Early Cinemas Existence and Its Connection with Science - Essay Example

Major Influences on the Evolution of Early Cinema Introduction Even though early cinema was largely inspired by the live stage- specifically the pictographic concept of the stage background, styles of actors, and irregular scenes- the shortness of early cinema made it neither crucial nor likely to fall back on the tools of the advanced pictographic stage. Furthermore, the evolution of cinematic tools in the preliminary fifteen years of the history of film—‘the adoption of a close camera position, creating a playing area quite unlike the theatrical stage, the deployment of deep staging within that area, and the development of devises such as intertitles and assemblage of scenes to tell relatively complex stories without dialogue’ (Brewster & Jacobs 1997, 170)—transformed early cinema. This paper discusses the primary influences on the evolution of early cinema. Evolution of Early Cinema Early cinema evolved rapidly. It had quickly transformed from being a simple innovation in 1895 to a strong industry in 1913. The earliest movies resembled moving photographs, hardly one minute in duration and usually composed of just one shot (Verhoeff 2006). Years later, by 1905 to be exact, they were frequently ten minutes in length and applied camera angles and scene transitions to narrate a story or demonstrate an issue. Afterward, in 1910, with the introduction of the original ‘feature-length’ movies, there slowly surfaced new guidelines for dealing with complicated stories (Nowell-Smith 1997). By this period as well, film production and showing had itself become a major industry. Early cinema is at times called ‘pre-Hollywood’ cinema. It has also been portrayed as pre-classical, in view of the influence that an integrated group of ‘classical’ narrative traditions has on world cinema since the 1920s (Nowell-Smith 1997). These names have to be applied with care, as they can mean that early cinema merely exists as a forerunner of Hollywood. In reality the common techniques of early cinema were never completely replaced by classical styles of Hollywood, even in the United States, and quite a few films continued being at least non-Hollywood in their styles or methods for decades to come (Abel & Altman 2001). However, according to Nowell-Smith (1997), it is still true that many of the main influences on the evolution of early cinema from 1906 or 1907 may be viewed as establishing the basis for what was to develop into Hollywood. The cinema, similar to other technical inventions, has no exact ‘birth’ and owes its emergence to nobody or to nothing. Indeed, one can find the major influences on early cinema in multiple sources as Italian trials with the camera obscura in the 16th century, a variety of optical models in the early 19th century, and various experiments with visual images like panoramas and dioramas (Brewster & Jacobs 1997). In the latter part of the 19th century, attempts to put uninterruptedly moving pictures on to a screen increased and capitalists/inventors, which are principal influences on the development of early cinema, in a number of nations introduced the ‘original’ moving images to the awed public (Nowell-Smith 1997, 13): William Friese-Greene in Britain; Max Skladanowsky in Germany; and Edison in the United States. These entrepreneurs/inventors made possible the following developments in early cinema (Nowell-Smith 1997, 13): … improvements in photographic development; the invention of celluloid, the first medium both durable and flexible enough to loop through a projector; and the application of precision engineering and instruments to projector design. With the emergence of the feature film in the early 1900s, the cinema further resembled plays in the form of stories they narrated- certainly, numerous, possibly most of them were inspired from both ancient and contemporary stage performances (Popple & Kember 2004). In this novel, lengthier type, the pictographic theatre became an influence once more, but the traditional processes of filmmaking were not easily left out for a pictorial documentation of stage plays (Popple & Kember 2004). The ‘classical Hollywood cinema’ of Kristin Thompson, Janet Staiger, and David Bordwell (Nowell-Smith 1997, 234) is largely influenced by Aristotelian plot with the objectives focused on the main characters- basically a hero/heroine gives him/herself an aim the effort for which, against outside barriers or the attempts of villains, takes the narrative from its start to its conclusion, whether that finale is the realization of the objective or some other reconciliation, tragic or joyful. As the appearance of the filmmaker or movie director shows, evolution in film plots usually required related adjustments in the production course. In general, until 1907, movie directors focused on the individual scene. During this time, the multi-shot movie surfaced as the standard instead of the exemption, with movies no longer handling the individual scene as an independent element of meaning but connecting one scene to another (Brewster & Jacobs 1997). Nevertheless, movie directors may have been employing a chain of shots to acquire and stress the climaxes of the action instead of the idea. In order to suit the ‘cinema of attractions’ the revision was aimed at improving visual delight (Brewster & Jacobs 1997) instead of polishing narrative growth. Throughout the early 1900s, as well, filmmakers tried cinematically breaking the pro-filmic episode’s space, mainly to boost the audiences’ visual enjoyment through a more direct shot of the scene instead of stressing particulars needed for narrative understanding. Nevertheless, the Edison catalogue enlightened exhibitors that the shot may appear at the start or the end of the movie (Abel & Altman 2001). Even shots that estimated the perspective of a character within the narrative, and which are currently linked to the embodiment of emotions and thoughts, were at the time more to give visual delight than narrative understanding. Magic lamps, original adaptations of slide projectors usually illuminated by kerosene lights, became a major influence on early cinema, for the use of magic lamps allowed the showing of moving images, which established prototypes for the cinematic depiction of space and time (Verhoeff 2006). Magic lamps used by visiting exhibitors normally had sophistical lever and pulley instruments to generate motion within specifically constructed slides. Lengthy slides dragged leisurely through the slide receptacle created the counterpart of a filmic pan. Two slide receptacles placed on the same lamp allowed the machinist to generate a dissolve by toggling quickly between slides (Verhoeff 2006). Lectures on magic lamps presented by visiting exhibitors like the American Burton Holmes and John Stoddard largely influence the train and travelogue cinema (Brewster & Jacobs 1997). Aside from copying the visual traditions of other media, movie directors based a large number of their films from narratives already familiar to the viewers. Edison promoted its Night before Christmas by claiming the movie ‘closely follows the time-honored Christmas legend by Clement Clarke Moore’ (Nowell-Smith 1997, 21). Vitagraph derived its Happy Hooligan franchise from an animated hobo character whose well known comic book appeared in a number of New York newspaper (Nowell-Smith 1997, 21). Large numbers of early cinemas showed synoptic renditions of quite complicated stories, their producers most probably relying on their viewers’ previous idea of the issue instead on cinematic traditions for the necessary storyline consistency (Nowell-Smith 1997, 21). The Epic of Napoleon narrates the life of Napoleon through a sequence of scenes based on popular historical events, such as the Moscow burning and the coronation, and stories but without any effort toward causal linear relationship of narrative expansion among its shots (Popple & Kember 2004). Similarly, multi-shot movies like Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed only the main points of these popular and widely staged melodramas, with scene links given not by editing techniques but by the idea of viewers of overlapping incidents (Abel & Altman 2001). Yet, the latter cinema seems to be one of the first to use title cards, or intertitles. These intertitles, summing up the images of the scene which followed, emerged simultaneously with the multi-shot movie, roughly 1903-04 (Nowell-Smith 1997), and appear to suggest that producers had the idea of the importance of internally based narrative consistency. Conclusions Appearing at the advent of the twentieth century, early cinema’s existence is indebted to technological works in optics and motion study. Early cinema would eventually reveal its connection with science when its capability for global commercial achievement became more evident, pushing its influence into the core of twentieth-century entertainment culture. References Abel, Richard & Rick Altman. The Sounds of Early Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001. Brewster, Ben & Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Popple, Simon & Joe Kember. Early Cinema: From Factory Gate to Dream Factory. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Verhoeff, Nanna. The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. Read More