The Movie Industry: The Great Train Robbery

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One of the largest industries today, bringing in millions upon millions of dollars world wide is the movie industry. It is surprising to think that it was all started because of a bet. In 1878 Eadweard Muybridge was hired to determined whether or not a horse left the ground when galloping. he set up 12 cameras in a row on a track that photographed a horse running when the horse was in front of the camera. He not only found out that a horse does have all four legs off the ground, but when you show these in rapid succession they resemble movement. This started Muybridge researching what all you can do with this discovery Muybridge created these projections that would be models taking several pictures doing an activity, then played back quickly. …show more content…

Regardless of if it is or not, it helped create many of the conventions found today. In addition to Life of an American Fireman, it was not edited continuously. It would cut to different locations with different characters to help the main story. This was revolutionary at the time and is commonplace today. The Great Train Robbery also featured new things like pans and tilts. This is very noticeable when the criminals run down the hill next to the train track. The camera needs to follow them but since this isn’t a regular move they do, it is very stuttered and shaky. These were done out of necessity to follow the action taking place, they had not realized a new artistic convention was being invented. The film also features a process in the development stage called toning. Toning is when you color the entire frame in a film a certain color. The Great Train Robbery has a sepia tone over the entire film. Sepia tone today is now associated with westerns partially because of the this film. The film also features some tinting. Tinting is when you colorize only a certain part of the film in the development stage. They tinted the red dress in the girl, the dresses in the hoe-down, and the gunfire and explosions. They use these coloring to increase the dramatic effect. Even though it looks really rough the additions help the film. The film employs a lot of Méliès’s techniques he had worked on including jump cuts, rear projection and multiple exposure. This film also started the star system that would soon become very prominent of western cinema. Broncho Billy Anderson had a few famous deaths in this film and would later become an extremely famous film producer because of his dramatic deaths. The film as a whole was meant to be an exciting ride that the audience would experience. The film really did its job well because when people would watch it they would

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