Task 1a
History of Film Editing
Eadweard Muybridge placed 12 separate cameras along a straight horse track to take photos at the time the horse ran by. This way each different stage of the horse's movement was captured, and it was only after viewing the images as individuals that Edweard had the notion of viewing them very quickly one after the other. Thus, 'Stop-Motion' came to be.
Inspired version
frames.docx | |
File Size: | 1011 kb |
File Type: | docx |
This stop-motion picture is done in the style of Muybridge's horse experiment:
- The images were taken individually on a digital camera and converted to black and white.
- Just as with Muybridge, there is almost exactly the same content in each image, with only one part of it changing slightly. In this case the focus point is me moving - in Muybridge's experiment it was the horse's leg positions etc.
- It is dissimilar to Muybridge's experiment in that my photos were taken on the same camera, whereas Muyridge placed 12 separate cameras along the horse's 'track' to take photos at the time the horse ran by. Also Muybridge would of course have only been able to use film cameras.
- The images were taken individually on a digital camera and converted to black and white.
- Just as with Muybridge, there is almost exactly the same content in each image, with only one part of it changing slightly. In this case the focus point is me moving - in Muybridge's experiment it was the horse's leg positions etc.
- It is dissimilar to Muybridge's experiment in that my photos were taken on the same camera, whereas Muyridge placed 12 separate cameras along the horse's 'track' to take photos at the time the horse ran by. Also Muybridge would of course have only been able to use film cameras.
Task 1b
Lumière Brothers
Auguste and Louis Lumière
came from Lyon in France where they worked in their father's photographic
factory. In 1894, they saw Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope
in Paris, and decided to design a camera of their own. By February of the next
year they had produced a working model of their ciné-camera, which they called
a Cinématographe. The machine was in
fact not only a camera but could be used, together with a magic lantern, to
project the films the brothers had taken.
The films produced by the Lumières' camera tended to be close to 45 seconds long. Each film was taken in one shot, with the camera kept on a fixed tripod with a set angle the whole time. The first film ever shown to an audience was called “Exiting The Factory” and featured a frontal shot of some workers leaving a factory in Lyon. This showing was also the first time that an audience had seen moving pictures projected on to a screen; Edison's Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer at the top of the device, rather than as a projected image.
In addition to “Exiting The Factory,” the brothers produced several other films such as “Baby's Breakfast,” “Jumping On The Blanket,” “Fishing For Goldfish” and “The Gardener,” which was also known as “The Sprinkler Sprinkled”. The latter was the first ‘sketch’ ever created. Some of these films feature in the video below and by watching them it becomes apparent that, even though it was the very beginning of Moving Image, the brothers had knowledge of how shots should be taken. “Exiting The Factory” is for example taken with a long shot to encompass as much of the setting as possible, while “Baby’s Lunch” is a medium shot in order for the audience to view the smaller details on a more personal level.
The first public screening of “Exiting The Factory” was shown on 28th December 1895 in Paris. This event is often taken to mark the birth of the cinema, although Edison and even Louis Le Prince and Wordsworth Donisthorpe – both inventors and pioneers of cinematography of the same era - had photographed moving pictures before then. After the screening, the brothers began to produce their camera on a commercial scale and it was soon in demand across the world. The age of the cinema had begun.
And did you know? Rather appropriately, ‘lumière’ translates as ‘light’ in English. Perhaps it was meant to be.
The films produced by the Lumières' camera tended to be close to 45 seconds long. Each film was taken in one shot, with the camera kept on a fixed tripod with a set angle the whole time. The first film ever shown to an audience was called “Exiting The Factory” and featured a frontal shot of some workers leaving a factory in Lyon. This showing was also the first time that an audience had seen moving pictures projected on to a screen; Edison's Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer at the top of the device, rather than as a projected image.
In addition to “Exiting The Factory,” the brothers produced several other films such as “Baby's Breakfast,” “Jumping On The Blanket,” “Fishing For Goldfish” and “The Gardener,” which was also known as “The Sprinkler Sprinkled”. The latter was the first ‘sketch’ ever created. Some of these films feature in the video below and by watching them it becomes apparent that, even though it was the very beginning of Moving Image, the brothers had knowledge of how shots should be taken. “Exiting The Factory” is for example taken with a long shot to encompass as much of the setting as possible, while “Baby’s Lunch” is a medium shot in order for the audience to view the smaller details on a more personal level.
The first public screening of “Exiting The Factory” was shown on 28th December 1895 in Paris. This event is often taken to mark the birth of the cinema, although Edison and even Louis Le Prince and Wordsworth Donisthorpe – both inventors and pioneers of cinematography of the same era - had photographed moving pictures before then. After the screening, the brothers began to produce their camera on a commercial scale and it was soon in demand across the world. The age of the cinema had begun.
And did you know? Rather appropriately, ‘lumière’ translates as ‘light’ in English. Perhaps it was meant to be.
Task 1c
Kuleshov effect
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who developed a famous theory which has been dubbed The Kuleshov Effect. This is the method of presenting images in a certain order, with the intent of altering the perception of the viewer. An image of a person's expressionless face is taken and traditionally used three times (although this number is flexible) in a sequence of images. The image of the face is shown and, afterward, an image of something else entirely. Then the image of the face, then yet another different image and so on. The connection we make subconsciously is that the face can see this second image - it is looking at it, and therefore is feeling and expressing the emotion one would expect to feel when looking at the second image. Imagine examples of this: if the second image were a field of beautiful flowers, we would expect happiness. If the second image were a holocaustic scene, sadness would be the emotion. A femme fatale = lust etc. Each time the next image was displayed, we would think back to the image of the face and believe in our minds that it had been expressing the emotion we link to the second image - and yet the face had never changed because the same image of the face had been used each time. The way we order and place images has great effect on our understanding of the storyline. This is the most famous example of the Kuleshov effect: