Lab 4 Instructions: Early Cinema

Tonight, we will be looking at some of the first films ever made and tracing the emergence of cinema as a medium of expression over its first decade of existence. As you watch the selections, keep the following questions in mind:

The earliest films reflect multiple and competing ideas about what kind of medium cinema would become and what kinds of purposes it would serve. What different ideas about the medium do you see explored in these early examples?

If, as we have repeatedly seen, a new medium often builds upon traditions drawn from earlier media, what signs of that process do you see here? In what ways does cinema build upon photography, comic strips, live performance, magic shows, etc.?

If radio was a medium which had to express sight through sound, early cinema often faced the challenge of expressing sound through visual images. Can you identify some of the ways that filmmakers show us things that would normally be heard?

One early tension film must confront is between presentational style (that is, showing us something with the awareness that there is an audience out there watching the action unfold) and representational style (that is, pretending that we are watching actions unfold which are unshaped by our invisible presence). As you watch each film, think about which style seems dominant.

We can watch cinema learn how to convey basic information as we progress through the first decade. Watch for moments when cinema discovers the close-up, the point of view shot, the ability to show us things that other characters don't see, the ability to link adjacent shots together through character movement, the ability to link nonadjacent shots together through character movement, the ability to show the passage of time.

The idea of a purely visual cinema may be a myth. Many of the early films were accompanied by lecturers who narrated the action. (We will see an example of this process at work in A TRIP TO THE MOON). Others began to introduce intertitles to convey information which could not be shown. Think about the role(s) which intertitles play in the films which possess them.

How would the experience of the cinema have differed if you went to see a program of eclectically selected shorts rather than a single feature? How might this experience of diverse material juxtaposed together relate to other phenomenon of the late 19th century such as the mail order catalog, the funny pages of the newspaper, the magazine, the department store, the wax museum, etc.? How might this aesthetic reflect something of the dramatic social and cultural changes, especially those surrounding urbanization and immigration, that occurred in the late 19th century?

Early cinema did not yet know how to direct our eyes towards salient details or to organize the movement of our vision across the shot. As you watch some of the earliest films, be conscious of the challenges they pose to viewers, especially of moments when we have competing points of interest within the same shot.

A common myth is that early spectators confused the actions on screen with reality, i.e. ducking when the train rushes towards the camera. Tom Gunning in this week's reading argues, instead, that cinema made us highly aware of the technologies which achieved these illusions and that we were astonished by its differences from previous modes of representation, such as the still photograph or the magic lantern show.

One important difference was between movement side to side (which could be achieved in a magic lantern show) and movement directly towards the camera (which could not). Be conscious of the kinds of movements which are used in early films and how they might have been designed to exploit the unique properties of cinema.

What roles do special effects play in early cinema? How might that role be different at the moment a medium is emerging from the use of special effects within later examples? What narrative similarities and differences do you see between these early trick films and more contemporary special-effects based blockbusters, such as the films of Steven Spielberg or James Cameron?

Early exhibitors often manipulated the flow of the image to show off its new properties. Gunning describes the way that early film screenings started with a still projected image and then watched as it sprang into motion. One of the Lumiere shorts on this program is showed in reverse to achieve a similar effect.

One important aspect of early films was the fact that they brought to us moving images of places and events which we would never see directly. What impact might this have upon our consciousness of the world? How has this same appeal been built into the introduction of other media?

The first decade of cinema saw dramatic progress in the artist's conceptions of the medium. How would this compare to the first decade of digital media?

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