DISCUSSION DUE IN 14 HOURS

Week Two: Early Silent Cinema

Print

Early Silent Cinema

Introduction

This week's material builds upon the knowledge learned in the previous week. We move beyond the earliest inventors and those striving to understand the capabilities of new technology to those working to create an industry. The addition of narrative brought the realization of cinema as a storytelling medium. An established method for telling these narratives along with a formula for cinematography and editing create a template for American film for decades to follow. Thus emerges the motion picture industry with the rise of early studios the remarkable filmmakers who worked to usher in an era of entertainment.

Topics

· Week 2 Learning Resources

· Rise of early motion picture studios

· Early types of filmmaking

· Adoption of narrative cinema and its impact on the industry

· D.W. Griffith "The Father of Modern Cinema"

· Early editing techniques 

· Fundamentals of the editing process

· Impact of editing on narrative cinema

Outcomes

By end of this week, you should able to

· identify early film studios 

· define narrative cinema

· understand the importance of D.W. Griffith's style of filmmaking

· list and define editing techniques

· understand the basics of the editing in cinema

· describe the importance of editing in a motion picture

· discuss editing and narrative techniques in relation to a given set of films

· Week 2: Early Silent Cinema

· Why Editing Works

· Admiral Cigarette – 1897 (film & reading)

· The Gilded Cage – 1915 (film & reading)

· U.S. Navy of 1915 (film & reading)

· Mutt and Jeff: On Strike - 1920 (Animated) (film & reading)

· Pathé News, No. 15 - 1922 (News Reel) (film & reading)

· Hollywood Snapshots - 1922 (film & reading)

· Rise of the Studio by the Timeline of Cinema

· The History of Cutting - The Birth of Cinema and Continuity Editing

· The History of Cutting - The Soviet Theory of Montage

· The Great Train Robbery 1903

· The Gold Rush – 1925