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Post by newt5996 on Mar 6, 2020 3:01:41 GMT
Hello all, I'm creating this thread because I've got an odd request. As part of my interdisciplinary coursework I am working on a 20-30 page essay tracing the connections between the invention of the printing press and the first modern film with sound (I'm using The Jazz Singer as the first talkie, yeah it's not perfect but it's a cultural touchstone and the one most often recognized). This paper is meant to be like James Burke's Connections series and I was wondering if anyone on this forum could help point me to some resources detailing some of these connections?
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Post by Digi on Mar 6, 2020 3:32:27 GMT
Do you have any sort of guideposts to illustrate the sorts of things you’re looking for? I tend to think of film as evolving out of theatre in general and vaudeville in specific, and the antecedents of those (in my mind) would more be live entertainment like minstrels or bards. I’d like to help if I can, I’m just having a bit of trouble fitting the printing press into the evolutionary steps toward film as I’ve always understood them.
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Post by newt5996 on Mar 6, 2020 4:42:57 GMT
Do you have any sort of guideposts to illustrate the sorts of things you’re looking for? I tend to think of film as evolving out of theatre in general and vaudeville in specific, and the antecedents of those (in my mind) would more be live entertainment like minstrels or bards. I’d like to help if I can, I’m just having a bit of trouble fitting the printing press into the evolutionary steps toward film as I’ve always understood them. I'm looking for a mix of the technical developments of film and recording technology as well as how telling stories evolved from the printing press (which allowed the first aspects mass reproduction). The entire point is seeing how everything is connected even by small connections. |
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Post by Jeedai on Mar 6, 2020 11:31:12 GMT
I cant remember the name, but I saw a documentary (probably on Turner Classic Movies) about the Lumière brothers, who developed the Cinematograph from an idea by Léon Bouly. It was the first device that could project a 'motion picture' to a full audience (contemporary kinetoscopes could only accommodate one viewer as a time). The device name translated as "Writing In Movement," if you need that for the printing press angle. I put 'motion picture' in quotes because we're talking very short subjects with no plot. One of their films is nothing but a train pulling up to a station, which caused audiences to panic due to the illusion of it coming towards them. I'd say it too was a cultural touchstone in movie history: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtXXypztywAnd to Digi 's mention of theater, Georges Méliès was a stage illusionist before he started a film company that pioneered a lot of storytelling and special effects techniques for silent film. And a great many early silent shorts and films (Including Méliès') were filmed in a static-camera format closely resembling theatrical plays staged for a camera instead of an audience. Several aspects of a distinctly cinematic style of storytelling (Closeup on emotional scenes, cross-cutting between concurrent events, location shooting, battle choreography...) were in part created for or codified by Birth Of A Nation in 1915. Which itself took inspiration from 1914's Cabiria, the first Epic Movie. The Battleship Potemkin in 1925 did a lot with montages and cross-cutting between one item or person and another to toe them together thematically. The visual scope and complexity of movies took a downward turn during the time of the early talkies, because sound recording technology had to catch up to the rest of the business. Out went the vast setpieces of Metropolis and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. In came smaller, closed-in sets that could accommodate microphones in a controlled environment. A trend quickly started up of 'Follies' movies, which revolved around fictionalized nightclubs or theaters and their acts. Or actual filmed variety shows performed by a studio's top acts, such as MGM's The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Because musical numbers/ vaudevillian stage routines were easier to film AND record sound for. Which nicely connects everything back to bards. |
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