CINE 201 Midterm

Cinema of attractions

• Term coined by film historian Tom Gunning to describe early films

• Prioritized visual spectacle directly to the audience over traditional stories

• Directly engaged viewers through the camera, breaking the fourth wall.

• Fronality (facing camera), viewer address (directly engaging audience), and spectacle (shocking or entertaining viewers, influenced by vaudeville).

• Ex: The Great Train Robbery mugshot and shooting audience

Black Maria

• World’s first motion picture studio, built for Edison

• Produced short films for Kinetoscope parlors

• Built on a rotating base to turn toward sunlight for filming

• Used for early film sets and shooting short videos

• Filmed actualities (short nonfiction films of everyday life)

Bioskop

• Developed by the Skladanowsky brothers

• One of the earliest motion-picture projectors

• Used for one of Europe's first public, paid movie screenings

Cinématographe

• Invented by the Lumière brothers

• All in one camera, film printer and projector

• Portable and could be operated by one person

Kinetograph

• Camera developed by Thomas Edison’s team

• Used to record moving images on film

• Used celluloid roll film with sprocket holes (perforations) to move the film smoothly through the camera without tearing or breaking

• Kinetoscope

• Viewing device developed by Edison’s team

• Allowed one person at a time to watch short films through a peephole

• Latham loop

• Developed by the Latham family's team

• Used a loop of slack film in a steady pace to  prevent tearing or breaking

• Allowed for longer films

• W.K.L. Dickson

• Edison’s lab assistant

• Helped develop the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope

• Left and founded a company called Biograph Company

  • A studio where many filmmakers got training and experience

• Lumière brothers

• invented the Cinematographe

• Held one of the first public, paid film screenings in 1895

• Known for early actualities (short nonfiction films of everyday life)

• Étienne-Jules Marey

• First to record continuous live movement with one camera

• Chronophotographic gun, capturing 12 photos per second

• Interested in study of human anatomy and organisms

• Eaeweard Muybridge

• Photographed a horse galloping using multiple cameras along a track

• Used 24 cameras to capture different stages of movement

• Proved that all four of a horse’s hooves leave the ground during a gallop

• A Trip to the Moon (1902)

• Leap of telling stories

• Stop motion special effects

• Pioneered transitions (fade in, fade out)

• Georges Méliès

• Obtained the British Animatograph (film projector) and founded Star Film Company

• Built a studio and produced around 500 films

dream palaces

• Large, luxurious movie theaters that replaced Nickelodeons

• Featured orchestra pits for live music

• Mark Strand Theater in NYC first opened in 1914 

block booking

• Distribution tactic where studios required theaters to buy packages of popular and less popular films together

Cross-cutting

• Editing between simultaneous actions

• Pioneered by English filmmakers of the Brighton School

Italian superspectacle

• Large-scale Italian films featuring epic stories, elaborate sets and large casts

• Ex: Cabiria (1914, Giovanni Pastrone)

Alice Guy-Blaché

• First woman to direct films

• Worked at Gaumont as director, screenwriter and head of production

• Founded Solax Studios  in the US

• Pioneered narrative storytelling and longer films

• The Spring Fairy (1906): Featured hand-painted color

• Her contributions were largely forgotten for decades

D.W. Griffith

• Began at Biograph as an actor and writer, then became a director

• Pioneered film editing techniques, including crosscutting, flashbacks and shot transitions

• Used editing to create dramatic and emotional impact (e.g., last-minute rescues)

• The Lonedale Operator (1911): Example of suspenseful crosscutting

• Left Biograph for Mutual, bringing actors and crew

The Birth of a Nation (1915):

• Groundbreaking, expensive Civil War epic

• Deeply racist, featuring blackface and glorifying the KKK

• Helped inspire the KKK's revival

Thomas Ince

• Worked at Inceville, Triangle Motion Picture Company and_____ Studios

• Pioneered the studio production system with supervisors and small production units

• Used continuity scripts to plan filming and maintain consistency

Edwin S. Porter

• Joined Edison’s company in 1900

• Pioneered editing between scenes to tell stories

• Life of an American Fireman (1903): Experimented with editing

Edwin S. Porter

• Joined Edison’s company in 1900

• Pioneered editing between scenes to tell stories

• Life of an American Fireman (1903): Experimented with editing

• The Great Train Robbery (1903):

The Great Train Robbery (1903):

• Helped establish the one-reel standard (10–11 minutes)

• Used camera movement, hand-colored effects and direct audience address (gunshot at camera)

• Important advancement in narrative storytelling

Lilian St. Cyr

• One of the first Native American actors in mainstream film

• Worked with James Young Deer on 100+ films for Pathé Frères (1911–1914)

• Worked as a writer, costume designer, stuntwoman and cultural advisor

• Advocated for Native American representation

• Known for The Squaw Man (1914)

Lois Weber

• Early female filmmaker who worked with her husband as “The Smalleys” as co-director, co-actor and principal screenwriter

• Known for social problem films, especially women's issues and poverty

• Shoes (1916): Explored poverty and women's struggles

• First female honorary member of the Motion Picture Directors Association

• One of the highest-paid directors of her time

• Founded ____ Productions through Universal

Brighton school

• Group of English filmmakers

• George Albert Smith, James Williamson, Alfred Darling and A.A.E. Collins

• Experimented with filmmaking techniques and technology

• Pioneered close-up shots and crosscutting/intercutting

Motion Picture Patents Company

• Aka “The Trust”

• Edison-led monopoly controlling film patents, licensing, royalties and film stock

• Independent filmmakers had to pay extra or obtain licenses

• Standardized one-reel films and no technical credits

• 1910: Formed the General Film Company to control film distribution

Société Film d’Art

• French company that aimed to make film a respected art form

• Used famous theater actors and writers

agitki

• Short Soviet propaganda films and newsreels promoting Bolshevik ideas

• ____ tours: Traveled to educate and influence the public during the Russian Civil War

• Served as a training ground for early Soviet filmmakers

dialectical montage

• Developed by Sergei Eisenstein

• Opposing shots or ideas collide to create new meaning through montage

• Combining shots creates a new idea, not just a sequence

• Builds emotional intensity and intellectual meaning through editing

5 methods of montage:

• Metric: Shot duration

• Rhythmic: Movement within shots

• Tonal: Emotional tone

• Overtonal: Combination of the first three

• Intellectual: Conceptual relationship between shots

Kino-glaz

• Aka Cine-Eye

• Developed by Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov

• Belief that the camera could capture reality better than the human eye

• Focused on real life and documentary footage rather than staged stories

• Used montage (editing) to reveal deeper truths about reality

Kuleshov effect

• Same shot of a man's face followed by different images makes audiences interpret different emotions

• A shot's meaning comes from both what it shows and its relationship to other shots

• Demonstrates how editing creates narrative and symbolic meaning

Leninist film proportion

• Lenin ordered a fixed ratio between Soviet information/propaganda and entertainment films

• Dziga Vertov proposed a 4:1 ratio, favoring information films

• Exact ratio was never officially established

Narkompros

• Soviet government organization that controlled education and the nationalized film industry

• Helped establish VGIK, the world's first film school, in Moscow

• Trained filmmakers to produce agitki (propaganda newsreels)

Sergei Eisenstein

• Background in engineering, theater, set design and agitki poster design

• Kuleshov’s workshops and apprenticeships

• Associated with Esfir Shub and Eduard Tisse

• Films: Strike (1925) and Battleship Potemkin (1925)

• Soviet montage: Explored spatial, temporal, rhythmic and graphic editing

Esfir Shub

• Soviet filmmaker and editor at Goskino, editing foreign films for ideological compliance

• Edited over 200 films

• Pioneered the compilation film, re-editing existing footage to create new political meanings

Dziga Vertov

• Soviet filmmaker who rejected fiction films and favored documentaries

• Agitki editor who experimented with compilation films

• Developed kinoki and kino-glaz (Cine-Eye)

• Used hidden cameras to capture natural, unstaged behavior

• Created Kino-Pravda (“screen newspaper”)

• Known for Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Autorenfilm

• German films based on famous writers’ stories or plays

• Used well-known authors to make movies seem more serious and artistic, rather than just entertainment

Paraufamet Agreement

• Deal between Paramount, MGM and Germany’s UFA

• American studios loaned money to UFA in exchange for access to German movie theaters

• Increased Hollywood’s influence over the German film industry

Schüfftan process

• Special effects technique invented for Metropolis (1927)

• Used mirrors to combine miniature models with live-action sets, making them appear as one scene

“Big 5 Agreement”

• Agreement between MGM, Famous Players (Paramount), First National, Universal and PDC

• Studios agreed to choose and adopt the same sound technology for movies

• Helped avoid incompatible sound systems across the industry

“midnight rambles”

• Late-night screenings of Black films after regular theater hours

• Provided Black audiences access to films during racial segregation

Blimp

• Soundproof covering around a film camera to reduce camera noise during sound recording.

race film

• Films made primarily for Black audiences, often featuring Black casts

• Created opportunities for Black filmmakers during racial segregation

• Early companies included Foster Photoplay Company (1910) and Lincoln Motion Picture Company (1916)

• Oscar Micheaux: Major Black filmmaker who explored racism and survived the transition to sound

• Often screened through Black churches, organizations and midnight rambles

vertical integration

• Studios controlled production, distribution and exhibition (showing films)

• Studios bought theaters and converted them for sound

• Created oligopolistic control, where a few major studios dominated the industry

Five major Hollywood studios that controlled production, distribution and exhibition, allowing them to dominate the film industry.

MGM

• Wealthiest studio, biggest stars, rich color, musicals and optimistic films (The Wizard of Oz)

• Louis B. Mayer led production.

Paramount

• Largest theater chain, known as a director’s studio with European talent

• Adolph Zukor led the company.

• Warner Bros.

• Working-class studio, known for crime films, social issues, low-key lighting and pioneering sound films

• Jack L. Warner led production.

• 20th Century Fox

• 
  

• Formed by a merger, known for Shirley Temple films and John Ford westerns

  • Darryl F. Zanuck led production.

• RKO

• Newest and most financially unstable studio, known for Astaire-Rogers musicals, Orson Welles and B movies

• Various heads of production

• Dorothy Arzner

• One of the only women directing at the time

• Directed films at Paramount, a studio known for giving directors creative freedom