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.
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.
ReplyDeleteIn 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.