How Citizen Kane Changed The Film Industry

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American cinema has marveled audiences for over a century and during that timeframe there have been several advancements worthwhile of mentioning. The creation, introduction, and development of the camera is clearly one of the advancements which set the stage for films, beginning with the basic image to those utilizing multiple images in order to create movement. Then came the addition of sound into films which added another element for viewers to enjoy and finally the use of light to enhance the movement being displayed. For the most part, these techniques were rudimentary in nature until 1941 when the film Citizen Kane was released and forever changed the film industry. The remainder of this paper will analyze how Citizen Kane challenged traditional filmmaking techniques to revolutionize and benchmark the film industry for all production studios. Orson Welles the Visionary …show more content…

By the time Citizen Kane was produced, Orson was on contract with RKO Pictures to produce two films but more importantly he was and given unprecedented full creative control during the filmmaking process (Lewis, p.156. 2008) and that proved to be a monumental event in film history. From a young age, Orson was viewed as a visionary and this is revealed in his spectacular use of mise-en-scene, which is the placement and use of everything that is captured within view of a camera (Mooney, 2015). With full control, Orson not only wrote and directed Citizen Kane but he also acted in the film which earned a total nine Academy Award nominations. Of the nominations, one victory was earned in the screenplay category which was in large part because of Orson’s improvements to traditional film techniques and use of

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