ENG 110: Introduction to Film and Media

Agenda

• Syllabus

• Intros

• Early Cinema History

• Sherlock, Jr. (5:05)

First Assignment

• 1. Log in to blogs.uoregon.edu, using your Duck ID and password.

• 2. Email me at platt@uoregon.edu to let me know that you have logged in to the blogs site. Then, I can give you access to our course blog.

• 3. Also, read all of Ch. 2 and pages 432-443 in the textbook for Wednesday.

Icebreaker Question

• First, tell us your name.

• Then, if you could require everyone in the world to see one movie, what would that movie be?

• Finally, if you could also place one movie in a black box deep in a cave, so that no one in the world would ever have to see it again . . . what movie would it be?

Cinema History: 1893 to 1924

(31 years in 10 minutes or less)

Clips

• Brief History of Pre-Cinema: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKJqeJ48CPs

• Early Film Clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Sv_teye8w

Cinema of Attractions: 1893 to 1905ish

• 1890s: Edison/Lumiere Brothers invent motion picture cameras

• Early films: short “spectacles,” limited story-telling

• Movies often part of a larger vaudeville or theater program

Early Hollywood Cinema:1905 to 1915

• From New Jersey to L.A. (smart move)

• The first studios create movie industry oligopoly; vertical integration

• First “features” (averaging 75 minutes)

• Conventions of Continuity Editing: – Intertitles, enlarged facial expressions– Intercutting: showing how two actions are

occurring simultaneously– Contiguity editing: showing spaces are

connected

European Cinema in the 1920s

• German Expressionism, French Impressionism, Soviet Montage

• Formal experimentation and innovation

• Emergence of the Avant-Garde: Films begin to achieve status of “art”

Hollywood in the Late Silent Era: 1920 to 1927

• Post WWI: Hollywood takes control

• Theater boom

• Big budgets, industrial production

• Delineation of genres

• The “star” system

Sherlock, Jr. (1924)• Buster Keaton: one of

the “big three” of Hollywood comedy

• BK fractured his neck in this shot

• BK was also the director of Sherlock, Jr. (along with Fatty Arbuckle)

Questions to Consider As You Watch

• What does BK’s character see in the movies? How does film affect him?

• Do you find this movie funny? What makes it funny to you?

• How do you respond to Keaton’s expressionlessness?

Don’t Forget: First Assignment

• 1. Log in to blogs.uoregon.edu, using your Duck ID and password.

• 2. Email me at platt@uoregon.edu to let me know that you have logged in to the UO blogs site. Then, I can give you access to our course blog.

• 3. Also, read all of Ch. 2 and pages 432-443 in the textbook for Wednesday.