Film History

• Cinematograph released in 1895 by Lumina Brothers which was the first viable cinema camera
• George Melies started as a magician who pioneered editing techniques including the jump cut.
• Realism was pioneered by the Lumina Brothers.
• Formalism is more expressive than realism.
• Verisimilitude describes a film's universe or movie's reality and is more expressive than formalism.
• Most Hollywood films adhere to classicism called 'Hollywood Style' or 'Continuity Style' perfected in the 1920s-1930s.
• Hollywood was chosen as a location for filming most films as it had an ideal climate and was free of Edison's patents in New York.
• DW Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation' from 1950 was a pioneering film and amongst it's accomplishments was the first film to have an original score, fade outs, tracking and dolly shots and introduced continuity editing.
• Compared to Hollywood European cinema was more experimental and formalistic including surrealism, abstraction, soviet montage and German expressionism.
• Compared to European film, Hollywood had a more classical style with filmmaking adopting a studio model of mass production with films grouped in genres for economies of scale.
• German Expressionism (1920-1930) is a genre from the silent film era, a byproduct of Germany's post-war isolation which was highly expressionistic with films often having a psychiatric theme and high contrast lighting and shadows. In addition art design was highly cartoonish, acting exaggerated and theatrical, camera work with little movement focussing on the subjectivity of the characters, lighting harsh using silhouettes and chiaroscuro whilst plot usually dealt with the unconscious mind.
• Chiaroscuro describes an intense contrast between light and dark.
• Examples of German Expressionism films include the Cabinet of Dr Calgari (1920), The Golem: How he came into the World (1920) and Destiny (1922)