Judging from the examples listed on the syllabus, what are the sorts of things that early film makers sought to capture? Are they all of a kind, or are there different sorts of early films? Do the shorts you saw seem to support the arguments Ross makes or conflict with them? You don’t have to address all of these questions in your posts.
8 thoughts on “Emergence of Cinema”
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The short films vary in what they portray, but in agreement with other students they are all short snippets of comedy, random daily acts, absurdity, and all of them, with the exception of “Searching Ruins”, have a serious tone to them. With the motion picture being a new concept, I think that film directors were experimenting with movie ideas. There are films that captivate the audience with their humor and simplicity. Also, “The Trapeze Disrobing Act” takes advantage of the motion picture medium to trick the audience and almost present a magic show with clothes appearing off a the woman and reappearing back on the woman. Also, “Kiss Me” uses some trickery with an optical allusion. There is a woman who appears to be on an advertisement, but is actually a real woman standing behind a wall with other advertisements and people passing by are wrought with confusion as they attempt to figure out whether it is a real person or not. So these videos not only are playing tricks on the audience, but the portray actors who seemed to be tricked as well. All of these videos are short and the quality is grainy, obviously far inferior to video quality today, but at the same time some of them share the same nonsensical quality that a lot of youtube videos posses in today’s society, providing the viewer with a cheap laugh.
correction on the third line
with the exception of “Searching Ruins,” **do not have a serious tone to them.
While no argument has to be made about the seriousness and overall moral meaning of these videos, the entertainment factor that they present can be seen on all fronts. No matter who you were or what gender you were, everybody that went to see these would have 100% found them compelling. In my eyes, the sheer ridiculous of them is what makes them hilarious. An “athlete” moving around a wand in a variety of directions is just comical because of how pointless it is. I agree with Jake in that these film makers literally filmed anything and everything, and it simply didnt matter because the general public was going to like them anyways. Living in the 21st century now it is funny to think about how far we have come in the technological and film making world, however at this time these films were basically ground breaking and really caught the audience’s eye, regardless about their content.
After watching all of these short films, I was left thinking of vaudeville in the sense that it is a variety cinema. All of the films were very different from one another depicting anything from a stage performance to a realistic scene like the “New York Dumping Wharf.” With the creation of cameras occurring right around the turn of the century, filmmakers were simply using cameras to show what they were capable of doing with them. In “Uncle Josh” He splices in a shot of a train coming towards the theatre and the actor needs to jump off stage. As primitive as this may seem to us, in a time when people were first seeing moving photography, this was spectacular. These shows were largely seen by working class audiences and families like Ross says because these are the people who are looking for a quick and easy escape from everyday life. They would go to these Nickelodeons that were open pretty much all day and be able to watch as many of these short films depicting everyday life or “magical” experiences.
The selection of short films we viewed helped solidify Ross’s argument of why anyone, regardless of sex or origin, could be entertained for a nickel: these motion pictures were short, varying in subject and cast, and provided a moment of immersion and exploration into film. There was little by way of class segregation in the films, appealing to all and playing continuously all day to attract large amounts of people. If what Ross argues is true, then the advent of film as a mid-late vaudeville phenomena may have served to remove some of the lowbrow/highbrow distinction in the theatre. Of course Shakespeare will still be Shakespeare and Burlesque Burlesque, however in the early variety films there seems to be less of a class distinction in the subject ans performance of screenings.
I want to support Ross’s argument as to how the early films attracted the working class , and how their eventual transformation to longer features reworked the stigma of film to new audiences.
The short films reminded me a lot of what I would have expected to see in a Vaudeville performance – in the sense that many Vaudeville shows were shows that people could have entered into and exited out of whenever they wanted. There was no long captivating act to which an audience needed a long amount of time to comprehend. For example, Princess Rajah’s Dance was an act so temporary that a person walking into the theater in the middle of it would not be disappointed since another act would follow immediately after. After watching the clip on the “Athlete with Wand” and “Boxing Cats”, I realized that these short films were not anything that anyone would be distressed to have missed. And as Ross mentioned, these early film theaters were often open continuously through the day and it would make sense for the films to not require much development, since the people who walk into them halfway would not enjoy them as much as the people who had already been there. The working class would often come from different work shifts, so an continuous viewing opportunity would be favored over a strict start-end schedule. In this light, I feel as if these early film theaters were Vaudeville performances – but on a screen and much cheaper.
Another thing I noticed is that these films were very random and more demonstrative than designed. I mean this in the sense that it was as if the film producers were simply showing to us what could be done on screen – but not actually creating anything substantial. This is most easily seen in the “Trapeze Disrobing Act”, where we get to witness many “special effects” of film, but we do not get a true story. The film makers were dealing the cards to the audience, but they have not started playing yet. It would be this way until the late 1910s, as Ross mentioned, when the short films gave way to longer “feature films”. I would say this was akin to someone getting a new camera and simply playing around with it at first – not truly appreciating what could be done with it. By the late 1910s, I would argue that the basics have finally been covered and filmmakers began to create.
So in the sense of those 2 points, the short films are all connected because they are so disjointed. Some provided a slight shock of excitement, and some were repetitive motions, but all of them did not require much concentration. These short films allowed people (working class) to interact during the viewing as they wouldn’t miss much anyway. People were able to watch, get tired, and go home to sleep. But as longer films started to develop, the nature of film and the audiences themselves changed. In the earlier days of film, the mindless films would allow the working class to bathe in a pool of diffusive thoughts. But as films got longer, it is logical that the crowd would hush up to understand the film. Ross would be correct to argue that when this happened, the “new” and “old” middle class began to frequent films, as they no longer represented places of working class chatter and “contamination”.
After watching each of these short films, it has come to my realization that the film makers filmed anything that came to mind. There is no re-occurring theme between any of these shorts and each of them hold their own pointless meaning. A 30 second clip of a slow motion sneeze can by no means have any meaning or reasoning behind filming that other than pure instinct. Just as Anna mentioned, families and working class citizens loved to attend movie theater’s for several reasons, and as terrible as the clips were, they probably enjoyed them. It gave them a chance to get away from their jobs and stress of life, and offered a moment of relaxation.
The example short films all seemed to have varying themes, but all have the same nature. All of them are comical, silly, and pointless. They are obviously meant as a form of entertainment and not as a way of teaching a moral lesson. Ross mentions that many of the people attending nickelodeons and movie theaters were working class citizens, families, and young single men and women, who all sought the movies theater as a place to escape from everyday life and have fun. The humorous, meaningless films encouraged viewers to relax and forget about the worries they faced day to day.They didn’t require much concentration and appealed to everyone.