Key names and details:
- Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies (1877-85)
- Louis and Auguste Lumière early films (1895 and following), including Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, and many others
- Alice Guy-Blaché, The Cabbage Fairy (1896)
- Georges Méliès, A Trip To The Moon (1902)
- Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Key terms:
- Motion studies, persistence of vision
- Cinematographe (Lumières), actualities, frame rate 16fps, single-shot films
- Kinetoscope (Edison), cinema of attractions, Nickelodeon
- Trick films, frontal staging, single-shot films, multiple-shot films, hand coloring, continuity editing
Worksheet questions:
- Describe what you see in these films? What is interesting?
- What is the attraction in these various films? What do these films reveal about the audiences of early cinema? What were audiences looking for?
- What film techniques do you see in these films? What familiar techniques are not on display?
- How might we interpret (some of, any of) these films as technology? As artistic/cultural practice? As commercial endeavor? As historical artifacts?