I’ve always enjoyed a good movie here and there. Comedies tend to be a favorite of mine, along with action movies and chick flicks every once and a while. Watching movies takes up time when there isn’t anything else to do or when you just want to relax with friends. It’s a chance to escape from reality and live another person’s life.
The first day of film class was definitely an eye opener. I’ve always viewed film as a common form of entertainment; something that people put their time into for fun. But there are so many people who have put thousands of hours and all their energy into enhancing the capabilities of film throughout the past 100 plus years. Seeing some of the first films in class last week revealed an entirely new side of film to me. It started as something so revolutionary and ingenious and has turned into a form of entertainment that many of us take for granted.
Movies used to be shot from the angle of an audience in a theatre so that the viewers would feel like they were truly watching a show in a theatre. The idea of a close-up was unheard-of during the early stages of film. The audience had never been that close to the action of a production before nor had the audience traveled away from the setting of a stage.
Some films were even just recordings of scenes from everyday life. When I first watched one of the Lumiere Brothers’ films, I honestly was bored. How could people seriously be entertained by something witnessed everyday in normal actions of life? Why were people exiting a train or the traffic on a busy street so cool to watch? But then I put the entire concept in perspective. The thought of filming people without them knowing was unthought-of. It was ground-breaking. Just the act of watching a film was new to people.
I still can’t even soak in how incredibly innovative and different film was when it first developed. It is something that I have become so accustomed to; something that I don’t even think of as ingenious like I do the Amazon Kindle or touch screen computers. Film is an extraordinary progression of technology; an image revolution. I believe this class is going to be quite a fun ride and I can’t wait to see how my understanding of film enhances throughout the semester.
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I can't agree with you more when it comes to watching ordinary scenes like the people exiting the train. I found it hard to picture people actually getting excited over something like that, but in reality I'm sure I would have been dumbfounded if I was seeing a moving picture for the first time. We obviously still have a bunch to learn!
ReplyDeleteI know, people always critique story lines or poor acting. I have personally never really thought about the hours of work that goes into merely producing a film. Much less people who wore solely on advancing the technology of film. There is literally someone out there whose job is to make the next big thing. It is mind-blowing how far we have come since the zoetrope and in a relatively short period of time.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of a sucker for very naturalistic, narrative-free cinema. It's definitely not something I was born liking but something I now love to distraction.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, realizing the hard work that goes on behind the scenes makes any film legit and worth watching. And I really don't realize the significance of those simple things like recording people getting off a train, but then once someone told me when i asked that question, "They thought of it first!" And then I wonder, how can anyone ever think of something like first, for now we only use hindsight bias.
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