[Week 4] Cinema's Adaptability & Art's Adaptability

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 making process inside campus, I truly realize how important the preliminary works can be in order to help in the post.

Based on Gunning, the early filmmaker put more effort into creating visual attraction to audience rather than unfolding story. For my understanding, the early cinema is using the power of action rather than power of story to attract the viewers. The action in early cinema is something simpler and more directed and goal driven representation for the viewers to adapt and comprehend.

In last week's zoom meeting, I was questioning about why the early cinema of attraction is not story telling, it still contain a simple story, it is just more creative and astonishing. But after I read through Tom Gunning's reading, I found my own answer. He illustrates that "The act of display on which the cinema of attractions is founded presents itself as a temporal irruption rather than a temporal development. While every attraction world have a temporal unfolding of its own which might cause viewers to develop expectations, it will be secondary to the sudden appearance and disappearance of the view itself” (46, G&K). The story developing is just a transition tool for the audience to move from one attraction scene to another, the scene which audience will remember the most is still the "climax, surprise, shock or astonishment".

The ways of surprising people is limitless, creative mind can go to any where. I think the reason why the early cinema is so controversial is because the film is art, and art is hard to define. It could be anything you want, and people won't always know what art are they making. They can make art for no reason (at least not that moment in a conscious level). I bet some artist in the beginning of 1900s' don't even know the technique of finding a climax point to catch people's eyes. They just go with their feelings and realize it works!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Image
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...
Read more

[week 5] forum+reflection - what story attracts what type of spectator?

Image
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...
Read more

[Week 7] Forum-Film Analysis

Image
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...
Read more