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

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 watch them. As my week 7's film analysis, because of the early time period of film, the film is so simply about story and cinema language. All the little moves in cinema language are pure to analyze and study. Compare to nowadays the films, there are always so many things going on at the same time, which might lead to us already losing the first original goal of watching film. Are we go to see film for the stories, or the special effects, or the stars, or something else? I am not saying the film these days are bad, but the film in the past, the beginning of cinema time contain some more pure and important values when people first start using film as a form to express their emotions and to tell the story. By enjoying all those films, it helps me to make my own improvisation and innovation in the future when I try to make film.

A final thought, which I also mentioned in the last zoom meeting, I haven't learn enough about film history and I am so ready to take Film History II which is sound cinema in the future now! Here you go me rapping in Chinese for the end of the term. Lyrics is on SoundCloud! (I wrote 2 lines about film history!)





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