Early cinema 1890s 1913

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Early cinema1890s - 1913

• 1890s Edisons Kinetoscope
• 1895-1905 Lumières
• Late 1890s Méliès makes first films
• 1902 - Meliess Trip to the Moon
• 1904 -1912 experiments with narrative
• By about 1913 - narrative system established

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Some popular types of early films

• Actualities, Travel logs
• Stories based upon current events
• Blue Movies Pornography for Peep shows
• Trick films
• Gag or physical humor films

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Méliès

• - Interested in appearance and disappearance
• - The ability of cinema to make things
  visible/invisible
• - Used camera like a magic trick
• Films play with presence and absence
• Also, thematize technology and machine-produce
  images

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Méliès

• - Subversion of natural order of things,
  materiality,
• Upsets hierarchies of nature, physics, gender,
  class
• Irreverent stance towards science
• Mocks/quotes travel logs, actualities

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Méliès vs the Lumières

• The magician The documenters
• Fantasy/ Sci-Fi Realism
• Mise-en-scene Photographic base
• Trickery Recording life
• special fx
• Creative Purely
• manipulation observational
• -deforming the real -respect for the real

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The Shot
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Diegesisthe total world of the films story
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Diegeticvs. Non-Diegetic
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On-Screen SpaceandOff-Screen Space
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Méliès vs.The Lumière Bros.
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AUTARKY or UNICITYof the frame
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Non-Centered Quality of the Image
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Camera Distance(almost always a medium-long
shot)
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Non-closureand a Fundamental Non-linearity
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FRONTALITY