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[Week 9] The ending of the journey to silent cinema+ bonus my rap song

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Finally! The long but fast journey to the silent cinema era is going to end for this term. Even though my exploration to film will never end, but what I learn in this term is already enough to digest. We walked from pre cinema era, to the first screening of film, to the simple life recording footage film, to the pure cinema of attraction, to the first editing strategy of film, to all the development of narrative film and aesthetic value of all type of film... This short 9 weeks do include a lot of amazing and interesting and boring but still important(sorry) information of film and I loved it! What I found intrigues me the most is the fact that by seeing the growing up of cinema from such a close and careful way, all the little improvement and innovation in the first 40 years of cinema are all so clear to be noticed. I am the theory lover who rely on cool cinematic skills a lot when making film, thus it makes me become so sensitive to the cinematic skills in the old film when we watc...
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[Week 8] Some philosophical thoughts about stars (not necessary but interesting tho.)

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Charles Chaplin's films are well-known from the silent film era until nowadays. Is Chaplin a modest genius or a crude and vulgar social menace? Everyone is holding different opinions but either way, the fact that everyone is making comments on his star persona means he made huge influence on the world. The distinction between Chaplin's persona and real personality; the relationship between the work he presents and the audience who buy it; the matching of audiences' interests in Chaplin film company's decision and the real facts of him as a celebrity are all worth exploring. Amy quotes on the powerpoint that according to Charles Maland, the star system “provided a way for one company to differentiate its product from that of other companies” (198). Different company controls the representation of film, the style of their work, and the stars of their company. The needs of Chaplin's film is not simply expressing art feeling, but also fit what the public want to see i...
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[Week 7] Forum-Film Analysis

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Q: These films are both made during the silent film era but are almost 20 years apart and from very different cultural and historical contexts. How do these films use the tools of cinema specifically to tell their story? How do each of the films contribute to the development of narrative cinema? Made in Movie Heaven: The Best Match Cuts in History In week 8, both The Great Train Robbery (1903) film and  I was Born But...(1932) film are extremely attractive to me. Even though the time of publishing these two films has a 30 years interval, both of them used their own methods to developed and explored the expression of cinema language.  in  The Great Train Robbery (1903), the main powerful tool that is being used is professional acting, which is the simple and distinguishable action and interaction between people on screen. Even without on screen dialogue or flash clip with words on, the film allows audience to understand and digest the story plot effortl...
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[Week 6] Movie Palaces!

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The readings of this week are discussing about the development of multi reel film and the narrative quality of it. As I discuss in the last week's blog post. The growing up of the cinema system and the exploration of potential of the multi reel long film makes both the filmmaker and the audience curious about the narrative power of the media of cinema. In 1920s, with the historical background environment in Europe and America, some of the big questions that filmmakers bring to the audience on big screen are the discussion of woman rights and human rights in general. Actually, these are the topics we are still discussing about through the influential media of film these days. Since we already discussed a lot in this week's zoom meeting about gender and race, what am I going to talk about in this week's reflection will focus on another interesting point I found on the reading. The Movie Palaces ! "Legitimate theatre, rather than variety theatre, became the domin...
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[week 5] forum+reflection - what story attracts what type of spectator?

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Q: In the reading both Shelley Stamp and Richard Abel demonstrate the ways that spectatorship changes cinema and vice versa. How did series like Les Vampires and The Perils of Pauline challenge gender roles? How did they help establish narrative conventions and codes?  Unlike the beginning of the cinema which audiences and directors focus more on the "cinema of attraction" when they make films. With the better developing of technique and cinema language and expression. When directors like Louis J. Gasnier start to use cinema as a media to really tell a complicated story, the hook and suspension factors in the early narrative film become very important. First of all, what people want to see in “nickelodeon” must be something unique and interesting after more and more people figuring out how the media of film works. They will start aiming more intriguing screenplay rather than simple one shot films. As Ben Singer concludes in his article "manhattan nickelodeons...
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[Week 4] Cinema's Adaptability & Art's Adaptability

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LE BARBIER DE SEVILLE , Beaumarchais "This period offers us, as ,scholars, the opportunity to study an unprecedented and enthralling body of textual and contextual material with profound consequences for our contemporary media-saturated society" (24, S&J). The power of cinema is so strong because it is a flexible media which can reflect and mix many other form of media into one. Gunning says the early cinema is "exhibitionist cinema" which shows the media of film's attraction in its own way. Popple and Kember also mention the "exhibition strategies for film were remarkably sophisticated and diverse" (34, P&K). For me, the preliminary work in making film is really respectable. Any type of representation in the set up of mise-en-scene, if the director wants it, and be creative enough, they can all somehow make it work. These days, people rely too much on the post work and special effect on film, but relating to my personal low-budget film m...
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[Week 3] Reflection-The beginning of the editing

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As a film major kid who is really interesting in editing, The Silent Cinema Reader 's reading of this week truly intrigues to me. The writing style Lee Grieveson and Peter Karmer use to depict the beginning of the cinema is lively and engaging. The way they talk about audience's feeling when they first see the edited 3 shot film by Smith successfully brought me back to the time and seeing the early cinema from the old audience's eyes. By comparison, I found Simon Popple and Joe Kember's reading too tedious...I just don't have that much patience to keep my interest on that book... Since I talked a lot about view point in this week's forum already, I'd like to express some thoughts that I found in another theory G&K mention in their reading which is the Kuleshov Effect.  Kuleshov describes the "essence of film art" as "the artistic vehicle of the cinema lies in the composition, in the way filmed pieces succeed each other" (51, G...
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