. Despite the challenging, they faced they decide to cross the border until they reached the destination
The decade was largely dominated by silent films, but the creation of movies with sound followed afterwards. These innovations greatly improved the movies and made them more immersive and exciting for the viewer. Soon after the invention of sound in movies, the silent era movies...
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
With the discovery of techniques such as continuous editing, multiple camera angles, montage editing, and more, silent filmmaking developed from simple minute-long films to some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring films that have ever been created—in only a few decades. In Visions of Light, someone alluded that if the invention of sound had come along a mere ten years later, visual storytelling would be years ahead of what it is today. This statement rings true. When looking at the immense amount of progress that was made during the silent era of films, one must consider where the art of film has been, where it is, and where it is
Montage is from the beginning of the twenties characterized as a process of synthesis, building something new and in terms of the physical planes also something quite simple. Most montage’s films were created as a dialectical process, where initially from a two meanings of consecutive shots form a third meaning.
In the early 1900’s Georges Melies introduced his film “A Trip To The Moon” to audiences in France. This film, when first seen by viewers at this time, was jawdropping. Melies who happened to be a magician, and illusionist before becoming a filmmaker, made one of the first-ever narratives in motion picture history. Similarily throughout “Trip To The Moon” and many of his later films, Melies, who also worked in theatre, took full advantage of what is known as Mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is defined as: All the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: the settings and props, lighting, costumes and make-up, and figure behavior. In “Trip to the Moon” Melies created a world to which no one had ever seen on film, and utilized all the characteristics to which mise-en-scene is based upon.
The use of jump cuts within Breathless and Contempt was an unconventional technique during the French New Wave and still is today because it violates one of the rules of Classic Hollywood Style. Jump cuts create “…discontinuities that the perceptual system will not ignore because the stimuli fall outside of the accommodation ranges for perceptual continuity, then spatial coherence breaks down” (Berliner). Even though jump cuts are not aesthetically pleasing, Godard uses them for the deeper meaning of the films.
...or visual effects movies. Most of the movies that are released today used this technique only to bring clarity and depth to the film.
If we go back beyond Lumière Brothers’ projection of their cinematography in Paris over Christmas 1895, which is too straightforward birth narration of cinema; ancient visual forms like Egyptian hieroglyphics or pre-cinematic technologies of image capture and projection, known as magic lanterns, employing a series of lenses and light sources, were early proof of humanity mesmerised by the play and tricks of light and shades.