MECS 102: Introduction to Media Studies Early Film: Lecture 6

DW Griffith noted for making unprecedented contributions to filmmaking practice, transforming it into a fully-fledged art form credited for establishing the narrative language of cinema called “the father of film technique”, “the man who invented Hollywood”, “the cinema’s first great auteur”, and “the Shakespeare of the screen” his filmic prowess has come under scrutiny: described “…a provincial southern romantic with pretensions to high literary culture and a penchant for sentimentality and melodrama….” (Cook, 1996: 59) considered a racial bigot intellectual approach referred to as superficial and limited

Innovations in the Field experimented with narrative technique – evident in Birth of a Nation and Intolerance - formed the conventional lexicon of the cinema Considered these techniques the natural or rational results of a need to find solutions to the problems experienced during filmmaking narrative influences probably emerged out of theatre, novel writing and a brief career as a writer in film.

Innovations in the Field the 180 degree system - helps maintain consistent screen direction for continuity: a scene’s action must always progress along a straight line from the right to left, or left to right of the frame - the camera never crosses the imaginary axis line to insure that the character will always be on the same side of the story action and the spectator on the right side of the screen so as not to be disoriented the ‘cut-in’ - heightened the emotional intensity: cut from a medium long shot or long shot to a full close shot of the same space or character altering the camera position in mid-scene to convey detail and character emotion broke down the scene into several shots reduced the distance between the spectator and the action.

Innovations in the Field began to “alternate shots of different spatial lengths” (i.e. shots of different camera-to-subject distances). to show a scene from varied perspectives, Griffith later began arranging together long, full, medium and close shots twin narratives (i.e. storylines that occurred concurrently) established a technique called parallel editing interweaves the plots of two related characters/events at two separate locations to illustrate their relative connection to each other marked the beginning of the subjective camera (i.e. the director leads the spectator to certain responses) objects of attention involved cutting from a character looking at something off-screen to a shot of what the character literally or figuratively sees “motivated point-of-view shots” - encourage optical subjectivity the switchback i.e. ‘flashback’ a shot or sequence of shots that disturb the present to travel back to the past.

Innovations in the Field accelerated montage shots of several narratives, decreasing in duration, rapidly alternated during inter-cutting, creates the illusion of speed/quick movement. proliferates in chase and rescue sequences. Intraframe Narrative (i.e. the stories occurring within the frames and shots) trained his actors to be more natural and to access the subtlety of expression demanded detail in the design and construction to achieve a kind of authentic, unmediated reality. testied the expressive possibilities of lighting: to create passage of time for dramatic effect

Innovations in the Field Intraframe Narrative discovered how vital camera movement and placement is to dramatic expressiveness investigated panning (horizontal) and tilting (vertical) movements to follow the movement of actors to engage the audience in the total environment of his films composed his shots in depth positioned camera to capture simultaneous action in background, middleground and foreground to create dramatic emphasis Increased Film Length felt restricted by the length of one-reel films (an average of 10 to 16 minutes) began making films over two reels