Comic Cinema has become more inept to show the visual comedy and instead rely on sound, particularly dialogue. Take the scene from comedy film Old School where Will Ferrell tries to explain to a group of college kids why he cannot drink. (Figure 1.9) In a cinematic standpoint the scene just seems is a simple shot reverse shot of a grown man and a couple of college kids who seem to disapprove of his decisions. The chunk of the humor lies solely in the dialogue and the way the characters in the scene react to the one speaking. Since the introduction of sound and cinema, audiences have been more drawn to the pleasures of the act of hearing and seeing that they need less and less from both instead of a masterpiece of both. Visual comedy will always …show more content…
Jackie has the ability to use any prop in his fighting scenes from ladders to dresses. He uses this to introduce comedy in his action with the coexistence of natural everyday objects into fighting mechanisms. This is similar to Keaton’s “Impossible gags” that he used in his early days of cinema before he joined MGM. (Figure 1.5) Not only has Jackie Chan been influenced by the stunt work of Buster Keaton but also in several of his films Jackie pays homage to several stunts Keaton is famously known for creating. Doing so reveals these scenes as sort of an artifact of the silent era’s movement. Specifically in the action movie Project A where a falling partition literally crashes on top of Jackie Chan. (Figure 1.6) This scene is an exact replica of Keaton’s film Steamboat Billy Jr. where a partition of a house literally comes crashing down on …show more content…
Slapstick enables the beleaguered audience to stay here on earth and have the best good time; with a perfect sense of completeness, the clown’s martyrdom becomes the good time the audience is having. The significance of the silent era in film history cannot be overstated. During the first decades of the twentieth century, a truly commercial popular art emerged bound closely to the image of a modern America. Movie making luminaries such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton lead the way of comic cinema with their unforgettable films. Regardless of the development of synchronized sound, the era drew to a close, but the modes of production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption inaugurated during the silent film era persisted, creating the film industry, as we know it
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Show MoreThe silent era in film occurred between 1895 through 1929. It had a a major impact on film history, cinematically and musically. In silent films, the dialogue was seen through muted gestures, mime, and title cards from the beginning of the film to the end. The pioneers of the silent era were directors such as, D. W. Griffith, Robert Wiene and Edwin S. Porter. These groundbreaking directors brought films like first horror movie and the first action and western movie. Due to lack of color, the silent films were either black and white or dyed by various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Now, we begin to enter towards the sound era and opposed to the silent era, synchronized sounds were introduced to movies. The classic movie, The Jazz Singer, which was directed by Alan Crosland, was the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue. This was not only another major impact in film history, but it also played a major part in film technology and where film is right now.
New and exciting technologies have always played a huge role in the culture of American people. When the motion picture came out it was no surprise that both consumers and producers were more than happy to get in on the action. Back in the 1920’s film was still pretty new and was only in black and white with no sound, but the films were always accompanied by orchestral pieces to help set the mood. The art of movie-making has come a long way since then with the addition of not only color and audio, but new techniques and new ideas. Both The Kid and Iron Jawed Angels are very popular films about the early 1900’s. Although they share some common thoughts, but because they were made in two completely different time periods their focuses are far off from one another and their ideas contrast for the most part.
Frank was at first an amateur with silent film-making, but working as an apprentice with producer Henry Cohn, he began more adept at it. He started with gags and comedy humor movies, but the emergence of fil...
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
During the mid 1890’s, early picture projectors dubbed Kinetoscopes became easily available to the public. Although completely silent, “People enjoyed these and similar machines as technological novelties; one film advertisement, for example, describes the film's excellent documentation of water spraying from a sprinkler” (Halperin.) The 1900’s was when people became interested in plots and characters, and only in the 1910’s and 1920’s when more advanced technology became available did films become highly regarded.
Watched by grandparents, known by parents, but quickly fleeting in the minds of young ones, Charlie Chaplin is the original “tramp.” From films such as The Kid or The Circus, Chaplin is the face of silent films. His unique combination of comedy and tragedy is a modern reformation of Shakespeare’s style. Many would agree that Charlie Chaplin is the Shakespeare of silent films. From rags to riches to exile, Chaplin is a timeless comedian and will always be remembered as the “tramp.”
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Amongst the numerous great silent film directors, the three that are commonly mentioned surrounding that discussion are Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin. Having seeing a greater amount of Charlie Chaplin’s magnificent work than the others, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd most certainly still got my consideration. In spite of every one of the three delivering awesome pieces of visual artwork, they shared some comparable attributes, however they each had unique differences which contributed to their each distinct style of silent film production. From seeing films produced by all three of these directors, it is evident that comedy works magnificently well with the silent movie format.
Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane is one of the first modern sound films. However, it was innovative in more than just sound, it introduced various cinematography techniques and structural ideas. With the help of Barry Fesler and Jamos D. Stewart, Welles introduced subjects such as deep focus sound, the use of voice texture, and the “lighting mix.” Moreover, he explored different camera angles, deep focus photography, elaborated on fluid continuity, and experimented with structure. Citizen Kane was produced during a rather unusual time as many studios were having financial troubles due to war in Europe. France was being invaded by the Nazis, which caused a shift from movies being shot in sound stages. Nevertheless, this politically intense period, gave rise to America’s press lord, William Randolph Hearst, who build an immense newspaper chain and published over the top stories. His ruthless behavior and troubled personal life inspired Welles to write Citizen Kane.
Another major contender in the comedy genre was Harold Lloyd. He had an unpredictable style of comedy at first. For a long time he wanted to model himself after Charlie Chaplin until he came into his own unique style. Chaplin’s clothes were too big for him, so Lloyd wore clothes that were too small for him. However, it was not as simple as reversing Chaplin’s style. One day someone put him in oval wire glasses and it somehow became part of his persona. Lloyd eventually evolved on his own and claimed his own unique style. “At times he would seem meek but then would explode suddenly with force and anger” (Cousins, p. 73). He became most famous for his incredible stamina and ability to perform outrageous stunts, known as his “human fly” act. In Safety Last he is seen climbing the side of a building, along the way running into many obstacles that would threaten to push him off. He was unparalleled in the way he performed such dangerous stunts all for the sake of comedy.
The first link I was truly fascinated with was a short video of Buster Keaton in “The Railrodder” because though the short film had no lines it had a funny story and I could understand everything that was going through the mind of and around the characters. Buster Keaton, who plays the main character, is known for his acting, directing, and doing nearly all of his own stunts. It is incredible the things he was able to do even as he got much older and continued to do stunts. He was mainly recognized for being a physical comedian though he always had a stony, expressionless face in all his films. Even in “The Railrodder,” Keaton’s last silent screen performance, he continued to be the deadpanned face that he was in his early years. He was an amazing
From the Kinetophone to the Vitaphone, the sound-on-disc format dominated the pioneering stage of sound in movies. For the first time ever, people were able to hear sound synchronized with the images on the screen, and the revolution had begun-the talkies were here to stay. It was the sound-on-disc format that helped create many of Hollywood’s “talkie” classics, including The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool. However, another format, sound-on-film, would soon take reign of the talking motion picture movement, as the audience and the exhibitors started to become more demanding as technology was slowly improving. Sound-on-disc was simply beleaguered with too many technical and economic problems to continue to stay relevant. Thus, the competing sound-on-film format eventually became widely-accepted in the motion picture industry and is used even to this day.
As stated by English professor and film historian, John Belton, “In the cinema, genre is a term used to designate various categories or motion picture production. Major movie genres include such types of films as musicals, comedies, action and adventure films, Westerns, crime and detective films, melodramas, science fiction and horror films, gangster films, and war films” (123). During the course of this class we have studied a majority of these genres. Recently, we took a look at the development of silent film melodramas (a drama accompanied by music). In the late 1920s, the coming of sound took place and transformed melodramas into “talkies” (with speech and song). With song, comes dance; musicals were on the rise. Throughout this paper, I will discuss the elements of the musical film genre, and how it has changed and
Comics: A Better Means An Artistic End. If a line of symmetry were to be drawn down the center of the paper, it would seem that each character rests within his environment about to collide with the other. Even without words, a vivid story begins to formulate in my mind, and hopefully I share the artist's vision. Comic book art is the Pez dispenser of modernism.
In the last 70 years, many things about America have changed. Yet every week since the 1940s, Americans still run to their nearest comic book shop to buy stories about the characters that they love and look up to. Many superheroes have barely changed since mid-19th century, but the industry as a whole has changed us as Americans and as citizens across the globe. Comic book characters have provided a sense of comfort to us, giving us someone to root for and as an escape into a fantasyland of powers and abilities. They have been used as propaganda and also to advance movements amongst the people such as the Civil Rights and Feminist movements. Also, the shift in our real world has changed the tone of comics, such as terrorism becoming a main idea of many comics following 9/11. Now, the movie industry has brought comics to life and has made some of the highest grossing film franchises which pull in billions upon billions of dollars. But this industry has had its ups and downs. Many have subjected it to harsh criticisms about the unrealism they show and the way they depict certain groups. Regardless, comics have changed the course of American history and shaped our culture.