FILM FORUM, PART 1: I was a theatre purist for many years. Oh, I watched movies selectively, but I generally felt film was a lower art form, and in those days I would never have opened up a forum to discuss film on a page dedicated to theatre. But I’ve changed… I can’t deny there are some absolutely fantastic, even life-changing films out there and some terrific directorial and acting jobs done in the past, present and, I trust, the future. So here I want to create a forum for talking about the history of film, about great films, directors, actors, whatever, sharing clips or insights from great films and just appreciating what has been done and is being done through this medium. The fact is that live theatre can give us immediacy and intimacy that film never can and film has the freedom to go anywhere, film anything and show us things that live theatre can’t. And of course if you have a message or talent that you want to have heard or noticed with the widest coverage possible, there is no better place to do that than on a screen. But before I launch into this I want to say for the record that, for me, the thrill of doing a play live onstage will never be matched by doing film, and the same goes for seeing a truly well-done live play. Nothing matches it. I am presently learning about the history of film myself, so I am happy when anyone who has information on the subject shares it. Probably most of us tend to think that moving films began toward the end of the 19th century, but in fact, from ancient times people have played around with ways to make images move and recreate the illusion of movement in pictures. The zoetrope was an attempt at just that. The zoetrope, Greek for ‘turning life,’ was a cylinder with sequential pictures on the inside of it, so one could look through a window and as the cylinder turned, it seemed the pictures were moving. It has been said that the Chinese had invented one as early as 100 BCE, but there is no prototype or detailed description of exactly what it was. The first we know of was popular in Europe by the 1830’s. Even earlier than this, as early as 1650, a projector called the Magic Lantern that could cast images on a wall had been developed, and by the very early 19th century Magic Lantern novelty shows had become popular, usually showing frightening images since the Gothic horror novel was a widely read and enjoyed genre at the time. Phantasmagoria was one of the most famous of these shows, because, using more than one projector, the producers created an illusion of movement. See the link below for a video of this. The very earliest true movie to be shown (not commercially) was when Leland Stanford, the governor of California in 1878, hired Eadweard Muybridge to help him settle a bet. Stanford contended that a horse at times ran with all four legs off the ground during a race while his betting opponent insisted a horse kept one leg on the ground at all times to keep its balance. Muybridge set up a trip-wire photographic technique to take pictures of a running horse in rapid succession on the Palo Alto racetrack. Muybridge played the film back on his invention, the Zoopraxiscope, and proved once and for all that a horse runs by taking all four legs off the ground regularly. This was the beginning of motion pictures. youtube/watch?v=S9hVVLOHdTI - Phantasmagoria youtube/watch?v=IEqccPhsqgA - galloping horse
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 13:14:04 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015