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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.