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- Media Technologies: Motion Pictures
- Persistence of Vision
- optical illusion
- about 16 frames per second
- optical toys, 19th century
- thaumatrope
- zoetrope
- phenakistoscope
- Magic Lantern Slide Shows
- 17th and 18th century device
- light projector
- hand-painted sheets of glass
- illustrated public lectures
- Camera Obscura
- “dark chamber”
- ancient device
- basis for all photography
- Photochemical Photography
- developed in 1830s
- mechanized photography through light-sensitive materials
- Chronophotographic Gun
- Étienne-Jules Marey
- photographic rifle
- loaded with photosensitive film
- shot multiple exposures
- Stop Motion Photography
- Eadweard Muybridge
- photographer
- animal locomotion
- Leland Stanford
- “do all four of a horses’ feet leave the ground in full gallop?”
- contracted Muybridge to study
- Zoopraxiscope
- Muybridge, 1879
- motion picture projector
- rotating glass disks
- rapid succession
- illusion of movement
- Motion Studies
- Muybridge continued his studies
- recorded various subjects in motion
- recorded many nude persons, including himself…
- Celluloid
- nitrate cellulose and camphor
- photographic plates
- billiard balls
- Hannibal Goodwin, 1887
- replaced plates
- flexible material
- ideal for roll film
- Roll Film
- George Eastman
- Kodak camera, 1888
- roll film in a box
- sued by Goodwin’s estate
- Combined by Thomas Edison
- persistence of vision/phi phenomenon
- camera obscura
- daguerrotype
- chronophotograph
- zoopraxiscope
- celluloid
- roll film
- Kinetograph
- Thomas Edison and WKL Dickson
- motion picture camera
- “for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear”
- filed caveat, 1888
- completed, 1891
- Kinetograph films
- motion picture experiments
- recorded in Edison’s laboratory
- attempted synchronized sound
- produced dozens of motion films
- Kinetoscope
- peephole device
- Edison, 1894
- viewer for films recorded on kinetograph
- Phonographic Parlors
- using Edison’s phonograph, 1877
- first opened in 1889
- popular throughout 1890s
- listen to a recorded “selection” for one nickel
- Kinetoscope Parlors
- using Edison’s kinetoscope, 1894
- first opened in April 1894
- Holland Brothers, Broadway at 27th St
- ten kinetoscopes
- 30–60–second films
- 25¢ for five films
- 50¢ for all ten films
- Lumière Brothers
- Auguste and Louis Lumière
- manufacturers of photographic plates
- began experiments with motion pictures,1892
- Cinématographe
- acquired patent from Léon Bouly, 1892
- dual-function motion picture device
- allowed for public screenings of motion pictures
- Grand Café Screenings
- December 28, 1895
- first public screening of motion pictures
- first admission charge for motion pictures: one franc
- ten films screened in succession
- each less than a minute in length
- Vitascope
- Phantascope
- electric-light motion picture projector
- Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat, Washington, DC
- Edison acquired Phantascope, 1895
- renamed it Vitascope
- first public exhibition, 1896
- Latham Loop
- Latham brothers
- Otway, Woodville, Grey
- Kinetoscope Exhibition Company
- loop to relieve film tension
- allowed for longer (heavier) films
- patent acquired by American Mutoscope and Biograph
- start a patent war between AMB and Edison
- Nickelodeon Theaters
- storefront theaters devoted to motion pictures
- emerged around 1905
- located in urban commercial districts
- entertainment for working class and newly arrived immigrants
- Nickelodeon Films
- rotating program
- five films
- each about ten minutes long
- cost 5–10¢
- created insatiable demand for new films
- Moral Panics
- progressive fears
- people were at the theater not at church or school
- improper education of newly arrived immigrants
- conservative fears
- Jack Johnson and boxing films
- representation of vice in “white slavery films”
- Patent Pool
- Patent dispute between
- Edison Company
- American Mutoscope and Biograph, led by WKL Dickson
- Woodville’s “Latham loop”
- competition between Edison and Biograph companies
- Motion Picture Patents Company
- Edison formed a patent pool, 1908
- resolved Latham Loop dispute
- Edison and Biograph
- eight film companies
- Eastman Kodak
- film manufacturing cartel
- sued violators
- eliminated competition
- MPPC Standards
- production agreements
- one-reel film length
- anonymous actors
- responded to moral panics
- Fall of the MPPC
- Kodak leaves MPPC over profit-sharing, 1911
- U.S. government sues MPPC for unfair competition, 1912
- patent for Latham loop expires, 1913
- competition from independents
- The Birth of a Nation
- D.W. Griffith, 1915
- based on Thomas Dixon’s novel, The Clansman
- celebrated the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction
- protested against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons
- celebrated by President Woodrow Wilson
- revolutionary fast-paced editing to build dramatic tension
- The Blot
- Lois Weber and Phillip Smalley, 1921
- made several social problem films
- “genteel poverty:” college professor’s family
- the meager pay of a college professor is “a blot on the present day civilization"
- The Immigrant
- Charlie Chaplin, 1917
- comedy film about a family’s difficult journey across the Atlantic Ocean
- endeared himself to audiences who felt downtrodden
- Chaplin would form United Artists, 1919, to ensure creative freedom
- Battleship Potemkin
- Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR
- montage
- language and logic specific to cinema
- editing
- glorification of Russian Revolution, 1917
- Odessa Steps sequence
- faced scrutiny and persecution during Stalinist era
- Expressionism
- Germany film movement, circa 1920
- based on painting and theater
- shadows
- architecture as expression of characters and plot
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Weine, 1920
- Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, 1922
- adaption of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
- influenced Hollywood filmmaking
- movement would end with rise of Nazism in the late 1920s
- Sound and Motion Pictures
- attempted with Edison’s Kinetophone, 1895
- insurmountable challenges
- amplification
- synchronization
- little interest among majors
- all would be overcome in the 1920s
- Western Electric
- subsidiary of AT&T
- electronic sound
- motion picture
- sound-on-disk system
- strong amplification
- high fidelity
- Vitaphone
- Warner Brothers
- Western Electric sound-on-disk
- Vitagraph Studios
- Vitaphone Pictures
- The Jazz Singer
- first feature film with synchronized dialogue
- based on a play by Samson Raphaelson
- starred Al Jolson
- premiered New York, October 1927
- ushered “the talkie”
- Studio System
- 1930s–1950s
- factory system
- controlled stars and other personnel
- enforced “block booking” of films over independent theaters
- owned first-run movie theaters
- vertically integrated
- production
- distribution
- exhibition
- Big Five Studios
- Paramount
- Warner Brothers
- 20th Century-Fox
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Radio-Keith-Orpheum
- Golden Age of Hollywood
- stable genres
- comedies
- musicals
- cartoons
- horror films
- gangster films
- westerns
- dominance of studio system
- preferred form of entertainment
- Citizen Kane
- Orson Welles, 1941
- RKO Pictures
- Welles was given complete control over film
- loosely based on life of William Randolph Hearst
- Hearst stifled release and reception of film
- World War II Propaganda Films
- Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, 1935
- Fritz Hippler, The Eternal Jew, 1940
- Antifascist Filmmaking
- Charlie Chaplin, Great Dictator, 1940
- parody of Hitler: Adenoid Hinkle
- stood against fascism
- Three Stooges, You Nazi Spy, 1939
- Frank Capra, Why We Fight? series, 1942
- Mrs. Miniver, 1942
- Casablanca, 1942
- End of the Studio System
- suburbanization, post–1945
- HUAC and Hollywood Ten, 1947
- Paramount decision, 1948
- emergence of television, 1950s
- African Americans and Hollywood Film
- portrayed by white actors in blackface
- Watermelon Eating Contest, 1896
- Wedding of a Coon, 1907
- strong characters albeit stereotyped
- Paul Robeson in Emperor Jones, 1933
- Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind, 1939
- Lena Horne in Stormy Weather, 1943
- racial reconciliation
- Lilies of the Field, 1963
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967
- Post-Classical Era
- starting in the 1960s
- undermining of cultural hubris
- younger generational sensibities
- “artistic chaos”
- new social themes
- Rebel without a Cause, 1955
- Easy Rider, 1969
- Post-Classical Genres
- war movies
- westerns
- science fiction
- Blockbuster Era
- demise of the Hollywood studio system
- erosion of old distribution structure
- high-budget filmmaking
- expensive stars
- complex marketing campaigns
- visual effects
- Star Wars, 1977
- Jurassic Park, 1991
- Avatar, 2010
- Independent Filmmaking
- home video
- on-demand video platforms
- opened up new choices for content
- International Filmmaking
- new cinemas would emerge
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, China
- Lagaan, India
- Spirited Away, Japan
- Slumdog Millionaire, United Kingdom and India
- Film Distribution and Technology
- Sony Betamax, 1975
- Motion Picture Association of America suit against Sony, 1984
- peer-to-peer sharing networks on the Internet
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998
- Viacom and YouTube, 2006
- End of Mass Audience
- 1930s: 95 million Americans (75%) went to the movies every week
- competition from television, 1950s and 1960s
- competition from home video and video game systems, 1980s
- home video maintain industry profits
- new era of blockbusters
- popularity of digital distribution
- online streaming
- Netflix ending the era of “driving bits and bytes” around