The greatest entertainment art form of the 20th century
MOVIES – Cinema – Film as Art
Please note: Trailers and clips of the well-known films noted here can be found and viewed on the Internet.
– Characteristics
– History
– Animation
– 3 Presentations
– Conventions:
6 Theatrical
5 Editing
6 Filmic
– 14 Genres
– Auteurs
– Effects on Audiences
– Watching While Thinking
– Evaluating Merits
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2
Movie: a composite art form
Borrows from older art forms:
Visual arts
Performing arts
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Fabrications made up through
special effects:
camera use, editing, juxtaposition,
structural rhythms
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3
Action/
Adventure
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4
Invented in 1895
First motion pictures only a few minutes long
The greatest entertainment art form of the 20th century
Cinema: Background
A Trip to the
Moon, 1904
1st 20 min. movie –
Science-fiction!
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Hugo, movie 2011. Dir.: Martin Scorcese.
Inspired by Milies’s 1904 film.
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A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) is a 1902 French black and white silent science fiction film. It is based loosely on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.[1] The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston. The film runs 14 minutes if projected at 16 frames per second, which was the standard frame rate at the time the film was produced. It was extremely popular at the time of its release and is the best-known of the hundreds of fantasy films made by Méliès. A Trip to the Moon is the first science fiction film, and uses innovative animation and special effects, including the well-known image of the spaceship landing in the moon’s eye.
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Ashurbanipal pursuing Arabs on camels
(Assyrian, ca. 850 BCE.)
Ancestors of Movies in History
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Multiple Exposure:
Photographic study of movement
Zoetrope: A device that produces the illusion of action by presenting a rapid succession of static pictures.
Precursors: Simulating Motion . . . .
Flip Book: contains a series of pictures that vary gradually from one picture to the next, so when turned rapidly the pictures seem to animate by simulating motion.
