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Response to "The Invention of Cinema and the Early Years"

I was struck throughout the reading by the influence both of science on film, and of film on science.  It's so strange to me to think that, before the late 19th century, no biologist knew exactly what the gait of a galloping horse looked like.  The biomechanics of anything too fast for the human eye could only be guessed at. The scientific origins of film mirror that of many forms of entertainment.  Social media was made possible by computer scientists whose only goal was inter-system communication. In the span of just 20 years, that spawned the internet and a massive information revolution. 

The ability to record motion and preserve one set of moving images to be viewed repeatedly was as revolutionary to acting as the phonograph and audio recording was to music.  We laugh now at early screen acting, but we must remember that prior to the advent of film, there was no objective way to compare performances or self evaluate. 

It also fascinates me that people still react very much the same way to seeing themselves on video today as they did during the early 20th century.  There is a fascination with seeing an outsider's view of ones self that, despite the ubiquity of smartphone cameras, has not disappeared. 

Overall, the similarities struck me more than the differences.  It's fascinating how similar people are over centuries. 

The Invention of Cinema

The thing that I find most interesting about the invention of cinema is that it started off with a fascination about movement, and a lot of that is visible in the first little films that were created. Melies' films have movement all over the screen, just for the sake of movement. Edison's shorts were people dancing and boxing and the like, so the novelty of seeing things move that weren't really there was a huge driving force behind developing the technology.

I'm also thinking about how interesting the kinetoscope was, and then the movement to projection. Single viewer on a personal screen versus lots of people watching together. The single viewer method didn't really come back around until youtube and computers, and now it's everywhere, Netflix on Cell phones, that kind of thing. Personal media versus group media. I don't really know where my thoughts are going with that but it definitely stuck out to me.

The Invention and Early Years of the Cinema 1880s-1904, was a very interesting chapter which explained the early beginnings of modern day cinema. I found many parts of this chapter intriguing, however, what I read that stood out to me most was the segment Preconditions For Motion Pictures: which provided readers with five preconditions for motion pictures, another segment that stood out to me was the Early Filmmaking Segment: where the writer was able to give readers a glimpse into how the world was shaping around the time cinema became relevant. 

In the segment Preconditions For Motion Pictures, the writer broke down, what he believed were five important key/requirements needed to be met before cinema was invented. These five key requirements were thoroughly outlined in the chapter (page 14-15). All of these five key requirements were very interesting, however, number three was particularly interesting to me as it discussed how exposure time was historically much to slow to make motion picture possible ( 8hours was the first cameras exposure time). Questions came to my mind, such as: What is exposure time had not increased significantly, due to restrictions in technology? How much would of that changed the world that our ancestors would have lived in?


The Early Filmmaking Segment provided readers with a glimpse into the environment of Victorian leisure and how extravagant of a time it was. It seems from reading this segment that this era truly enabled the growth of entertainment, and possibly sped up the growth and use of cinema. Overall, reading this chapter enabled me to view the history of cinema in a different light and raised serval questions in my mind as to what would the world be today if certain inventions did not take place, or if certain era's did not exist.

Reading Response 1

Bordwell's The Invention of Cinema provided a great deal of background pertaining to the history and technological development of modern cinema, but what I found most fascinating is how easily traceable film's lineage can be. Film is a very young art form, which developed incredibly quickly due to how responsive humans are to image-based media as well as something that previously could only be accomplished in live performance: movement. Audiences were so drawn to the moving pictures that soon there was a capitalistic influence pushing the medium forward as well, as hungry investors soon joined the less-funded pioneer/inventors of early film.

Cinema's beginnings boil down to what would proliferate throughout the medium's lifespan: illusion. There isn't a single aspect of film that cannot be attributed to illusion: scenery, lighting, makeup, costumes, even acting - all are illusions for a replicable exposure of light upon a lens. What would ultimately decide a film's "look" more than anything were the limitations placed upon it by the technology/resources available to the filmmaker. Once a filmmaker finds a technique/technology that they really enjoy, that becomes incredibly key in the style, among other cinematographic elements.

The special effects from the time are much more impressive to me than any Michael Bay explosion. Having to actually manipulate the images frame by frame is much more difficult to do than simply drag something into AfterEffects. Melies's magic was never meant for the stage, it was meant for the editing room, where he could manipulate time and space to create surprises that audiences had never seen before. Physical film has an aspect of craft that comes from its tangibility and lineage that digital will never quite match, regardless of how many new lens attachments are made.