The films A Trip to the Moon, Man With a Movie Camera and Meshes of the Afternoon were all inventive pieces for their time. A Trip to The Moon (1902) was one of the first films to make a relationship between films and dreams. The story is about a group of men who take off to the moon, and get into some trouble with the natives and come back home. Some aspects of the film reminded me a lot of theatre, specifically that the camera never changes angles in the scenes, the sets were very two dimensional, and that the costumes were all very elaborate. However, this short film also featured forms of expression that was not available to other art forms, for example the animations. I was surprised at the quality of the animations for being made in 1902, and my favorite was the face in moon, and all the animated stars and meteors in the background. The cross-dissolve transitions are another aspect of the film that was new for the time, and unavailable to use in the theatre.
Unlike the still, boring camera movements of A Trip To The Moon, the film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) featured many new and interesting camera shots. This film was one of the first avant-garde American independent films, and represents the "interior state", or the contrast between imagination and reality. Cinematically, this film featured a number of different types of shots including jump cuts and slow motion. One scene I found extremely artistic and creative was when the woman was walking across the room, yet with each step she is walking in a different place, for example the beach, then the street, then back into her own house. The cinematographer for this film used a number of creative camera shots, with the most impressive being the camera movement while the woman is walking up the stairs, and you feel like you too, are falling against the walls with her. There were also a few point of view shots, which I think are always neat.
The third movie we watch was Man With a Movie Camera, (1929), which was out of the three, my favorite piece. It was an artsy film that was described as "a stunning avant-garde, documentary meta-narrative that celebrates Soviet workers and filmmaking." The film uses radical editing styles, and brand new techniques and camera angles, making it a beautiful piece of art.
Mary Jane’s Mishap was made when ‘multi-scene films were becoming popular’ (Salt, 1990, pp32) It is notable for its use of experimental transitions. To ‘separate successive scenes’ (Salt, 1990, pp32) Smith used vertical wipes to transition to wider framed shot. This efficiently showed an ellipsis in time from the funeral to people visiting her grave. D.W.Griffith also used inventive shots but popularised them rather than inventing them, such as tracking shots adding pace the characters movement and the narrative.
My initial idea for this paper was to focus on the technical aspects of the film—the hybrid of animation and live action. I first saw this technique used in The Three Caballeros (Ferguson & Young, 1944) and was going to research this film, but the amount of literature on t...
Statement of intent: This formal report was written with the intent of discussing the mise-en-scene element of film which is used in two of Wes Anderson’s most popular films. Both films The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) showcase the limited colour palette and costume aspects of mise-en-scene.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a defining turning point in Russian history. This overall revolution consisted of two individual revolutions in 1917 which resulted in the overthrow of the Tsarist government and the formation of a socialist society led by Vladimir Lenin’s radical Bolsheviks. For a moment with such enormous weight like the Bolshevik Revolution, there will be various interpretations on the true results of that moment and the meaning and value of these results. The film Man with a Movie Camera deals with the results of the Bolshevik Revolution and the early Soviet Society it birthed as it utilizes footage of one day in this early Soviet Union, thus making it worthy of examination. In the film Man With a Movie Camera, Vertov impressively
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
The portrayal of art cinema is to some extent accurate when considering the time period of this film. Art film was first introduced to the American film industry during the period of time when this film came out. Art cinema utilizes its own set of artistic expression. Hollywood classical films on the other hand, are at odds with the artistic concept, and are considered to be mainstream. When we look at Classical films, we think of the basic Hollywood movie where there is a beginning, middle and end, and the whole movie comes together at the end, with a little bit of romance. In this specific movie, the audience is faced with a confusing dilemma of choosing whether this movie is an art film or a classical film. Most even think it has a documentary approach, but what makes this movie even more successful and even more entertaining, is that it is both art cinema and classical cinema.
The absolutely stunning film, Citizen Kane (1941), is one of the world’s most famous and highly renowned films. The film contains many remarkable scenes and cinematic techniques as well as innovations. Within this well-known film, Orson Welles (director) portrays many stylistic features and fundamentals of cinematography. The scene of Charles Foster Kane and his wife, Susan, at Xanadu shows the dominance that Kane bears over people in general as well as Susan specifically. Throughout the film, Orson Welles continues to convey the message of Susan’s inferiority to Mr. Kane. Also, Welles furthers the image of how demanding Kane is of Susan and many others. Mr. Welles conveys the message that Kane has suffered a hard life, and will continue to until death. Welles conveys many stylistic features as well as fundamentals of cinematography through use of light and darkness, staging and proxemics, personal theme development and materialism within the film, Citizen Kane.
In this essay I will be analysing the use of cinematography in two films, using Peeping Tom (1960) directed by Michael Powell and Psycho (1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The reason why I choose these two films is because although they are from the same genre, and from the same period, the methods both films use are similar and at the same time completely different.
...s appeared not so much to matter as the fact that he developed new techniques, devised camera approaches and sought always to bring out the potential of a still developing form. That he forgot--or overlooked--to bring the Marxist message to one of his films two years ago brought him that fatal kiss of all--the accusation from the authoritative Soviet magazine, Culture and Life, that his productions had been short on the prescribed Soviet requirement of art and interpretation of history” ("Sergei Eisenstein is Dead in Moscow”, New York Times, 1948) . In film, Eisenstein was known for his development of the montage sequence, his unusual juxtapositions, and his life-like imagery. In life he was known for his propaganda and belief in the plight of the working class. Eisenstein left an inevitable mark on his community, his time, the shape of a sub-culture, and his art.
However, in stark contrast to The General, other films were being made around the world that did not follow a simple Hollywood structure, but rather were more experimental with what a movie could be. Man With a Movie Camera (1929), a very ahead of its time, utilized a completely different style of filmmaking that resonated strongly with the ideals of the Soviet Union. Thus, Man With a Movie Camera sought out to make the everyday people of the Soviet Union the stars of the film. This idea was completely revolutionary as well, and almost by necessity, introduced a new style of editing to fit the story—or rather the documentation—that director Dziga Vertov was trying to tell.
David Bordwell. The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film. – Cinema Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1972, 9-17.
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.
Rhodes, John David. Meshes of the Afternoon. London: Palgrave Macmillan on Behalf of the British Film Institute, 2011. Print.
Gunning, Tom 2000, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde.” Film and theory: An anthology, Robert Stam & Toby Miller, Blackwell, pp 229-235.
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