DEVELOPMENT OF FILM
Cinema is a French invention: The Lumiere Brothers' gave birth to what might be one of the best contributions humans can enjoy; entertainment, documentaries, series and animation. Everything we see moving on the screens is because of them. Below is the first ever film in the form of a story.
D.W Griffith was a premier pioneering American Film director. He is best known as the director of the ground breaking 1915 film 'The Birth of a Nation'. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States. The film has been extremely controversial for its negative depiction of African Americans, white Unionists and Reconstruction, and its positive portrayal of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. The film was widely criticized and subject to boycotts by anti-racist organizations such as the NAACP. Griffith responded to his critics with Intolerance, intended to show the history of prejudiced thought and behavior. The film was not a financial success but was praised by critics. Several of Griffith's later films were also successful, but his high production, promotional, and roadshow costs often made his ventures commercial failures. He is generally considered one of the most important figures of early cinema for his command of film techniques and expressive skills.
Sergie Eisenstein was a Russian film director and theorists, known as the 'father of montage'. He was a pioneer in the use of montage, a specific use of film editing, and argued that montage was the essence of the cinema. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through the linkage of related images. He felt the 'collision' of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He developed what he called 'methods of montage'. Below is a clip from his famous film 'Oktober' which shows s
everal excellent examples of the Soviet Montage Techniques, developed to improve propaganda through film.
David Fincher is an American film director known for his dark stylish thrillers such as Seven, Fight Club, The Game and more recently the girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Finchers films are always at the
leading edge of film making due to his lighting and editing styles. Set on a directing career, Fincher joined video-production company Propaganda Films and started off directing music videos and commercials. Like Fincher, other directors such as Michael Bay, Samuel Bayer. They honed their talents at Propaganda Films before moving on to feature films.
The history of film has had many changes up until today, which means that editing styles have changed. Film first started out in the 1800's with no editing at all. Today we would look at these films and think of them as almost home videos if we were to film them ourselves. You can see this style of filming in this video of L'Arrivee d'un train a La Ciotat by the Lumiere brothers in 1895. After all of these one-shot short films were around they eventually thought that cinema didn't have a future since people were just filming things that they could go and see first hand for themselves. They then came to the realisation of cutting the footage to change between shots. To do this they would physically cut and paste together pieces of film using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer. It was editing that allowed film to take off as it allowed the film to transport between any two shots. Editing also allows shots to be sped up or slowed down, this was the reason why people generally like film as they would like to be able to edit their own lives as is done in film. Editing can also be used to make the audience have a certain reaction. Editing also went on to add colour to film. To do this, each shot was individually coloured by hand. As i meniotned before D. W. Griffith was the first editor introducing narrative to film. He was also the first man that used the close up in a big way. The audience didn't understand this shot at this point as they said that they wanted to see the whole actors body since they had paid all of this money to see the film. They wanted the cut to be so smooth that it was barely noticeable so that the viewer stays involved throughout the film. Editing can be essentially seen as the start of the making of the film as this is the point where the film is actually put together. At this point you can actually physically see the film and decide what changes need to be made. In conclusion looking at films dating from when filming came about you can see the difference easily in the editing and even the quality.
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