100 Best Films Essay due; The origins of Film

Please take the first period to complete your personal essays. Once you are done, please hand in and continue to examine the following:

Early Technology & Inventors:

Please read and research film technology. It is important to understand the technological history of film as an art form, for it shapes our culture and has become such an important element of our lives.

Find out the following (to write down in your film journal as participation credit):
1. What is a Zoetrope? How did it work? Who invented it and why?
2. What is a praxinoscope? How did it work? Who invented it? Watch this clip.
3. What is a kinetoscope? How did it work? Who invented it?
4. What is a cinematographe? Who invented it?
5. What is a mutoscope? How did it work? Who invented it?
6. What is a vitascope? How did it work? Who invented it?

then visit the FILM HISTORY website. Find out the following:

7. What was a magic lantern? Who invented it and when?
8. What was a thaumatrope? Who invented it?
9. What invention did Joseph Plateau invent? How did it work?
10. Who invented celluloid?
11. Who was Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)? How and why is he important to the history of film?
12. Who claimed to be the "inventor of film"? Why?
13. Explain Thomas Edison and William K.L. Dickson's contribution to film history.
14. What was Thomas Edison's studio's name? Where was it located?
15. Name a few titles of the earliest films.

These questions should be completed by the end of class today. If you have completed this assignment, please watch a few early films:
The Kiss (1900)
Serpentine Dances (1895)
Sando the Strongman and other Edison Films (repeats of Serpentine Dances & the Kiss)

Dickson's Experimental Film (1894)

Lumiere Brothers Films
Falling Cat (1890)
Two Fencers (1891)
Emile Reynaud: pauvre pierre animation (1892)
Emile Reynaud: autour d'une cabine (1894)
Turkish Dance (1898)

HOMEWORK: After watching these clips, please make some comments about what you've noticed in your journal. We will discuss this next class.