Film Exam (Prep)

Your unit test will cover the following material. All material mentioned was either referenced and discussed below in the blog (check and review blog entries), the handouts from Turning Points in Film, or from Tim Dirks website (Film History). Please refer to your notes and study. This test covers a lot, please study. Please. No. Really. Study.

• Styles of film: realism, classicism, formalism
• Film Treatment (how to write one) & definition of a film pitch
• Early film invention: Magic Lantern, Daguerreotype, Celluloid, Kinetoscope, Mutoscope, Praxinoscope, Thaumatrope, etc.
• Edweard Muybridge, photography, & the Zoopraxinoscope
• The Lumiere Brothers & their films (The Sprinkler Sprinkled, Arrival of a Train, etc.)
• Pathe Frere Manufacturing Company (Charles Pathe)
• Pathe Films: Aladin and the Wonderful Lamp; Onesime the Clock Maker; Slippery Jim; The Policeman's Little Run
• Thomas Edison and the Edison Manufacturing Company: various films (Sandow the Strongman, Serpentine Dances, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz (1910), Uncle Josh films, Life of an American Fireman, etc.
• The Black Maria
• Augustin Le Prince
• W.K.L. Dickson
• Hepworth Manufacturing Company (Cecil B. Hepworth)
• Hepworth's films:Rescued by Rover ; How It Feels to be Run Over; Explosion of a Motor Car; That Fatal Sneeze; Alice in Wonderland
• George Melies & A Trip to the Moon
• Persistence of Vision
• Etinnene-Jules Marey
• George Eastman
• Edwin S. Porter & his films: The Great Train Robbery ; Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
• Actualities & Blue Movies
• D.W. Griffith and his contribution to film (also his Intolerance, Way Down East, and Birth of a Nation)
• Billy Bitzer
• Lillian Gish
• Early film comedy and comedians (particularly The Keystone Kops, Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Harold Lloyd, etc.)
• Charlie Chaplin (various films; we watched the Rink in class, but others were mentioned)
• Buster Keaton (One Week, The Haunted House, The General, various films)
• Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle & his scandal (Hays Code chapter)
• Hollywood (the origin and development of)
• Eisenstein & Montage & Battleship Potemkin (Odessa Step sequence)
• Types of Shots (close up, medium shot, full shot, deep focus shot, long shot, extreme close up and long shots, panning, dolly/tracking shot, etc.)
• Types of Angles (high, low, bird's eye, oblique, etc.) 
• Advice about Camera shots
• Early independent film studios/the Hollywood Studio System
• Early major film studios (1920-1930)
• Sid Grauman
• MPPC, MPPDA & AMPAS
• The Hays Code
• German Expressionism
• F. W. Murnau & Nosferatu
• Robert Weine & The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• Birt Acres
• R.W. Paul
• Alice Guy-Blache
• Mack Sennett
• Oscar Micheaux
• Minorities in film 
• Other important film stars: Douglas Fairbanks sr., Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Janet Gaynor, Clara Bow, W.C. Fields, Greta Garbo, Conrad Viedt, Lois Weber, etc.
• Auteur, Story, Plot, Order, Narration, Narrative Form
• Diegesis
• Scene, Sequence, Frequency, Ellipsis
• Motif
• Space, Viewing Time, Duration
• Film Reviews and how to write them

Silent Film Project

Today, please do the following during period 1:

A. Read, watch, and take notes on the material on Minorities in Film and Camera Advice posted below (Monday and Tuesday's blog entries).

B. Study for your Unit Exam (exam is next week and covers a lot of material)

2nd Period:

A. Get into groups of 1 (working solo) up to 5. (No group will be given credit for more than 5 people in it) and come up with a film idea or treatment. Choose the best idea and treatment from your group to make into a silent film. Each member of a group is responsible for shooting, editing, and creating the intertitles for a silent film. Your silent film should be no longer than 5 minutes in length. It should include intertitles as appropriate, opening credits, and closing credits. You may use music to underscore your film, of course.

Generally jobs that you will need to fill:

1. Director (this person makes sure the film comes together)
2. Cinematographer/Director of Photography (the person shooting the film; decides how to shoot the film photographically)
3. Grip(s) (people to move objects around/carry the camera, props, etc.
4. Gaffer (deals with lighting)
5. Casting director (gets actors for the film or assigns parts)
6. Script Writer (handles the treatment and intertitles)
7. Editor (edits the film)
8. Actors (people to play various parts; these people may be from outside of our class, if deemed necessary or available.)
9. Your credits should give credit to any music you use
10. Please make sure you have credits where you indicate who did what job.

Alice Guy Blache, Oscar Michaeux, & Minority Voices

While most of the pioneers of early film were male Caucasians, the lack of minority voices in film was filled by two very important filmmakers: Alice Guy Blache and Oscar Micheux. While we will focus on these two primarily, they are far from the only minority voices around. Gay & Lesbian, Asian, Latino, and other influential filmmakers begin working in this time period.

Today, watch a few of their film clips and take notes on important details. By the end of the lesson you should begin to ask yourself the question: why is minority cinema important? What is the future of minority cinema? How does knowing a little history help minority artists?

Oscar Michaeux was the first black film director.  Within Our Gates (1919) (music underscore added recently) and his film in its entirety for those interested Within Our Gates (full film). Evelyn Preer was one of the early black actresses. She was also a popular singer. Here's one of her songs: It Takes a Good Woman to Keep a Good Man at Home. You can hear the rhythms of the jazz age (late 1920's). Think of the book Ragtime. Sadly, in American film, it is not until 1991 that the first African-American female director appears (Julie Dash). However, since then, more black female directors have joined the ranks.

The first female director is:
Alice Guy Blache
The Cabbage Fairy (1896)
The Life of Christ (1906) (our first religious epic depicted in film, predating Cecil B. DeMille)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1913)
You can see Taylor & Mariah's film documentary on Alice in the post below.

Various films by the early filmmaker Alice Guy.

Lois Weber, an American female, was also a silent film actress and then director. She invented the first use of the split screen technique in her film Suspense (1913).
Other films include the Blot (1921) and Hypocrites (the first full frontal nudity depicted in film outside of "art film" like Edweard Muybridge's work.) She, too, is important.

As for gay and lesbian films of the early silent film era, there are a few. Apart from two men dancing in the film by Edison, the first depiction of one of the sissy stereotype characters is Algie the Miner (1912). The film was directed by Alice Guy Blache. The first butch male-to-male kissing scene is the fall of Babylon sequence in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916). It also features a pretty kick-ass heroine: mountain girl. 
A little gender bending: Vitagraph's A Florida Enchantment (1914)

German film was one of the first to tackle gay subjects head-on. Here's the film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919) by Richard Oswald. It stars Conrad Viedt (see below). The lesbian film Madchen in Uniform was made in 1931 (and is a talky, so we won't but mention it here). If you're interested in this film, you may also like the 1933 film Anna und Elisabeth. (This is only a clip, sound is not original, of course.)

Latino silent film information can be found here. There is little on line to watch (sorry about that). And Asian film star Sessue Hayakawa starred in such films as The Typhoon (1914) and The Dragon Painter (1919). He signed on with Paramount Pictures (Famous Players Lasky) where he worked with Cecil B. DeMille in such movies as The Cheat (1915). The first Japanese feature film was made in 1912, the Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara. The director Dadasaheb Phalke is considered the father of Indian film, although Asian film begins in the late 1890's. It is interesting to note that the first optical toy (a primitive zoetrope) was invented by Ting Huan in 180 AD in China. By the end of the silent film era, most countries have begun to make films. Of particular note are the directors we will look at next class: Sergei Eisenstein & Robert Wiene (Russian and German Expression films).


But for now...


Early Film Stars from Hollywood:
From your notes you should also know the following blockbuster film stars of the early screen. Please watch their clips. Various famous Hollywood actors:

Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in the Thief of Baghdad (1924), The Mark of Zorro (1920); the full version of The Thief of Baghdad can be found here. It's really a good film, all told. Douglas Fairbanks was known for doing his own stunts.
Rudolph Valentino's The Son of the Shiek (1926) & the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Blood and Sand (1924)
Mary Pickford (1917) The Poor Little Rich Girl
America's Lovebirds or America's Sweethearts:Janet Gaynor & Charles Farrell
Clara Bow in It (1927)
Conrad Viedt
The Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, The Phantom of the Opera (complete silent film, 1924), The Unmasking Scene from Phantom, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

A Moment With Our Camera

The 5 Deadly Sins of Amateur Video

Basic Camera Movement

On an unrelated (that is I don't want you to connect what I've posted above to criticize Taylor and Mariah's film, but please watch this student film from the film project.)

Alice Guy Blache

http://youtu.be/X5P9q3QIBho

D.W. Griffith & Catching Up

Please work with Mrs. Dankert to learn about D.W. Griffith today. If you finish your viewing early, please use the time in the lab to catch up. Many of you have not turned in your Feb. Break Film History homework. Please complete this and turn in late.

D.W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith was called the "Father of film technique" & "the man who invented Hollywood"

Birth of a Nation trailer.

With cinematographer G.W. Bitzer, he created and perfected the film devices:

the iris shot
the flashback
crosscutting

He directed the very controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) Based on Thomas Dixon's stage play "The Clansman" Over 3 hours long, the racist epic included a cast of hundreds. The film contained many new film innovations:

Special use of subtitles
Its own musical score with orchestra
Introduction of night photography
Used a "still shot"
Used an "Iris shot"
Used parallel action
Used panning and tracking shots
Used close-ups to reveal intimate expressions of actors
Used fade outs and cameo-profiles
Used high-angles and panoramic (extreme) long shots
Used cross cutting between two scenes to create excitement and suspense

Here's a clip from Birth of a Nation.

A year later his masterpiece Intolerance (1916) was made as a reaction to the censorship of Birth of a Nation

Part one: Intolerance.
Part Four: Intolerance.

In 1919 he established the film company United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and William S. Hart

Overall, Griffith directed over 500 films. He retired in 1931 and died in Los Angeles in 1948. In 1975 his picture was on a post stamp. But by 1999, The Director's Guild of America's National Board renamed the prestigious D.W. Griffith Award (first given in 1953 to such directors as Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and Cecil B. DeMille) because of Griffith's racism.

"We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare."
D.W. Griffith (1915)

"If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain." - D. W. Griffith (1915)

Please take a look at these clips and films starring Lilian Gish.

Way Down East (1920) Probably the most amazing stunt ever pulled in cinema history. Please realize that these actors really were doing their own stunts. That water is cold and yes, those are ice floes.

Orphans of the Storm (1921) (with sister Dorothy Gish)
Judith of Bethulia (1913) (entire film)

Buster Keaton

It is important to realize that actors back in the early days of film really did their own stunts. Comedy and slapstick particularly were rather dangerous. Here A Montage of Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank Keaton was given his professional name by Harry Houdini. "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), was an American comic actor and filmmaker. He got his start as part of a vaudeville act and later co-starred with plump actor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in "The Butcher Boy". Here's a clip of one of their films. He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was farce or physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton as one of the greatest male actors of all time. His film The General is listed as one of the greatest 100 films. (You can watch The General in its entirety below).

For those of you most interested in Keaton's life and work, here's an excellent website.

Take a look at some of his work:

One Week (1920)

The Paleface (1921)

The Haunted House (1921)

Sherlock Jr (1924)

The Scarecrow (1920)

The General (1927) Full Length Feature Film
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) Full Length Feature Film