Connor's Film Blog

Chaplin got his start at the age of 13 in a theater because his brother introduced him to it, in London. His talents included with him being able to display comedy so efficiently and visually, without any dialogue, he was also writing and directing and producing movies. I admire how he was able to rise to fame and success with just his brother and himself growing up together. I find his comedic approach and how he did almost everything in a movie to be very unique. I also think that his starring in The Kid  was unique, because it was sort of reflecting his own childhood experiences.

Nickelodeons were small theaters that allowed you to watch movies for a low price. They weren't anything super fancy, but they were extremely popular for the price and for what it provided. The first movie palace was called "The Regent" and was more directed towards the wealthy to come to the theaters. It would cost more, but the palaces would be this grand and luxurious interior. The transition from nickelodeons to movie palaces probably was made because people started realizing that the viewers' experience wasn't solely based on what they were watching, but the environment they were in when watching it. The first to make movie palaces also knew there was a profit to be made to be giving the viewers more than what they originally wanted. Movie palaces were so important because they paved the way for modern movie theaters. It made it known that movie theaters started emphasizing not only the movies being played, but the experience to be had.

The latham loop was an invention that was able to pull film gently through the camera as it was shooting, and spooled it up, which made it take up less space. It change cinema because it allowed for filmmakers to create longer films, instead of just shooting shots that only last a couple of seconds. This made it easier for films to not just be a clip of everyday life, but to be telling stories.

The weather in Hollywood is ideal for year round shooting, and has a diverse environment. Also, aspiring filmmakers wanted to get far away from New Jersey to avoid Thomas Edison and his patents. Thomas Edison had patents on equipment not only to make movies, but also on the equipment to display movies. With the move to California, filmmakers could get by with using equipment that Edison had a patent on, and could then make as many films as they wanted.

Mabel Normand was famous for being an actress in many films with huge stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Sennett. She was also famous for being one of the first silent actors to also be their own director. Three significant films she made were:  Mabel’s Dramatic Career ,  Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life, and  Mickey. The downfall of her career was led by a series of scandals, from rape scandals by her coworker, to substance abuse rumors, all of which putting a bad reputation for Normand, making her movie sales wildly unsuccessful. What surprised me about her was how she would go against what her male colleagues would say and she would take credit for the movies that she directed. Many women at the time were very oppressed by males, and this was a great showing of resistance.

Melies had several contributions to cinema. He was a pioneer in early film and would experiment with many different techniques in filmmaking such as double exposure, split screen, and dissolve. He also was the first filmmaker to start using production sketches and story boards (both staples in pre production). He also made the first film production studio in Europe. His most famous piece of art, A Trip to the Moon , is the first science fiction film ever made. His work is so significant because of the inspiration he sparked for other filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith. 

This music video is about a couple flying all over to foreign places such as the moon and the deep sea (in a literal sense). The deeper meaning is that it is about old films and the evolution of them. The band and filmmakers probably chose these images to pay homage to older films such as A Trip to the Moon . They are showing special effects used back in the first days of film, such as hitting a monster and they disappear into smoke.

Alice was the one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative film, and she also created some of the first visual effects, experimented with hand-coloring, and also played with sound in her films. Her accomplishments are so incredible because no one would do them since the ideas themselves were so revolutionary. She is a significant figure because not only was she a revolutionizing filmmaker of her time, but she was also a woman and was able to break through the sexist oppression from that time.

Louis Le Prince was a cinematographer in the late 19th century. His contribution to cinema was the first motion picture. He invented a 16 lens camera used for photos and he was also able to invent the camera he used to make the first motion picture. What surprises me is how Louis Le Prince disappeared right before he was about to show off his invention. It seems too much of a coincidence for something to have not happened.

I chose The Great Train Robbery because I like the storytelling, composition, and editing in the film. It is very interesting because it shoots on unusual locations, has a unique story for the time, and puts in overlays to emulate effects such as smoke. When they would blow up a box or fire a gun, smoke was often overlaid on the film, a technique that was not used at all at the time. Two common things I saw while searching for these films are that they usually had no sound at all unless someone put sound in themselves, and many featured famous actor Charlie Chaplin.

All of these early films are just short clips of actions that can be seen happening if you just walk down the street. Filmmakers shot these because they knew that people would find it fascinating if they saw these actions done without the people actually being there. They differ from modern movies because they didn't naturally have color, where short lips showing one action, didn't tell a full-fledged story, and the film imperfections are apparent.

Muybridge would capture motion in his photos and would show different angles of the motion taking place to be studied. He was able to take photos of anything in motion within a fraction of a second. They are significant because it was the first time someone was able to capture motion like that and it led to the development of the motion picture. I find it interesting on how disturbed he seems, shooting the person his wife had an affair with, then leaving his child to be an orphan, and then putting his models in uncomfortable circumstances/positions. I find this interesting because it sounds unusual for someone who seems so mentally disturbed to be revolutionary in his field.

Marey made the invention of the photographic gun, which would influence the production of the  first motion picture camera. His photos showed movement in the scene, rather than a single static shot. This would lead to a great push to make the first video, because it showed that you didn't have to just capture a single static image.

Films are a series of thousands, possibly millions, of photos all played really fast and each frame only lasts for a split second. Without photography, there wouldn't be a way to capture all of those single frames and make it into video. I think that the three most important inventions on this list are the camera obscura, photochemistry, and rolls of film. The camera obscura was very essential, because it was the first invention that showed you can produce images from the outside world using a lens and a dark room. The invention of photochemistry was extremely important because that made it possible for photos to be preserved and not just seen once and then that was it. Rolls of film were especially important because they were what movies were first shot on, they made it easy to take many photos in succession of each other rapidly.

Phantasmagoria was a show that was meant to make the audience think that there were spirits of the dead through the use of mirrors and a magic lantern. This impacted cinema heavily because it inspired filmmakers to make horror films. It also played with the idea that spirits of the dead could come back, inspiring some movies.

The light didn't only make it possible to see the images, it also created a flicker that was used by the primitive man to make it look like the images were moving. The primitive man might have used this painting for a variety of reasons, spanning from religion, to documenting history, to tell stories to others and using it as a source of entertainment. The two techniques used were juxtaposition(painting in sequence of images) and superimposition(painting one image on top of another) of the images. I think they painted these images to tell stories to others about big hunts, or crazy experiences happening in the wild.

I achieved two of my goals in the fall semester, I did not achieve the volunteering events that I wanted to do, but I was able to learn about the jobs on a set/crew and I learned how to operate a cinema camera.  I did not achieve my volunteer goal because of the lack of time I have had, and I was out of town for one of the events. I can try to make more of an effort this semester to volunteer if I still want to, and hopefully the timing for the events works out better. I don't think this is something where I need to gather help and resources for.