HUMA 2740 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Dances With Wolves, Artisan Entertainment, Kinetoscope
31 May 2018
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HUMA 2740
Lecture 1
Why did the movies appear in the late 19th century?
A number of factors came together in 1890s allowing motion pictures to
take off:
1) The Scientific Impulse
a. Captures imagination of society
b. Ability to record world and desire to develop technologies to
understand the world
c. Push for technology (for science)
2) The social Context – industrialization, urbanization and the need for
cheap entertainment for new working class
a. New forms of and mass entertainment
b. People paying money for entertainment (e.g. services, theatres,
amusement parks)
c. Society going under mass industrialization (e.g. cities appear) –
work is long (long hours) and people want to relax
d. Science and tech and need for entertainment come together
- Photographs appear in late 18th century (around 1930) – recording
the world
Auguste and Louis Lumiere
- First to develop a camera able to project images on the wall
- First exhibition of projected motion pictures
- December of 1895 – held first commercial exhibition of films to an
audience in Paris (produced a series of short films)
- Southern France and Paris
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- Became an early model for film industry
- Copied by major film industries in a few months, movies copied and
sold in US for example
Edward Muybrudge (1830-1904)
- The Horse in Motion, 1878
- When a horse is in full gallop does its legs leave the ground at the
same time – wanted to answer this question
- Took a series of photographs (12) and put it together and projected at
speed to create illusion of movement
- Scientific experiment in figuring out how to make moving images
- Showed the way that images could be put together for other scientists
TV Advertising and TV Schedules
- Advertising firms—the primary source of revenue for TV networks—
often shape what TV shows are conceptualized, produced, licensed
and watched by viewers
- Large corps pay TV networks to air advertisements for their goods
and services
- Networks schedule TV shows, organizing their transmission to
viewers into units of time over the course of day, week, or entire
season
- Viewers who watch TV without time-shifting devices or digital video
recorders are bound by TV network’s schedule
- Networks use schedules to attract, capture, sort and delivery an
audience to the ad firms that pay to advertise between TV shows
- TV schedule is where viewer demand for TV shows and advertising
demand for viewer attention converge
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- Advertisers want a particular audience to be exposed to an ad for a
particular kind of product, so a particular kind of TV show is scheduled
by TV network to meet that demand
- TV schedules remain a dominant feature of 21st century
The Late Western Film and American Empire
- Western narratives usually involved the use of traditional male and
heroes whose job was to tame wilderness
- Included pacifying and conquering the Native Americans and making
wilderness save for civilization
- These stories part of America’s mythology
- Attempt to explain and rationalize the colonization of North America
by largely English speaking settlers
- Westerns also imp manifestations of American individualism, imp part
of America’s culture
- Since late 60s and 70s, number of Western films appeared bringing
these myths into question
- Movies like The Wild Bunch¸ McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Heaven’s
Gate cast a negative light on the American west and its heroes
- These late westerns called revisionist Westerns
- Their appearance in this period coincides with rise of various social
movements mentioned earlier
- Michael Cimino’s sin was to make extremely complex , thought-
provoking and challenging films that situates the Johnson County
conflict within a larger appraisal of American society in this period –
film’s unusual form violates many of the conventions of the traditional
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Photographs appear in late 18th century (around 1930) recording the world. First to develop a camera able to project images on the wall. December of 1895 held first commercial exhibition of films to an audience in paris (produced a series of short films) Became an early model for film industry. Copied by major film industries in a few months, movies copied and sold in us for example. When a horse is in full gallop does its legs leave the ground at the same time wanted to answer this question. Took a series of photographs (12) and put it together and projected at speed to create illusion of movement. Scientific experiment in figuring out how to make moving images. Showed the way that images could be put together for other scientists. Advertising firms the primary source of revenue for tv networks often shape what tv shows are conceptualized, produced, licensed and watched by viewers.
