1 )  "There exists today no means of influencing the masses more potent than the cinema"

2 )  "The cinema must and shall become the foremost cultural weapon of the proletariat."

3 )  "The cinema will only become an art when its raw materials are as cheap as pencil and paper."

1 )  Pope Pius XI

2 )  Vladimir Lenin

3 )  Jean Cocteau

• slide projector show using a lantern and painted glass
• contained movement, commercial, communal experience

• camera without film
• image; used to relearn representational skills

• one of the perfectionists of fixed image technology
• invented photography

• landscape photographer
• set up with still cameras, a way to capture a horse running and getting all feet in the air

• wanted to capture fast moving things with camera
• invented photographic gun

Persistence of Vision

10 - 12 fps

• mass production of the processes of invention

• small
• built to revolve resulting in a short distance from camera to subject

• continuous and intermittent drives (motors)
• loop
• sprocket holes, sprocketed/toothed wheels
• shutter and aperture
• aperture as a control of depth of field - mono, ortho and Pan chromatic film stocks
• electrically powered - big/heavy - subject must come to the camera

• only survivor of pure-photographic, movie-like experiences

Edwin S. Porter

WKL Dickinson

William Heisse

• hired by Thomas Edison to invent the movie camera which he took credit for

Kinetoscope - 1894

• subject must come to the immovable, bulky camera
• intended for solitary viewing experience
• theatrical vignettes
• tight framing- short distance from camera to subject
• flat, even lighting
• action composed/staged parallel to the picture plane as if we were viewing a stage play from a 3rd row center seat
• fixed camera; each film is one action, one shot

• kinteoscopes with sound

• an unbroken exposure/ a perspective on the action

• a self-contained dramatic unit, most commonly set in one place

• a thin ribbon of transparent, flexible material
• the alternation of images and black screens
• 3 parts - base, emulsion, silver salts

• portable, lightweight camera goes to subject
• with simple alterations, the same machine is a camera, a developing chamber or a projector
• product intended for public projection exhibition

• reportage, actualitie - ancestor of documentary film
• real-life subject matter
• tight or loose framing, depending on whether intimate/private (tight) or public (loose) subject
• 10 AM to 2 PM light, unless the public subject occurred ealier or later in which case the cameraman/operator had to adapt his imagery to the situation
• compositions/staging on diagonal for public, parallel to picture for private subjects
• fixed camera most of the time - rarely the camera was mounted on a movable platform (rickshaw, moving sidewalk, trolley car, etc.) - in which case the camera moves in photographing the subject
• each film is one action, one shot with the duration determined by the time the action took to play out
• framing device of doors opening, closing
• ethnography

• one of the most important of all filmmaking techniques
• the placement and movement of the characters in relation to each other, the decor and the camera during the shot

• Parisian (french) stage magician turned filmmaker
• began with long in duration one shot and went on to elaborate multiscene/shot films
• 'Trick' films - persistence of vision/stop motion photography.  Superimpositions, lap dissolves
• Decor
• Extremely elaborate staging and timing - highly trained, physically adept stage performers (from his magic theater troupe)
• entirely artificial, interior/theatrical spaces
• tongue in cheek, sophisticated awareness of the absurdity of the presentation - silly but wonderous
• unified, consistent style and tone

• british
• most technically sophisticated filmmaker before Griffith
• does not build on or develop a lexicon of filmmaking technique
• over the long haul, not story-oriented

• American - the first important American filmmaker
• innovative use of technique, combined with considerable common sensein ordering his visualizing his stories
• strong emphasis on narrative, on story-telling

• film by G.W. Griffith
• so big, makes feature films the thing to do