FTV 6A: History of the American Motion Picture

America

Porous construct whose boundaries have changed with colonial expansion, including in the first decade of cinema.

History

The study of the past using primary and secondary sources.

Primary Source

Record created in the past that has survived into the present

Secondary Source

Scholarly account that brings together a number of primary sources to create an interpretation or account of the past.

Historiography

The study of the practice and construction of history.

What might we consider as we study historiography?

Sources, Method, Interpretation

Film

A set of images typically on celluloid shown in rapid succession to be viewed, a cimena for all the people.

Urbanization

Massive urban growth through migration and immigration, shift in perception and sense of space and time.

Progressive Era: Age of Reform

A period of social activism and political reform in the United States from the 1890s to the 1920s, aimed at addressing issues caused by industrialization, urbanization, and corruption.

Modernity

Fixing of time and space through industrial regimentation.

Off-time: Mechanized Amusements

Forms of entertainment that utilize machinery and technology, such as amusement parks and arcade games, popularized in the early 20th century.

Victorian Era to Modernity and the Progressive Era

The Victorian Era, characterized by strict social mores and industrial progress, laid the groundwork for the transformative changes of Modernity and the Progressive Era, shifting societal norms and attitudes.

Accelerated Motion

Railways, streetcars, subways.

The Flaneur/Flaneuse and Flaneurie

Urban watcher who looks with detachment but deep descriptive powers on the city streets, a person of leisure or exercising leisure. A fascinated but detached narrator of the city and its spectacles of shock and surprise.

Arcades

Grew in popularity in turn of the century Paris and became a new way to experience vision, urban street life, the predominance of both gas lights and the illumination from above with the shop windows provided a new mode of spectatorship.

Diorama

A 19th century precinematic technology designed for a mobile viewer to experience three dimensional verisimilitude by watching a scene unfold from room to room.

Zoetrope

A 19th century optical toy consisting of a cylinder with a series of pictures on the inner surface that, when viewed through slits with the cylinder rotating, given an impression of continuous motion, Roots back 5000 years old to Iran and 4th century China.

Kinetoscope

Exhibited on Broadway in NYC in 1894, considered the first commercially viable picture technology. Projected within the wooden box and only 1 person could watch at a time. Images were taken on a Kinetograph, a camera for capturing which was highly reliant on the introduction of celluloid.

Vitascope

An early motion picture projector developed in 1895, which allowed filmmakers to project films onto a screen for larger audiences, was the first massively successful film projection technology in the US.

Intermediality

Crossing of two or more media forms to create added value in storytelling, art, or performance, enhancing the viewer's experience through the integration of different expressions.

The Cake Walk

A social dance that originated among African American communities in the late 19th century, characterized by its lively rhythms and strutting style. It became popular in vaudeville and early cinema as a form of entertainment.

Vaudeville

David Krasner considers the cakewalk as “double-voiced parody”: a hybrid of African dances and satiric gestures aimed at whites.

Aida Overton Walker

Choreographer and one of the premiere vaudeville performers of the early 20th century.

Cinema of Attractions

Tom Gunning argues that film spectators before 1906, when narrative/fiction films were more fully developed, were essentially different than spectators in the area dominated by actualies. They were captivated by the novelty of moving images and spectacles.

Production

The process of conceiving of, scripting, shooting and editing a film.

Distrubution

The profess of selling or tenting films so they can reach an audience.

Exhibition

The renting or buying of film prints to show an audience in a theater or other venue.

Exhibition

Final stage of the film industry, where films are presented to the public through screenings in theaters, festivals, or other venues.

The Nickelodeon Boom

The period in 1905-1910 when small theaters showed 1-2 reel films films for a nickel, leading to the popularization of motion pictures and the growth of the film industry.

Famous Nickelodeon shut down

Audience, the structures themselves, history of fires.

Black Maria

Considered the first film studio, established in 1893 by Thomas Edison in East Orange, NJ.

Film Genre

A way to categorize a film by type, one shared and recognized by audiences, critics, and filmmakers.

Film Cycles

A group of films on a given theme that filmmakers viewed to be exciting to audiences and potential money makers at a given time and came out in rapid sucession.

Actualities

A name for nonfiction films, usually lasting no more than one to two minutes, showing unedited, unstructured footage of real events, places, people, or things. News, the predecessor of documentaries, were popular forms of entertainment from the early 1890s until around 1908.

Reenactments

Documented key moments, events or scenes from history by re-enacting them before the camera.

Trick Films

Films in which rudimentary special effects are used to create an illusion for the spectator.

Chase Films

A genre of films characterized by intense “chase” sequences, often featuring action and suspense as a central theme. The character moves from scene to scene.

May Irvin Kiss

A film featuring a comic kiss scenario popular in silent cinema, showcasing humor and romance.

Dickson Sound Experiment (Edison, 1895)

An early film experiment by Thomas Edison that aimed to synchronize sound with motion pictures, demonstrating the potential for audio in cinema. Shows two men dancing naturally together, queer visibility. Made for the Kinetophone.

Self-Reflexivity

When the cinema plays itself, when a film shows on screen the cinema or one of its stages.

Early Film Narratives: The Gay Shoe Clerk

The film depicts a risqué comic encounter between a clerk and his female customer while she is trying on shoes.

Media Censorship

The alteration banning or controlling of conditions of production so that certain material, deemed controversial, will not come into broad public view. Designed to repress material plotted or designed for mass dissemination.

Censorship’s Results

Not linear, refractions, point of deflection, modifying principle, operates in both directions at one, translation.

Regulators’ Concerns About Early Cinema

Fire safety and the safety of women patrons, the morality of films.

The Mutual Decision

Supreme Court Decision of 1915 which branded film “a business, pure and simple.” Significantly the first time a major communications medium failed the bar of first amendment protections. Responding largely to shifts that took place in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Jack Johnson and Fight Film Censorship

A series of censorship actions aimed at fight films featuring Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight boxing champion. This reflected broader societal attitudes toward race and gender in early cinema.

Censorship Laws after Jack Johnson Fight

Legislation introduced to regulate and restrict film content in response to concerns over violence and racial representations.

Censorship Stemming from Jack Johnson Fight Films

Local censorship (Fort Worth, Texas, South Dakota, Memphis), Federal censorship (Sims Act became a Federal law in 1915), restriction placed on Jack Johnson himself, sentenced under the Mann Act.

Narrative as Censorship: The Suspense Melodrama

Establishment of a Stable Situation (usually a happy family or couple), situation disrupted by an outside force (typically evil characters or some other threat) that creates dis-equilibrium, the disruption brings about some counter-action to reestablish stability, resolution of the story usually with a change (bad guy never wins).

Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC)

Pathe, the French film company was the strongest film company in the world in the early aughts (1900-1908). Less than a decade later Pathe lost hold of the American market. MPPC was known as the “Movie Trust”. It was essentially an organization of film producers designed to vertically integrate film production, defend patents on technology and stifle independent production.

Patent

Grants exclusive rights to an invention to the inventor.

Vertical Integration

When one company controls multiple and separate parts of a supply train, supplying, distributing, and producing its own products.

MPPC: Censoring The Red Rooster

American film companies sought to stifle Pathe. They involved them in patent suits and waged a discursive campaign in the press claiming Pathe’s films were inferior and morally dangerous because they were French, capitalized on Xenophobia.

End of the MPPC

By 1912, the MPPC became engulfed in legal issues and ultimately failed to win in an anti-trust law suit. By 1917, they disbanded.

James Young Deer

Early filmmaker who identified as indigenous and descended from the “Moors of Delaware”, a group of Black, white, and indigenous Nanticoke people. He married wife Lillian St. Cyr in 1903 and joined the Winnebago tribe of which she was a member.

Reception

The documented reaction or response of filmgoers to a particular film or set of films.

Spectatorship

Examines often in theoretical terms. The social, idealogical, and viewing positions that the camera or filmmakers offer viewers and how groups of viewers use these signs to create a distinct mode of viewing.

Early Film Stardom and Fan Magazines

Early Film stars got closer attention in the emerging fan magazines, many of which published under industry supervision.

Scrapbook as Early Film Technology

Early film spectators used images of their favorite stars to generate their own fan texts.

Benshi

Provided live commentary on the film in darkened theater. They served to narrate and enhance the viewing experience, often translating dialogue and adding context for the audience.

Panorama

Visual interface where we go down a dark hallway, looking at a 360 degree landscape.

Oath of The Sword

Re-discovered in an archive by scholar Denise Khor in 2016, made by the Japanese American Film company which was the “first company in America to be owned, controlled, and operated by Japanese."

Curse of Quon Gwon

Earliest example of Chinese American filmmaking today made by director and producer Marion Wong.

Moving Picture World

An important trade magazine for the motion picture industry, it was influential in the early 20th century for filmmakers and exhibitors.

Within Our Gates

Film created as a response to the lynching crisis of the early 0th century and to The Birth of a Nation.

Charlie Chaplin

British born comedy actor, filmmaker, and producer, major inventor of “slapstick.”

Slapstick

Brand of physical comedy with often exaggerated action, also descended from the vauderville stage.

Film Lanaguage

A set of conventions that structure film’s system of communication.

Low Angle

Camera is positioned below the subject's eye level, looking up, making the subject appear larger.

Straight-on Angle

When the camera is positioned directly in front of and level with the subject.

High Angle

Places the camera above the subject, looking down to make them seem small.

Oblique Angle

Where the camera is tilted on its axis, making the horizon line appear slanted to create psychological unease.

Crane Shot

Change in framing accomplished by having the camera above the ground and moving through the air in any direction.

Extreme Close-up

A framing technique that zooms in on a tiny detail of the subject, such as an eye or a specific small object.

Close-up

A shot that captures the subject from the neck up, emphasizing facial expressions and emotion.

Medium Close-up

A framing that shows the subject from the chest up.

Medium Shot

A framing that shows the subject from the waist up.

Medium Long Shot

A framing that shows the subject from the knees up.

Long Shot

A framing where the subject's entire body is visible within the environment.

Extreme Long Shot

A shot where the subject appears very small relative to the sprawling landscape or surrounding environment.

Montage

Editing or cutting a film, joining of two non-contiguous strips of film into a splice.

Continiuity Editing

Regularized structure of shots and cuts designed to maximize film’s narrative legibility.

Shot-Reverse shot

Conversation between two characters is shown by cutting between shots of each character, often from an over-the-shoulder angle, creating a sense of direct interaction.

Eye-line match

Editing technique where a character looks at something off-screen, followed by a cut to what they are looking at.

Jump Cut

Editing technique where a single shot is split, the middle portion removed, and the two ends joined, causing the subject to seemingly "jump" in time or space.

Parallel Editing/Cross-cutting

When two events occurring simultaneously but in different places are joined together by editing.

Mise-En-Scene

Everything placed within a scene in theater or film, encompassing the arrangement of actors, props, sets, costumes, makeup, and lighting to visually tell a story or convey meaning.

Frame

A single still image from a motion picture.

Shot

Single, continuous take by one camera.

The Long Take

A shot that continues for an unusually long period of time before the transition to the next shot by means of a cut.

Subjective Shot

Places the audience directly into a character's perspective, making them experience the scene through that character's eyes.

Direct Address

A technique where a character looks or speaks directly to the audience.

Establishing Shot

Distant framing that illustrates the spatial relations along important figures, objects and settings. Provides a view of all the space in which the action is about to occur.

Panning

Camera mimics the action of turning one’s head. When the angle of vision shifts horizontally, as if the camera is “looking” from left to right.

Tracking Shot

Rather than just moving its head, the camera “walks.” When the camera actually moves from left to right or backward or forward.

Zoom

When the focal length of camera lens increases to make the object in front of the camera seem bigger.

Deep Focus

Where the foreground, middleground, and background are all in sharp focus, creating a vast depth of field.

Two Shot

A shot with two figures in it.

Mise-En-Abyme

When one space gives way to another in a seemingly infinite succession.

Backlighting

Places a light source behind the subject, creating a luminous outline.