Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back to finish out our discussion
Speaker 1: of the invention in the early days of the motion picture.
Speaker 1: Now last time I think should have been the episode
Speaker 1: where we talked with Scott Benjamin about the murder mystery
Speaker 1: or the maybe murder mystery, the disappearance mystery of louis
Speaker 1: La Prince, the person who actually did shoot inventive film
Speaker 1: camera and shot movies before anybody before Lumire Brothers, before
Speaker 1: Edison and his team. But in the episode before that
Speaker 1: we talked about the earliest commercially viable motion picture technologies.
Speaker 1: So by the mid eighteen nineties you had the flourishing
Speaker 1: of Thomas Edison and W. K. L. Dixon's kinematograph and
Speaker 1: kinematoscope in America, which made roughly fifteen to sixteen second
Speaker 1: movies that you could watch by sticking your head and
Speaker 1: a viewfinder in a cabinet. Um Again, I love the
Speaker 1: image like you just got your face down in the
Speaker 1: cabinet and somebody walks up behind you and puts the
Speaker 1: Kickney sign on or whatever happens in these parlors. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was a rowdy scene. And then around the
Speaker 1: same time, you've also got the cinematograph of the Lumier
Speaker 1: Brothers in France, which projected films on a wall. And
Speaker 1: this is a kind of different thing because it allowed
Speaker 1: this communal viewing experience, which is last time we talked
Speaker 1: about how we think this is sort of important both
Speaker 1: culturally and economically, that you can show films for a
Speaker 1: for a big audience all at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I think that when we look at the
Speaker 1: history of film viewing and film technology, we see that
Speaker 1: that push and pull between the communal experience and the
Speaker 1: individual experience, whether it's the communal experience of of the
Speaker 1: Lumiar Brothers invention, or movie houses or let's go, or
Speaker 1: places where we go back towards the the individual experience,
Speaker 1: such as suddenly being able to watch films at home
Speaker 1: on television, or watch films on a vcr um other
Speaker 1: home media advancements, right down to our our modern use
Speaker 1: of smartphones where you can you can just crawl underneath
Speaker 1: the blanket and watch whatever you want with your headphones in,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, you're you're all but just shoving
Speaker 1: the screen directly into your brain. And I do think
Speaker 1: I would bet that film historians have some interesting thoughts
Speaker 1: about how the changes in technology, especially like home video,
Speaker 1: changed the art of film itself. Yeah. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's had major certainly that I've I've read some about
Speaker 1: its effects, say on the adult cinema industry, where they're
Speaker 1: obvious clearly there, yeah, clear clearly there, you know, obvious
Speaker 1: influences the technology on on that genre. But I was
Speaker 1: thinking just the other night about a different avenue of
Speaker 1: film enjoyment, that being writhing. Oh yes, So we're of
Speaker 1: course both big fans of Mystery Science Theater three thousand.
Speaker 1: If you've never seen it, it's well, you've probably seen
Speaker 1: images of it. It's the old TV show where they
Speaker 1: it was a sci fi comedy premise where they take
Speaker 1: old movies that were generally very bad and poorly made,
Speaker 1: and you'd have hosts who made jokes about the film.
Speaker 1: As you watch, you'd see a little silhouettes bobbing in
Speaker 1: front of the screen. A human and two robots forced
Speaker 1: to watch bad movies, and in order to survive the experience,
Speaker 1: they riff on and they make jokes, they talk back
Speaker 1: to the screen. Um, you know, all the sort of
Speaker 1: you know, humorous shenanigans created by the great Joe Hodgson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is of course turned into a wider genre
Speaker 1: than just the show Mystery Science Theater three thousand that's
Speaker 1: been off the air for twenty years or whatever. Well
Speaker 1: it's back on Netflix. Well that's true, but so it
Speaker 1: was off the air for a long time, but the
Speaker 1: the tradition continued. I think it inspired a sort of
Speaker 1: style of media presentation. And it wasn't the only one.
Speaker 1: I mean there's also you were talking before we went
Speaker 1: on Mike Today about this other phenomenon of not people
Speaker 1: talking during the movie, but the TV movie host what
Speaker 1: do you call that? Like a daytime horror host. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Grandpa Monster hosting movies back back in the nineties
Speaker 1: on like the Turn Channelsvira Helvira or Joe Bob Briggs
Speaker 1: Monster Vision where they're not chatting during the movie, but
Speaker 1: they're these bumper segments where they're saying, Hey, how about
Speaker 1: that film you're just watched, how about those how about
Speaker 1: that scene with that monster? And then maybe they crack
Speaker 1: a few jokes. Right, So even if you're at home
Speaker 1: alone watching the movie. It's kind of like when you
Speaker 1: go out to the movies with your friends and if
Speaker 1: it's a bad movie, lean over next to each other
Speaker 1: and make jokes about what you're watching. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: wondered to what extent like these are reactions to to
Speaker 1: these these different technological advancements where movie viewing has leaned
Speaker 1: away from the communal towards the individual experience. But then
Speaker 1: we compensate for that through the pseudo communal experience of
Speaker 1: riffing or the host speaking to you about the film.
Speaker 1: And then later on when we get more into the
Speaker 1: DVD age, you of course have commentary tracks, which I
Speaker 1: think the better commentary tracks I'm thinking of, particularly like
Speaker 1: the John Carpenter and Kurt Russell commentaries. That's commentary tracks,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's it's like you're hanging out in
Speaker 1: the room with them listening to them. You're watching the
Speaker 1: film with them. To a certain extent, listening to any
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger commentaries track where it just explains what's happening
Speaker 1: in the scene and it's in total re called the
Speaker 1: the unbelievable distortion of the face. But yeah, even that
Speaker 1: is you know, sort of a communal experience. It's like
Speaker 1: you're you're watching the film with Arnold, So anyway, that's it.
Speaker 1: I haven't researched that to see if anybody else's has
Speaker 1: given you know, a lot more serious and structured thought
Speaker 1: to the nature of riffing and when it's important. But
Speaker 1: it came to mind thinking about the way the technology
Speaker 1: influences our experience. Yeah, I have a hunch that you're
Speaker 1: exactly right that there is this push and pull and
Speaker 1: that we want, you know, we want to be able
Speaker 1: to have privacy privacy bound experiences, you know, within our
Speaker 1: own boundaries, within our own you know, the convenience of
Speaker 1: being able to do it at home whenever we want
Speaker 1: to watch a movie or something. But also there's there's
Speaker 1: part of us that cries out for that kind of
Speaker 1: instant reaction. You're wanting to be able to lean over
Speaker 1: to the person next to you and talk about what
Speaker 1: you're seeing right like, and a counter to that would
Speaker 1: of course be some of these examples that you've seen
Speaker 1: of movie theater innovations designed to limit the communal experience.
Speaker 1: When you're like dividers next to your head, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Well, I mean I guess it's it's also
Speaker 1: going to be annoying if you're just trying to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the movie and the people right in front
Speaker 1: of you or having a conversation about whatever. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the human experience as a whole. Right. We want
Speaker 1: to be alone, but we want to be surrounded by people.
Speaker 1: And if we're and we have we have whichever we are,
Speaker 1: we want the other one exactly. The grass is always
Speaker 1: a little greener, right, But so we should come back
Speaker 1: to the early days of film and pick up on
Speaker 1: this technological journey. Okay, So yeah, So we had the
Speaker 1: Edison and Dixon kinematograph and kinematoscope, and then you had
Speaker 1: the Lumier brothers with their cinematograph, and these established some
Speaker 1: slightly different early traditions of films. And one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about before is that there weren't already
Speaker 1: films waiting to be shown. So the people who invented
Speaker 1: these camera and projector technologies had to make their own
Speaker 1: films to go in them. They had to be not
Speaker 1: only inventors of the technology but media producers. So Edison
Speaker 1: and Dixon's early films were usually like short recordings of
Speaker 1: things that would be kind of like circus acts or
Speaker 1: vaudeville performances. Here's the strong Man, here's a dancer, acrobats,
Speaker 1: or something something quick and interesting to look at that
Speaker 1: would be interesting without sound and last about fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: because that's how long the films could be. Based on
Speaker 1: the limitations of their technology, the loomis Are Brothers created
Speaker 1: these short documentaries of real life with scenes like a
Speaker 1: train approaching the camera, or I was reading about one
Speaker 1: that's just five men diving off of a jetty and
Speaker 1: bathing in the sea. There's one that's got a bunch
Speaker 1: of photographers getting off of a riverboat for a photography
Speaker 1: conference in Leone. It's riveting stuff, but people were really
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, I mean, just it's the magic of
Speaker 1: seeing the moving picture or without with with without living
Speaker 1: in an age of just ubiquitous moving pictures like we
Speaker 1: have today, exactly. Uh. And so the Lumiar Oh, but
Speaker 1: the Lumiar Brothers also created at least one fictional story
Speaker 1: that we mentioned in that previous episode, the classic The
Speaker 1: Sprinkler Sprinkled Yes, which is yeah, this is one of
Speaker 1: the first ten films that they that they unleashed and
Speaker 1: It is clearly a humorous little fiction piece where a
Speaker 1: gardener's hose is uh is stepped on by a child
Speaker 1: and then of course he does the natural thing, right
Speaker 1: then I comedic clown choice and looks down the hose,
Speaker 1: and then that's when the water squirts him in the face.
Speaker 1: I actually watched it today, and not only does he
Speaker 1: get squirted in the face, then he chases down the
Speaker 1: child and beats the child savagely. That's how it ends.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a different, different type of type
Speaker 1: of humor back in those days. Uh, if only we
Speaker 1: could have had the sprinkler sprinkled cinematic universe where they
Speaker 1: come back and and and that would be explored in
Speaker 1: a later film. But but you know, take the beating aside.
Speaker 1: It is exactly the type of human that has continued
Speaker 1: to be an important part of motion pictures like right
Speaker 1: up until today. Oh of course, yeah, I mean slapstick humor.
Speaker 1: It's still a very cheap way to make a movie
Speaker 1: that can make a lot of money. But by the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen nineties films, we we should say we're still
Speaker 1: mostly something like a curiosity and a technological spectacle and
Speaker 1: less like a fundamental medium. For stories and mass culture
Speaker 1: the way they are in our culture today. So what
Speaker 1: changed in between? You know, how do we get from
Speaker 1: that point to this point? One thing that I think
Speaker 1: is really important along that journey is that, of course,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of technological upgrades that came along to
Speaker 1: improve what people could do with motion picture filming and
Speaker 1: projection early on. But the one innovation that I think
Speaker 1: might be most important early on is something that is
Speaker 1: usually called the Latham loop. Now, we've talked before about
Speaker 1: how early films were less than a minute long, right there.
Speaker 1: There were technical reasons for this. It wasn't an artistic choice.
Speaker 1: One of the technical reasons was the strains put on
Speaker 1: recording media, and so these early films were shot on
Speaker 1: celluloid film strip and celluloid film was good. It was
Speaker 1: more durable than the flimsy paper film of the past,
Speaker 1: but still it had its limits, and one was this,
Speaker 1: the more film you've got coiled up on a roll
Speaker 1: and you know you're pulling on it, the harder it
Speaker 1: is to pull to feed along past the shutter. Like
Speaker 1: you can sort of imagine the physics of this, right,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to pull tape off of a huge
Speaker 1: role and pull it really fast. And the way film
Speaker 1: cameras and projectors worked at the time was to grab
Speaker 1: the film along these perforated holes along the side. So
Speaker 1: if you've seen film before, you know you see these
Speaker 1: sprocket holes along the side of it. That's so the
Speaker 1: latch or the lever can grab the film advanced at
Speaker 1: exactly one frame in front of the shutter and then
Speaker 1: move it along another frame after that. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: if you try to record or project a really long
Speaker 1: piece of motion picture, you would inevitably end up tearing
Speaker 1: it in the process, often by ripping through the sprocket
Speaker 1: hole as you tried to advance the film, and this
Speaker 1: actually put an artistic limit on the medium. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was reading a article for the American Society of Cinematographers
Speaker 1: by the film filmographer and film historian David Samuelson, and
Speaker 1: Samuelson writes that in the nineties, the problem with the
Speaker 1: tension on celluloid film meant that you couldn't pull more
Speaker 1: than maybe like a hundred feet or so about thirty
Speaker 1: meters of film through the camera projector without tearing it,
Speaker 1: and this limited films to roughly two minutes run time.
Speaker 1: Now in our brands that we're thinking like, how do
Speaker 1: you tell the story of RoboCop in two minutes? This
Speaker 1: is a robocopless world, you can't have it. But but
Speaker 1: it was actually a different question that led to the
Speaker 1: defeat of this technological hurdle. And that question was a
Speaker 1: more I don't know, kind of maybe more mercenary economic one.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's just me saying that because I'm not
Speaker 1: a big, big sports fan. The question was how do
Speaker 1: you shoot and play back an entire boxing match? Now,
Speaker 1: it's funny that and this reveals how little, uh interest
Speaker 1: I have in sports that I didn't even think about
Speaker 1: the idea of filming and exhibiting sports matches as like
Speaker 1: a major early use of film. But of course this
Speaker 1: is this is going to be big money, right yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was mainly thinking about the you know,
Speaker 1: the artistic possibilities here and maybe do a certain extent
Speaker 1: of journalistic opportunity possibilities. But then again, journalism would cover
Speaker 1: sports as well. There will be an interest in capturing
Speaker 1: what occurred exactly. So there's a family company run by
Speaker 1: an American named Woodville Latham and his sons, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to pioneer this process to make money off of
Speaker 1: exhibiting boxing matches after they had happened. So the idea,
Speaker 1: as you film the fight, you screen it later, and
Speaker 1: you charge admission. And obviously most boxing matches would have
Speaker 1: been too long, they would tear the film because they're
Speaker 1: going to need more than a hundred feet there. So
Speaker 1: the answer is something called a film loop or a
Speaker 1: Latham loop. And this invention essentially used wheels to spool
Speaker 1: out a kind of short, slackened loop of film ahead
Speaker 1: of the camera or projector shutter, so that when the
Speaker 1: lover grabs the film to pull it down rapidly advanced
Speaker 1: it past the shutter frame by frame, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: pulling tight on the entire roll of film and just
Speaker 1: be pulling down from this sort of slackened loop of
Speaker 1: film right above it. Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. According to Samuelson, though Woodville Latham gets the
Speaker 1: name credit for this invention the Latham loop, a sworn
Speaker 1: statement by our old friend W. K. L. Dixon, who
Speaker 1: remember invented Edison's kinetograph, indicated that the invention was actually
Speaker 1: the work of a guy named Eugene Lost, who was
Speaker 1: otherwise known for inventing the idoloscope, which was a wide
Speaker 1: film projector, and also as a side note, Samuelson notes
Speaker 1: that years later, in nineteen eleven, Lost would also travel
Speaker 1: to America to quote give the first demonstration there of
Speaker 1: a combined sound on film recording and reproduction system, though
Speaker 1: his method was not ever success fully commercialized, and actually
Speaker 1: synchronized sound didn't become mainstream in films until the late
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, so there was a ways to go before
Speaker 1: that became big. Lost by the way, it spelled l
Speaker 1: A U s T. Yeah, maybe that's Lost day or
Speaker 1: maybe lust day. I don't I don't know either way,
Speaker 1: he was quite the inventor. Yeah, totally double innovator here.
Speaker 1: The Latham loop was a big deal. In addition to this,
Speaker 1: this later uncommercialized sound on film process uh and the
Speaker 1: Latham loop was such a big deal that Samuelson writes
Speaker 1: about it, quote for filmmakers of the time, it was
Speaker 1: as big a breakthrough as anything that has happened since.
Speaker 1: And think about it again. This is so important because
Speaker 1: this is what makes it possible to have long films.
Speaker 1: Without it, we couldn't have long films right now, obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean Obviously, prior to this technology, we we had
Speaker 1: all these other storytelling mediums that were long form. We
Speaker 1: had books, we had we had plays especially uh. But
Speaker 1: but it but clearly like the medium was not to
Speaker 1: receive uh, those longer form stories. Yet this allowed them
Speaker 1: to receive those forms exactly. And I think this is
Speaker 1: one reason early on you wouldn't have had people quite
Speaker 1: yet thinking yes, this, you know, the film will become
Speaker 1: the medium for visual novels, that we will adapt a
Speaker 1: novel for film. If it would be like saying, look
Speaker 1: at postage stamps, think of the stories we can tell
Speaker 1: with postage stamps. And you're like, no, you can't. It's
Speaker 1: just not that big. You can't put Macbeth on a
Speaker 1: postage stamp. But then suddenly it's like, hey, we just
Speaker 1: figured out whether a way that makes the stamps so
Speaker 1: much bigger. And then suddenly the sky's the limit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so there's another piece I read emphasizing the importance
Speaker 1: of the loop that was pretty interesting. It's an article
Speaker 1: I found in the Atlantic in two seventeen by Henry Giardina,
Speaker 1: though originally it was from an essay series called object Lessons,
Speaker 1: and its title is the Camera Technology that turned films
Speaker 1: into stories and just talking about the Latham loop there. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so it notes several things. Of course, I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what's the deal with this boxing match that
Speaker 1: the Lathams were into. Well, it's got the deets on that.
Speaker 1: In May of eighteen nine, the Latham family successfully screened
Speaker 1: a boxing match in New York City and the boxers
Speaker 1: were Charles Barnett and somebody named Young griff. Oh so,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, is this the inspiration of the character in
Speaker 1: A Song of Ice and Fire. There's a young Griffo.
Speaker 1: You don't remember Young griff He's in the books, but
Speaker 1: not the show. I don't remember Young Griffin. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well he's a young griff. I don't know who won
Speaker 1: the fight. By the way, I'm pulling for Young Griffo though.
Speaker 1: But so, this invention obviously wasn't just for boxing. The
Speaker 1: film loop or the Latham loop, made longer motion pictures possible,
Speaker 1: and we all know the stuff that came along with that.
Speaker 1: Uh though. Giardina's article is also interesting in documenting the
Speaker 1: obsessive tactics that Thomas Edison pursued in order to hinder
Speaker 1: the early production of independent films and extract every dime
Speaker 1: he could out of anybody trying to make a movie,
Speaker 1: mostly through you know, uh, obnoxious patent claims, like you
Speaker 1: try to patent every part of the process, and and
Speaker 1: if somebody's doing it, he's going to be making money
Speaker 1: on it. And remember early on, films were not thought
Speaker 1: of yet as primarily as art or in terms of
Speaker 1: copyright law. They were technology primarily framed in terms of
Speaker 1: patent law. So ultimately they I mean, all these films
Speaker 1: that are being produced, like there's still nothing but um
Speaker 1: proof for the technology at this point, like that, like
Speaker 1: the films have not really taken out of life of
Speaker 1: their own, yeah exactly. I mean audiences were enjoying them,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they thought of films yet. The
Speaker 1: way we think of films is like this is another medium.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's like the written word, and
Speaker 1: we think of film as being something like that. And
Speaker 1: before we move on, I just have to mention also
Speaker 1: that in this Jardina piece, it talks about how it's
Speaker 1: been alleged that Edison didn't just use patent harassment on
Speaker 1: on people who were trying to make films at the
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century. UH. It's also
Speaker 1: been alleged that he used sheer, muscle and intimidation to
Speaker 1: control the early film industry, And the author here talks
Speaker 1: about an interview between Peter Bogdanovich, the you know, the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies filmmaker and UH and an early film director
Speaker 1: who was working in the earliest days named Alan Duan,
Speaker 1: who said that quote Edison sent gangsters across the country
Speaker 1: to follow them when they when they went west, and
Speaker 1: that the gangsters would shoot at their cameras. Quote most
Speaker 1: companies only had one. Sometimes they'd wait until a fellow
Speaker 1: was cleaning the camera and take a shot at it,
Speaker 1: anything to destroy it. So I don't know if that
Speaker 1: story is accurate, but wow, it does seem like another
Speaker 1: tally in the Edison as villain column. Absolutely absolutely the
Speaker 1: idea that you, I mean, there's so much um, I mean,
Speaker 1: any film that gets made, it's kind of a miracle, right,
Speaker 1: There's so much work that goes into it. And in
Speaker 1: these days that was that was still the case as well.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, you're gonna have Edison's gangsters
Speaker 1: allegedly showing up and UH and potentially messing your camera.
Speaker 1: That's awful. Yeah, So whether or not that story is true,
Speaker 1: of course, Edison couldn't stop, you know, independent films entirely.
Speaker 1: Films continued to develop in France and elsewhere, and then
Speaker 1: even in the United States, filmmakers moved west and spread
Speaker 1: out all over the place, and Edison's power wane. So
Speaker 1: he just he couldn't put a lid on all of it.
Speaker 1: So I think it's clear that the film loop or
Speaker 1: the Latham loop, was a crucial invention enabling the transformation
Speaker 1: of motion picture from just a technological spectacle into a
Speaker 1: mainstream storytelling medium in an art form. Like it allowed
Speaker 1: the creation of longer films, and it made possible new
Speaker 1: you know, things that you could do with film editing.
Speaker 1: Now we'll have to ask the question in a minute
Speaker 1: who who picked up on this opportunity, Like who were
Speaker 1: the artists who realized I can make art, I can
Speaker 1: tell stories with this new medium? Uh, you know who
Speaker 1: took advantage of the technology. But also I was just
Speaker 1: wondering first about a question about film history as an
Speaker 1: example of something that can be generalized, How does a
Speaker 1: new media technology come to be perceived in culture as
Speaker 1: a legitimate art form? Because I remember maybe you weren't
Speaker 1: aware of this, but I remember some debate in the
Speaker 1: mid to late two thousands where people would go back
Speaker 1: and forth about whether or not video games can ever
Speaker 1: be considered art, And uh, I don't maybe people still
Speaker 1: have that debate today. I would say that to me,
Speaker 1: you know, most video games to me don't seem like
Speaker 1: things that I really think of as art. But I
Speaker 1: don't have any problem at all with the idea that
Speaker 1: they potentially can be, and some probably are. And you're
Speaker 1: talking about the piece itself being in its entirety of
Speaker 1: work of art, not merely like encompassing nice production design. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I mean, certainly video games today,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of them have some beautiful designs
Speaker 1: in them that you would think of as visual art.
Speaker 1: So the question is once it incorporates gameplay, mechanics and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, like, does does it lose
Speaker 1: some artistic quality? Then? I don't know. I mean people
Speaker 1: have to work that out among themselves. But I also
Speaker 1: think about the same thing with the virtual reality. Can
Speaker 1: you just take a virtual reality environment and say, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: this is art. I mean, it seems to me that
Speaker 1: virtual reality is sort of in a space kind of
Speaker 1: like the films of the first decade of films, where
Speaker 1: in you know, where it's still maybe like a question
Speaker 1: of like is this just sort of a new technology
Speaker 1: and a spectacle that makes use of it. Well, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it comes down to you how
Speaker 1: you're utilizing the new medium. Because we mentioned plays earlier,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us. I don't know about
Speaker 1: all of us, but I've certainly seen my share of
Speaker 1: filmed plays, especially when it's like taking Shakespeare courses in
Speaker 1: college and so, and many of them were very good
Speaker 1: because you're in many cases it is a film of
Speaker 1: a wonderful performance. But if it's if the cameras not
Speaker 1: moving or it's barely moving, you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not the same as watching a film. It's
Speaker 1: not using all of the the the tricks available to
Speaker 1: the filmmaker. U. So it's it's very difficult, I think,
Speaker 1: to make an argument that a film to play is
Speaker 1: a good film, uh, even if it is a great play. Likewise,
Speaker 1: when you're looking at virtual reality or a video game,
Speaker 1: it's like, is the video game just giving me some
Speaker 1: nice visuals and I'm having some fun playing it, or
Speaker 1: is it doing something with gaming itself. They're doing something
Speaker 1: with the way that I interact with it, that it
Speaker 1: is that is refreshing and unique. And likewise with the
Speaker 1: virtual reality, are the mechanics of the invention or the
Speaker 1: technology integral to what the art is or how the
Speaker 1: art works in the same way that they are with films? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, film, the simplest thing you can
Speaker 1: think of, a film can use an edit to make
Speaker 1: a point. You know, a film can like jump cut
Speaker 1: between two things to cause you to have a connection
Speaker 1: between them in your mind. And that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: sort of unique to fill them as a medium, right, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess the question is are there things similar
Speaker 1: in games in virtual reality where the mechanics of it,
Speaker 1: sort of the physical characteristics of the medium are used
Speaker 1: to do things that other media don't do in service
Speaker 1: of an artistic design. Yeah, well, you know, in in gaming,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking the examples would big games that kind of
Speaker 1: lean into trying to create the feeling of watching a
Speaker 1: motion picture. But but but but feels that way, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like it feels like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is this is almost like watching a movie. I'm almost
Speaker 1: achieving something, but I'm not, you know, fully immersed in
Speaker 1: the experience. Maybe you're being you know, hit on the
Speaker 1: head with a bunch of cut scenes, and then in
Speaker 1: between the cut scenes there's more traditional video game like maneuvers.
Speaker 1: But then a game like well Soma comes to mind
Speaker 1: is a recent game that that we both played. It's
Speaker 1: a horror horrorci fi game, and like that game felt
Speaker 1: like as I recall it, it was not heavy on
Speaker 1: on cut scenes. You were controlling the elements for the
Speaker 1: most part, and and the way that you interacted with
Speaker 1: elements helped tell the story of your experience. I agree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good candidate for that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, as opposed to say many say fighting
Speaker 1: games or shooting games, where you're just doing the fighting
Speaker 1: and the shooting, and then there are moments that come
Speaker 1: along we're like, hey, I'm here to tell you what
Speaker 1: the narrative is and how the story is progressing, and
Speaker 1: then you move back to the thing you were doing.
Speaker 1: If I know anything, it's the twisted metal is art. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was thinking about the most recently Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat game of those. Yeah, but you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I would never say that. I didn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: it's not a game that I would say is art,
Speaker 1: though it combined. It clearly it was built on the
Speaker 1: talents of of numerous you know, very accomplished artists. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of cool art in the game. And then
Speaker 1: there is a certain amount of storytelling that takes place
Speaker 1: in the game, But the core game experience, it's is
Speaker 1: still not a narrative. It is fighting. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent of fight is a narrative. But
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Then again, if we're starting
Speaker 1: to set a high bar about what counts as art
Speaker 1: and what doesn't, most films probably don't count either. I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows. I'm sorry. I guess this is a pretentious discussion.
Speaker 1: It's my fault because I started. I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: the Council of Wizards that decides what is art and
Speaker 1: what is not. Well, but I think here's one of
Speaker 1: the things that about it though, is like, are you
Speaker 1: using tricks in various bells and whistles of the medium
Speaker 1: to engage the audience? And I think one of the
Speaker 1: important things to keep in mind about about cinema, about
Speaker 1: filmmaking is that a filmmaker benefits from a great number
Speaker 1: of tricks and effects to capture our attention, to manipulate
Speaker 1: our feelings. And these were these weren't just all rolled
Speaker 1: out at once. So it's not like Edison or anybody
Speaker 1: else came along and said, all right, here's here's how
Speaker 1: you make a film. Here all the techniques you can do.
Speaker 1: Here are the types of cuts, et cetera. Like these
Speaker 1: were all developed mostly through trial and error over decades
Speaker 1: in deck gades of of filmmaking. And that means the
Speaker 1: work of you know, highly acclaimed and serious filmmakers as
Speaker 1: well as uh, everybody else involved in the game of
Speaker 1: making films. This was pointed out by the way in
Speaker 1: Psycho Cinematics Issue and Directions by author P. Shimamura. So,
Speaker 1: you know, little changes here in their new advancements in
Speaker 1: cinema that allow a film to get its hooks into us.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, I don't know, I don't think it, you know, matters.
Speaker 1: They say the Blob is a work of art, uh,
Speaker 1: but but clearly it's using all of these various artistic
Speaker 1: tools that were created, uh to better tell the story,
Speaker 1: to better engage a viewer. Through the medium of cinema. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would also say that I think you can
Speaker 1: make the make the point that commercial cinema develops te
Speaker 1: techniques that are crucial to later art. Yeah. Anyway, so
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should take a break and then
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will discuss some of these
Speaker 1: early innovators in the art form of film. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, Okay. So we've been asking this question throughout
Speaker 1: of how did film and motion picture transition from being
Speaker 1: just a technological curiosity, you know, a new invention and
Speaker 1: a spectacle into something that was more oriented around narrative
Speaker 1: and story and something that might be considered a legitimate
Speaker 1: art form. Uh. And so we want to talk about
Speaker 1: just a couple of important figures here. One that I
Speaker 1: think is definitely worth mentioning is an interesting figure named
Speaker 1: Alice gi Blush. In the words of the American filmmaker
Speaker 1: and film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln,
Speaker 1: she was quote the foremost pioneer of cinema, which I
Speaker 1: think is interesting because before preparing for this episode, I
Speaker 1: want to be honest, I had not heard of her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and most of the names that come up are our
Speaker 1: men from cinema history, so it's refreshing to see a
Speaker 1: woman playing such an important role early on. And I
Speaker 1: think it is highly possible that her gender might have
Speaker 1: had something to do with the reasons she wasn't remembered
Speaker 1: as much as she probably should have been. So. Alice
Speaker 1: Ki Blasche was born Alice ge in France in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three. She grew up going to Catholic school and
Speaker 1: she early on had a love of narrative literature and theater.
Speaker 1: She you know, she was a fan of the arts,
Speaker 1: and she began her career in eighteen ninety four as
Speaker 1: a secretary working for the engineer, inventor and industrialist Leon Gomant.
Speaker 1: In the mid eighteen nineties, Gomont ran a photography company
Speaker 1: and so he made equipment and materials for this brand
Speaker 1: new film industry. For example, this company had a relationship
Speaker 1: producing equipment for the loumi Are Brothers, and through her
Speaker 1: work with Gomant's company, she was able to attend the
Speaker 1: loumi Are Brothers projected film premiere in eighteen We talked
Speaker 1: about this in the previous episode, so she she got
Speaker 1: to see the sprinkler sprinkle at the premiere. She was
Speaker 1: there and by by the way, all of these old
Speaker 1: films were talking about these these little short films. They
Speaker 1: are all available on YouTube. Well, the Loomis Air Brothers ones,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, well yeah, but as some of these
Speaker 1: others that we are discussing, like, we've looked up on YouTube.
Speaker 1: So there's a YouTube for all of its crimes. And since, uh,
Speaker 1: it's still a great place to find these little tidbits
Speaker 1: of cinematic history. Yeah, well, the ones that are available, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should definitely look up and check out. A lot
Speaker 1: of them are actually lost to history. The ones that
Speaker 1: are lost you're not going to find on YouTube. But
Speaker 1: the others are fair game. We'll talk about that in
Speaker 1: a minute. So so, yeah, so she's working for Gomants company,
Speaker 1: she attends the Loomis Air premiere. Uh, and by eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six it appears she'd gotten a bug. Even though
Speaker 1: she was still officially only a secretary at Gomant's company.
Speaker 1: He had become interested in filmmaking as an art form
Speaker 1: and wanted to see what she could do crafting films herself. Now,
Speaker 1: remember this is an age dominated by films that are
Speaker 1: less than one minute long. They're mostly like documentaries about
Speaker 1: people getting off a boat, you know. Yeah, So that
Speaker 1: year in eighteen, Gee got Gomant to let her use
Speaker 1: the company's equipment to direct her own feature, to direct
Speaker 1: a roughly one minute film of her own called The
Speaker 1: Cabbage Fairy or Lafe oh Shoe on her lunch break.
Speaker 1: This is she made. So she made the movie at lunch.
Speaker 1: And this film involves this beaming fairy woman in a
Speaker 1: gated garden pulling real babies out of giant heads of cabbage.
Speaker 1: It's pretty creepy. There is something I think captivating about it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it doesn't have much of a plot,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't take my eyes off it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: watched this as well that he and this was definitely
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and uh yeah, it's it's pretty captivating and
Speaker 1: kind of predicts the popularity of cabbage patrick kids later on. Oh,
Speaker 1: I hadn't even thought about that. So this is sometimes
Speaker 1: cited as the first fictional film. I do think that's
Speaker 1: debatable because why doesn't the Sprinkler sprinkled from eight count
Speaker 1: I think, and he doesn't. That doesn't contain a specative element, right,
Speaker 1: that's true, Whereas you know, babies coming out of Cabbage.
Speaker 1: That's clearly that is exactly what I was about to say.
Speaker 1: Whatever one comes down to on that question whether it's
Speaker 1: the first fictional film, it did occur to me. Is
Speaker 1: this the first ever fantasy film? It's possible I'm missing something,
Speaker 1: but I can't find an earlier example. Uh, And the
Speaker 1: films you see most often cited as the earliest fantasy
Speaker 1: films are films by a filmmaker we're about to talk
Speaker 1: about named George milliais from like nineteen o two. So
Speaker 1: this is much earlier than that. Unless somebody can provide
Speaker 1: a counter example, I'm going to say that this is
Speaker 1: the first fantasy film ever made. The Cabbage Ferry. Now,
Speaker 1: what was the date on Edison's um Frankenstein adaptation, nineteen ten? Alright,
Speaker 1: so she's still beat him way after Yeah, that's way
Speaker 1: after Milliers though. That is worth a look, especially looking
Speaker 1: Frankenstein monster there, especially given what you know about Edison.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a metaphor um. But so anyway, Alice
Speaker 1: Ky the Cabbage Ferry. Based on her success in directing
Speaker 1: The Cabach Ferry, g went on to direct and produce
Speaker 1: more films, and she was eventually made the head of
Speaker 1: production when Gomant's company transitioned from being a technical camera
Speaker 1: and equipment business into a full fledged film studio. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting how you see this transition happening over and
Speaker 1: over again with like with Edison, with Lumierer, with Gomant,
Speaker 1: you know, like people get into the film business and
Speaker 1: then they're like, I don't want to be just on
Speaker 1: the technical side. I want to be making movies. So
Speaker 1: he directed hundreds of films, and she oversaw the production
Speaker 1: of hundreds more. Perhaps her most famous film, and the
Speaker 1: best remembered one, is one from nineteen o six called
Speaker 1: The Life of Christ. Of course, it is a silent
Speaker 1: retelling of the life of Jesus. It's a little over
Speaker 1: thirty minutes long. And I watched some scenes from it,
Speaker 1: for example, the scene where Mary Magdalen watches the feet
Speaker 1: of Christ, and I watched the crucifixion scene, and it's
Speaker 1: beautiful film in any ways, like the sets and the
Speaker 1: costumes and the staging are wonderful for nineteen o six.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o seven, she married a Gauman camera operator
Speaker 1: named Herbert Blache, and she became Alice G. Blache, And
Speaker 1: after that the two of them traveled to the United States,
Speaker 1: where Alice founded a new film production company of her
Speaker 1: own in New York called the Soulas Company, and so
Speaker 1: g Blache was prolific over the course of for her career,
Speaker 1: she wrote, directed, and produced more than a thousand movies,
Speaker 1: sometimes like three movies a week. The last movie she
Speaker 1: made was in nineteen twenty. She died in New Jersey
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. Unfortunately, most of her films, like
Speaker 1: many films of this era, have been lost, so we
Speaker 1: can't go back now and watch them. For a long time,
Speaker 1: it seems g Blache was left out of many film histories,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about there, so there'd be histories
Speaker 1: of the period that just didn't really mention her some did.
Speaker 1: I want to say that there have been some people
Speaker 1: I've read saying that she was like completely forgotten until
Speaker 1: recent years, and that's not entirely true, but it does
Speaker 1: seem that her role in the history of film has
Speaker 1: been grossly under emphasized, and it does seem now that
Speaker 1: there's sort of a revival in attention to her story
Speaker 1: in the past few years, including I was looking. There
Speaker 1: was a documentary film about her that came out in
Speaker 1: teen called be Natural narrated by Jodie Foster, and I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the movie, but I like the title because
Speaker 1: I think the title comes from another thing I've read
Speaker 1: about her, which is that in her studio she hung
Speaker 1: up a sign urging actors to be natural, which is
Speaker 1: kind of hilarious if you think about the other staged
Speaker 1: films from this time, such as those of the great
Speaker 1: George Milliers, with all these wild exaggerated gestures and movements
Speaker 1: in them, you know, which, which really I think was
Speaker 1: a benefit to those films, because I mean, you're dealing
Speaker 1: with you're so far far removed from from capturing a
Speaker 1: natural performance. Yeah, there's no sound, right, there's no sound,
Speaker 1: So yes, like scream and contort your face as much
Speaker 1: as possible because you're you really almost have to shout
Speaker 1: through the limitations of the medium. Yeah. So, to quote
Speaker 1: again from Wheeler Winston Dixon, the scholar who called her
Speaker 1: the foremost pioneer of cinema. UH. Dixon also argues, quote,
Speaker 1: she's basically the first person to make a film with
Speaker 1: the plot, the first person to use color, and this
Speaker 1: wasn't color photography, this would mean hand tinted films. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also the first person to use the chronophone process,
Speaker 1: which was an early sound on film method that, like
Speaker 1: the other one we mentioned earlier, it did not commercially
Speaker 1: take off for a while. Again, sound on film didn't
Speaker 1: become mainstream until the late nineteen twenties. Yeah, but she's
Speaker 1: she's looking ahead though, she kind of sees the future
Speaker 1: and ultimately the whole idea of asking the actors to
Speaker 1: be natural. I mean that's the same thing nowadays. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, well a lot of movies, certainly in your
Speaker 1: more um, you know, serious dramatic pieces like that's where
Speaker 1: the focus is. You want to capture all the emotional
Speaker 1: nuance of her performance, and she saw that when others
Speaker 1: did not. Yeah, these early films were very well, again,
Speaker 1: they were still it was still the spirit of spectacle
Speaker 1: in a way. They were very stagy, you know, these
Speaker 1: huge motions, not to capture any kind of nuance of
Speaker 1: the characters, but but more in the spirit of vaudeville,
Speaker 1: exaggerated motions to to really draw the eye and engage
Speaker 1: people and not ask them to to like very boldly
Speaker 1: telegraph everything to avoid subtlety. Right, Because another thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that the medium is ultimately going
Speaker 1: to change the way that you can. You can bring
Speaker 1: an actor's performance alive, like it's gonna make those really
Speaker 1: close tense, studied the scenes of an actor's facial expressions
Speaker 1: possible in ways that a stage production never would. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these these earlier films were generally more like stage productions.
Speaker 1: They I mean, they usually didn't have things like close ups.
Speaker 1: Right now, I think maybe we should take another break,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we will discuss another
Speaker 1: better known but also genuinely amazing and influential early film pioneer. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, So let's let's go to the moon. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think we should. Uh so. One of the most
Speaker 1: important people in the transition from film as straightforward recording
Speaker 1: of documentary spectacle to longer narrative form is George Milliers,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen sixty one to nineteen thirty eight. And
Speaker 1: even if you don't know much about early film history,
Speaker 1: you are probably still a little bit familiar with Maliais
Speaker 1: through his nineteen o two film The Voyage Don Laloon,
Speaker 1: or A Trip to the Moon, in which some learned
Speaker 1: astronomers dressed like goobery wizards fly to the Moon in
Speaker 1: a giant artillery shell. They land there, they meet some
Speaker 1: moon men, they smash them with umbrellas and make them explode,
Speaker 1: They capture a moon being, and then they travel back home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the plot. Yeah, and yeah, I think everyone out
Speaker 1: there either you have seen this in its entirety, then
Speaker 1: you have seen allusions to it, right, or you've seen
Speaker 1: did the Smashing Pumpkins I think, had a music video
Speaker 1: that that they utilize a lot of the visuals from
Speaker 1: this picture. Well, the most famous image from it is
Speaker 1: something you've probably seen this, the one where the ship
Speaker 1: lands on the Moon and there's a close up of
Speaker 1: the moon which has a human face and the so
Speaker 1: there are special effects that do a do a cut
Speaker 1: to make the ship smash into the face and then
Speaker 1: the face looks very displeased. And so A Trip to
Speaker 1: the Moon is just still excellent to watch today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just really kind of whack a doodle to watch
Speaker 1: because it's it's not quite it's certainly not a film
Speaker 1: of play, but there is a sense of it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a film, a film spectacle, like there are
Speaker 1: these these scenes on but that you're presented with where
Speaker 1: you're just there's there's something fantasmagoric about it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and only thirteen minutes long, very short time. Now it's
Speaker 1: like it's really the perfect film for today's attention span.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't Malia's only film, of course. I mean
Speaker 1: he made all kinds of stuff. He was another great
Speaker 1: pioneer in early film production. And I like that you
Speaker 1: say that it does incorporate more of that tradition of spectacle,
Speaker 1: because there are some things about him that I think
Speaker 1: will explain that now. Like Ghi Blache, he was one
Speaker 1: of the first to see the storytelling potential of film
Speaker 1: as a medium. In the mid eight nineties, Maliais was
Speaker 1: a stage magician and a theater director in Paris. And also,
Speaker 1: like Gi Blush, he was present for the earliest demonstrations
Speaker 1: of the Loumier Brothers. So when they're showing this thing
Speaker 1: on the wall, Loomier Brothers are like, check out our cinematograph,
Speaker 1: and multiple members are the of the audience are like,
Speaker 1: I can do this. I can make a career at this,
Speaker 1: or or he's probably thinking I could do better that.
Speaker 1: You're just filming people leaving a factory. I could build
Speaker 1: you a set, I could perform you for you an illusion,
Speaker 1: I can make you a cabbage ferry, and you know,
Speaker 1: I can take you to the moon and so Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when Mallier saw what the Loumier's camera and projector
Speaker 1: could do, he pretty much immediately imagined the potential of
Speaker 1: the medium. He acquired a camera of his own, He
Speaker 1: founded a film studio which I've seen described as like
Speaker 1: a giant glass house to let in as much light
Speaker 1: as possible bowl for filming, and he started making movies
Speaker 1: and millias. In a way brought the spirit of a
Speaker 1: stage magician to the technology of the movie camera. He
Speaker 1: employed trickery, and that is one thing that he really
Speaker 1: revolutionized about early film. He pioneered many kinds of editing
Speaker 1: techniques and in camera special effects that are inspired by
Speaker 1: the tricks that stage magicians would use. Yeah, the trickery
Speaker 1: is so essential to the filmmaking process. We we lose
Speaker 1: sight of it, Like I I really had, I lose
Speaker 1: sight of that aspect until I'm find myself explaining films
Speaker 1: to my son who asked, like, how did they do that?
Speaker 1: How did this? You know, how the skexies disappear in
Speaker 1: this scene? Or you know, how did this happen? How
Speaker 1: did that the special effect occur? And then I have
Speaker 1: to stop and break it down a little bit like, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a trick. They stopped filming and then
Speaker 1: they move things around and then they start filming. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, explanations of that manner. But yeah, they are
Speaker 1: all essentially based in tricking the audience into thinking something
Speaker 1: happened that didn't happen. Well, I'm sorry, I've forgotten the
Speaker 1: source on this because I this is a story I
Speaker 1: remember from years ago. But I think there is a
Speaker 1: story that Malia's told that, you know, that he discovered
Speaker 1: the possibilities of for special effects when one day, like
Speaker 1: he was filming something and then he just stopped while
Speaker 1: he was and then he started filming again, and then
Speaker 1: when he watched it played back, there was a jump cut,
Speaker 1: and he you know, that was like, oh, oh, I
Speaker 1: can just transition from one thing immediately to another if
Speaker 1: I stopped working the camera and then started up with
Speaker 1: something different in place, and it's like magic. It's like
Speaker 1: something disappears and appears somewhere else. That's so obvious to us. Now,
Speaker 1: who you know, we're familiar with movie special effects. It's
Speaker 1: hard for us to appreciate how revolutionary of an insight
Speaker 1: that was, right, and it would make sense that a
Speaker 1: magician would see it like who's whose trade depends on misdirection?
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, and and also playing with expectations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Malias was the first great special effects wizard.
Speaker 1: He used all kinds of tricks. He pioneered a double exposures,
Speaker 1: you know, where you would run the film through the
Speaker 1: camera twice and the second time it would also pick
Speaker 1: up a trace of an image. One would be like
Speaker 1: would come through stronger on the film than the other.
Speaker 1: But you know, you could do all kinds of interesting
Speaker 1: special effects like that. He used jump cut editing like
Speaker 1: we were just talking about. And his movies are generally
Speaker 1: still pretty wonderful to behold. There was a nineteen o
Speaker 1: one film he did called The Man with the Rubber
Speaker 1: Head that I watched earlier today. And in this film,
Speaker 1: Maliais uses special effects to make duplicates of his own
Speaker 1: severed head, which he then inflates with the furnace pump
Speaker 1: until it explodes. And I believe from reading about his
Speaker 1: films he also put an emphasis on music. Yes, like
Speaker 1: having like like having some form of live music present
Speaker 1: to fully bring the production alive. But this was still
Speaker 1: the silent film era, so there was no sound on film.
Speaker 1: The film would not have a dead catered soundtrack that
Speaker 1: went along with it, unless like you know, you had
Speaker 1: like a score written out and had to say, okay,
Speaker 1: give this to the piano player in the theater or something,
Speaker 1: or in some cases I believe there would be like
Speaker 1: recommendations like here, here's a song you can play for
Speaker 1: this particular this particular short film. Uh. And it's the
Speaker 1: case of a trip to the Moon. Makes me think
Speaker 1: about an interesting modern phenomenon with early film, which is
Speaker 1: this thing I've encountered several times of rescoring old silent
Speaker 1: films or films that were made with older soundtracks by
Speaker 1: modern musicians. And I really am interested in this phenomenon
Speaker 1: and I like it. I want more bands to create,
Speaker 1: you know, a track synchronized to a voyage to the Moon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not enough of them do it. Um. Of course that
Speaker 1: Air did a soundtrack to a Voyage of the Moon
Speaker 1: two thousand twelves le Voyage downs La Luna, which I
Speaker 1: remember when it came out, And because because I love Air,
Speaker 1: air terrific act Um and I remember liking it at
Speaker 1: the time. I haven't listened to it a lot. I
Speaker 1: haven't heard it. It's a good um that. But that
Speaker 1: being said, I have not listened to the album synced
Speaker 1: with the movie itself. I see. I know people have
Speaker 1: done this with In fact, I've watched more than one
Speaker 1: modern rescoring of Metropolis, the Fritz Long movie, which is
Speaker 1: of course you know, it doesn't have its own sound
Speaker 1: and it's this, but it's different because it's like a
Speaker 1: long uh science fiction feature for it is a full
Speaker 1: full feature. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Marouder the French electronic artiste,
Speaker 1: which I remember like getting into. I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch Metropolis. I'm gonna use this score. And
Speaker 1: I really wanted to like it more than I did,
Speaker 1: so I ended up just playing a bunch of Kraft
Speaker 1: Work over it instead of anything that had been you know,
Speaker 1: there was a dedicated composition for Metropolis, and I have
Speaker 1: to say kraftworked worked really well. I think Auto Bond
Speaker 1: did a good one too. Um. But various folks have
Speaker 1: covered Metropolis over the years. I found one that was
Speaker 1: really interesting by a group called the New Pollutants, and uh,
Speaker 1: they did a pretty cool rescore of it that's as
Speaker 1: of this recording fully available on YouTube is from Like,
Speaker 1: I think I may have actually watched it with this
Speaker 1: soundtrack before I've watched it with multiple soundtracks. Another one
Speaker 1: that comes to mind that you you brought this one
Speaker 1: up Dracula, which was not a silent film, but it
Speaker 1: has been rescored. Yeah. Uh, this one was by Philip
Speaker 1: Glass and the most famous performance was by the Chronos Quartet.
Speaker 1: And then uh. Of some other silent films that have
Speaker 1: been rescored many times include The Passion of Joan of
Speaker 1: arc From and of course nineteen twenties the Cabinet of
Speaker 1: Dr Caligari. And I think that that one great creepy felt,
Speaker 1: great creepy film with some wonderful like you know, surreal
Speaker 1: German sets and the German expression this period. The sets
Speaker 1: are not designed to be realistic, you know they they
Speaker 1: they are all these bizarre sharp angles. I remember a scene,
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm imagining this. I remember a scene where
Speaker 1: somebody sits on the stool is just way too tall
Speaker 1: to be a stool. But yeah, I would love to
Speaker 1: see more of this sort of exercise with films. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you're an electronic artist or any kind of
Speaker 1: musician out there, and you like these old films as well,
Speaker 1: score some George Melia's yes, and then tell us about
Speaker 1: it and we will we will promote it on the show.
Speaker 1: Or score some Alice sky Blache. That would be cool too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's probably gonna be just like part of a track,
Speaker 1: right for most of this, well, for the early ones
Speaker 1: it well, I mean, like so the Cabbage Ferry is
Speaker 1: less than a minute long, but of course along her career,
Speaker 1: films got longer. In the films she made got longer.
Speaker 1: But I could see that could also be a worthwhile experiment,
Speaker 1: like what can you do with a really short film,
Speaker 1: like what you know, what can you apply to it
Speaker 1: musically to really bring it to life? Especially for modern viewers.
Speaker 1: All Right, so we've talked a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: how just how effective films are and manipulating our cognitive functions,
Speaker 1: because because that's ultimately the thing about it, right, when
Speaker 1: you watch certainly a great film or even a good
Speaker 1: film or even a bad film that has something captivating
Speaker 1: about it, like it is captivating, it takes over your mind.
Speaker 1: It takes over your thought processes, like it it becomes
Speaker 1: your new site. It uh, it becomes reality for your brain. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have the expression that you can become lost in
Speaker 1: a film and lost in a narrative, and of course
Speaker 1: that's a metaphor, but to some degree it's kind of
Speaker 1: a little bit literally correct. I mean, at least in
Speaker 1: the mental sense that, Uh, there's often while you're watching
Speaker 1: a film some degree of distance where you're sort of
Speaker 1: going in and out of being there with the characters
Speaker 1: and then having a thought that's disconnected. But there are
Speaker 1: times when you just disappear. You just become the narrative.
Speaker 1: You just become a part of it. Your whole consciousness
Speaker 1: is the character within the narrative. And films do this
Speaker 1: in a way that I think, uh, it's even more seamless,
Speaker 1: and it's easier for it to happen with films than
Speaker 1: it is with something that that requires more cognitive effort,
Speaker 1: like like reading a text. Narrative. Yeah, I mean, well, also,
Speaker 1: the film, a really good film, certainly a modern film
Speaker 1: is going to employ music, it's going to employ visuals.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's it's really using our most powerful
Speaker 1: senses and uh, and and and changing the way you know,
Speaker 1: the way we're viewing the world, at least for a
Speaker 1: short period of time. So I was looking into this
Speaker 1: little bit and I was reading the Science of Cinematic
Speaker 1: Perception on the OSCARS website. They the OSCARS website has
Speaker 1: a wonderful um overview of a series of of lectures
Speaker 1: that they that they hosted. I didn't even though they
Speaker 1: did features and stuff. Yeah, yeah, and this one was
Speaker 1: a pretty cool and this one, UM, this one involved
Speaker 1: a series like basically you had professional researchers in in
Speaker 1: film and cognition and then they were paired on stage
Speaker 1: with various directors and filmmakers and sort of film world experts,
Speaker 1: and they talked about you know what what the evidence
Speaker 1: uh you know said about the psychological the neurological effects
Speaker 1: of film. Um. For instance, that some of the lectures
Speaker 1: included Tim J. Smith, a senior lecturer and psychological sciences
Speaker 1: at Brokeback University of London who specializes in the study
Speaker 1: of visual cognition, as well as your Ree Hassan Oh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: an associate professor of psychology and Neurosciences at Princeton University
Speaker 1: who used f m R I to look at how
Speaker 1: we view films. We've talked about Rehassen before on Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. I think we discussed him in
Speaker 1: part two of our episode about about against narratives. So Hassen,
Speaker 1: for instance, they pointed out observed that showing uh, the
Speaker 1: movie Dog Day Afternoon from engaged sixty three to seventy
Speaker 1: three of a viewer's brain, well, that's a good one
Speaker 1: to use. Dog Day Afternoon will engage seventy three percent
Speaker 1: of my entire body. Well, and it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very well made movie with you know,
Speaker 1: a great pacing to it. But but yeah, it just
Speaker 1: shows like how you know, how well it captivates this up.
Speaker 1: You know, some other things that came up in this,
Speaker 1: in this article and in these lectures that there's some
Speaker 1: connection between blinks and cuts, and between our blinks and
Speaker 1: the character's blinks. James Cutting, chair of the Department of
Speaker 1: Psychology at Cornell University, has tracked the downward trajectory in
Speaker 1: average shot duration, which he says has been quote consistent
Speaker 1: and uninterrupted since the silent era. Oh yeah, this is
Speaker 1: so films used to have longer uninterrupted shots. You just
Speaker 1: have the camera trained on something without cutting away and
Speaker 1: the cuts are getting faster and faster on the whole.
Speaker 1: Now you still sign plenty of you know, smaller films
Speaker 1: are art art films especially that will really go for
Speaker 1: those long, uh drawn out scenes. But for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 1: everything gets flashier and flashier. I mean, if you've seen
Speaker 1: like a battle scene in Game of Thrones, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about. Yeah, or heck, I feel
Speaker 1: like everything is more laid back there. If you watch
Speaker 1: something like a Transformers movie or a modern teage Mutant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles movie, it's like, I don't even know what's happening.
Speaker 1: It's just a million things happening a second. It's just
Speaker 1: bombarding the eyes and the brain, constant changes. Um. Some
Speaker 1: more findings, this one, according to Jeffrey M. Zach's, a
Speaker 1: psychologist and neuroscientists, found that scenes from the film's step
Speaker 1: Mom Sophie's Choice and oddly enough The Ring to The
Speaker 1: Ring too. I don't know why the Ring too, and
Speaker 1: not that I mean the Ring. The first Ring, the
Speaker 1: first American Ring film, is terrific and probably one of
Speaker 1: my favorite horror films. Second One is a sequel to
Speaker 1: a great film. The Second One takes everything that's scary
Speaker 1: in the first one and makes it funny. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's sort of interesting. I remember, I mainly
Speaker 1: just remember being kind of boring and at times wet,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of water and interest. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty wet, I mean. But but anyway, he's got that,
Speaker 1: he's got that creepy girl scamper like a cockroach all
Speaker 1: over the place. Yeah. Well, that in and of itself
Speaker 1: is good, I guess. But at any rate, scenes from
Speaker 1: these films were shown to individuals in FM or I,
Speaker 1: and it was found to produce quote complex responses deep
Speaker 1: within the brain and generated activity beyond normal cognitive levels. So,
Speaker 1: as much as we might harp on the ring to
Speaker 1: the the idea is that when you're watching it, it
Speaker 1: can engage your mind more than most things in life.
Speaker 1: And then another one that is no, I mean, we
Speaker 1: are profoundly familiar with having deep thoughts about bad movies.
Speaker 1: We talk about this all the time. Absolutely, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I'm probably I feel like I'm more engaged with a
Speaker 1: with a good bad film with a you know, It's
Speaker 1: part of it is like is the movie doing the
Speaker 1: thinking for me? Or am I left to do the thinking?
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's the latter example that produces the most
Speaker 1: brain activity. I think you're right about that. And then
Speaker 1: one more bit from this UH from this article, in
Speaker 1: this UH this lecture series, Talma Hendler, founder and director
Speaker 1: of the Functional Brain Center at Tel Aviv Saurowski Medical Center,
Speaker 1: has found that certain scenes from Black Swan this is
Speaker 1: of course the surreal kind of horror movie about Ballerina's
Speaker 1: is it during Aronofsky starring Natalie Portman, right, Yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of a kind of a Susperia feel to it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Hindler found UH that watching certain scenes from this
Speaker 1: UH would produce quote results that Hindler compared to a
Speaker 1: schizophrenia like state with the cognitive and emotional centers of
Speaker 1: the brain operating dramatically in and out of sync. Well
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting. I mean, so one thing I
Speaker 1: think we could say from this that movies do is
Speaker 1: in a way, they produce a slightly altered state of consciousness,
Speaker 1: which also, of course some drugs do. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a whole thing about like people taking a psychoactive or
Speaker 1: psychogenic drugs to produce some effects. It's somewhat mirror aspects
Speaker 1: of psychosis in many cases, people you know, like intentionally
Speaker 1: do things to their brains that they wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be like stuck with or unable to turn off, but
Speaker 1: like they'll experiment with them in a in a controlled setting.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if visual storytelling like film can also
Speaker 1: be considered a form of that. Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you think of like, for instance, just really
Speaker 1: interesting examples of psychedelic cinema. You know how some examples
Speaker 1: of psychedelic cinema are just you know, bad movies trying
Speaker 1: to cash you on on whatever the psychedelic craze was
Speaker 1: at the time, certainly like in the sixties or or
Speaker 1: or even in the seventies. But but then you have
Speaker 1: those examples where they're really like playing with your perceptions
Speaker 1: of reality in a way that feels more authentic and
Speaker 1: is ultimately more upsetting. Um and and you can you
Speaker 1: point to various examples of this. I mean even two
Speaker 1: thousand and one A Space Odyssey. You know that that's
Speaker 1: a film that really kind of messes with your perception
Speaker 1: of reality, not in terms of like thinking about the
Speaker 1: nature of reality, but just like purely the way that
Speaker 1: you're experiencing the film. One of my favorites, definitely, And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to hear Robert and I talk more
Speaker 1: about two thousand one of Space. Obviously, we have a
Speaker 1: whole episode of stuff to blow your mind about it,
Speaker 1: you can go look up. I want to come back
Speaker 1: just briefly though, too. You know we're talking earlier about
Speaker 1: how all the tools of filmmaking were not developed at once,
Speaker 1: so they would develop gradually over time. I wanted to
Speaker 1: just run through one quick example of this and that.
Speaker 1: For that, I want to talk about the jump scare.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, so one of the best. Joe Joe, describe
Speaker 1: a good jump scare to to our listeners in case
Speaker 1: they're not familiar. Okay, So a little bit of tension
Speaker 1: building goes on. This is usually aided by a character
Speaker 1: being a I mean, it can be anything, but I'll
Speaker 1: paint one for you. A character is left alone in
Speaker 1: a horror movie. Nothing all that dangerous has happened in
Speaker 1: a while, so the audience is guard is up. They
Speaker 1: think maybe something's about to happen. A character is alone
Speaker 1: in a house, wandering around, asking is anybody there? Hello? Hello.
Speaker 1: The music is not in full force, maybe it's tinkling
Speaker 1: a little bit on the little you know, and then
Speaker 1: the character opens the closet and a cat jumps out,
Speaker 1: not only a jump scare, but a cat scare. The
Speaker 1: cat scare is the classic jump scare because it's because
Speaker 1: something suddenly happens. There's a blast of music, something flies
Speaker 1: at the camera and h and then oh, it's just
Speaker 1: just a cat. So I mean, it's it's wonderful because
Speaker 1: that we've talked about on on some of our shows before,
Speaker 1: that that when you're scared in a film and then
Speaker 1: that that that scare is deflated, like you realize it's
Speaker 1: not a threat after all. Like that is that that
Speaker 1: that is one of the pivotal um, you know, emotional
Speaker 1: roller coaster experiences that you have in watching a film.
Speaker 1: But but when we look at the history of the
Speaker 1: jump scare, I was looking around and it seems like
Speaker 1: the first jump scare that we really have was probably
Speaker 1: the luten Bus scene in Cat People from ninety forty two.
Speaker 1: This okay, so this is just very similar to what
Speaker 1: you just described actually except no, no, no, not no,
Speaker 1: not completely. But basically you have a female character walking
Speaker 1: down this this superbly darkly lit street. Like the use
Speaker 1: of shadows in this movie is phenomenal, especially for the time.
Speaker 1: And uh, and you're just getting a little more tense,
Speaker 1: a little more tense, and then a bus pulls up
Speaker 1: and it just scares the hell out of you. Like
Speaker 1: I watched it on YouTube, you can kind of find
Speaker 1: the scene isolated on YouTube. I watched it before I
Speaker 1: came in here, and it got me. It It legitimately
Speaker 1: gave me a fright, even though it's just a bus.
Speaker 1: It doesn't hit her or anything. It just comes out
Speaker 1: of nowhere and it's a surprise. And then she, you know,
Speaker 1: she boards it or whatever, just sudden and loud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a famous scene for this purpose.
Speaker 1: But after this film, you see other jump scare sprinkled
Speaker 1: across the decades that followed. But jump scare mania doesn't
Speaker 1: really kick into the nineteen eighties. It's almost as if
Speaker 1: it's not till the eighties that you have enough filmmakers
Speaker 1: who realize, oh, this is this is some potent magic.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just overuse the hell out of this. And
Speaker 1: then of course it becomes a cliche and then becomes
Speaker 1: a hated cliche. Can I tell you one of my
Speaker 1: favorite examples of the hated cliche jump scare. It's the
Speaker 1: mirror scare. How many movies is this in? Some horror
Speaker 1: directors picked up on it, I think sometime in the
Speaker 1: like nineties to two thousands. They're like, Oh, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be great to have something suddenly appear behind somebody in
Speaker 1: a mirror? Or of course they or it's the medical
Speaker 1: cabinet exactly, Yeah, the medicine cabinet, mirror of somebody looks
Speaker 1: inside the medicine cabinet. If you you're in a horror movie,
Speaker 1: somebody looks inside, sees what pills are in there or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then they close the medicine cabinet, you've got a
Speaker 1: nine nine percent chance that when it closes there's something
Speaker 1: creepy in the mirror. Either the person's face looking back
Speaker 1: at them isn't really their face and it's all distorted
Speaker 1: and scary, or there's somebody looking at them over their
Speaker 1: shoulder or something like that, and then you're throw in
Speaker 1: a nice pearl the sound effect, and and just to
Speaker 1: drive at home. Yeah, I mean, at the same time,
Speaker 1: if we start really thinking and there are these other
Speaker 1: sort of counter examples of jump scares done really well,
Speaker 1: I mean Alfred Hitchcock, he has jumped scares. Um. John
Speaker 1: Carpenter has some really nice jump scares that shot to
Speaker 1: show up a time or two, such as Prints of Darkness.
Speaker 1: It has a wonderful jump scare with a mirror that
Speaker 1: kind of plays with the format of b oh Man,
Speaker 1: I Love Friends of Darkness. It's an unpopular opinion. That's
Speaker 1: that's in my top three John Carpenter movies. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but but again. Yeah, the jump scare is just one
Speaker 1: of so many examples of cinematic techniques tricks, and it's
Speaker 1: it's probably ultimately more of like a a an obnoxious
Speaker 1: one to bring out because there's so many other tricks
Speaker 1: that we don't even think of is being tricks. We
Speaker 1: don't say it's only because it's gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where it kind of irritates its at times that we
Speaker 1: can even single it out. But every film we watch
Speaker 1: is just a non stop barrage of tricks. One of
Speaker 1: the things that bugs me the most about myself is
Speaker 1: when I catch myself using cliches, and I know I
Speaker 1: use them all the time. Everybody does. Everybody talks in cliches.
Speaker 1: It's just it happens effortlessly, automatically they just come out
Speaker 1: of you and you don't know where they came from. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I try to cut them out. When I catch
Speaker 1: myself using a cliche and speech, I always kind of
Speaker 1: WinCE and I'm like, I'll try not to do that again,
Speaker 1: but there's no way to stop it. And in films
Speaker 1: there are also they're they're like visual cliches, like the
Speaker 1: mirror scare, but there's a zillion of them, you know there,
Speaker 1: You see them, and they're invisible to you because they're
Speaker 1: so common, but they just pass right over you. You
Speaker 1: don't stop to notice how frequently you've been exposed to one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fool me once. Shame on, you fool
Speaker 1: me for three hours straight. Well, I guess it's my fault.
Speaker 1: But if I enjoyed the picture, I'm happy being fooled.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's interesting that these like film cliches,
Speaker 1: are not they're not just artistic laziness. A lot of
Speaker 1: them also come out of the material realities of making
Speaker 1: a film, Like, Uh, film cliches happened because of what
Speaker 1: filmmakers can do with the techniques they have, and like
Speaker 1: what's cheap to do and that kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: same way that I think often verbal cliches come out
Speaker 1: of our mouths because we might suddenly find ourselves limited
Speaker 1: to have limited in vocabulary. Right. But to come back
Speaker 1: to the jump scare, Yes, it's overused in films these days,
Speaker 1: but a good jump scare still works, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: like it for getting a viewer that's watching it by
Speaker 1: themselves on their iPhone at work, or an entire audience,
Speaker 1: an entire theaters audience, uh, they're watching it together. And
Speaker 1: so I mean you might say it's good as gold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you're it's almost foolish to resist at least
Speaker 1: one good jumps here. I'm not saying, you know, back
Speaker 1: to back, but you kind of you kind of gotta
Speaker 1: one in there, I feel. Look, I don't begrudge that
Speaker 1: horror horror filmmaker one or two good jump scares. You
Speaker 1: just can't build a whole film out of them. Well
Speaker 1: that's what we say, but I think the box office
Speaker 1: probably probably says otherwise. And I would say, also, if
Speaker 1: you're a horror filmmaker and you want to put a
Speaker 1: cat scare in your film, don't make it an orangutang scare. Instead,
Speaker 1: just hav an orangutang jump out of the closet and
Speaker 1: then like scampered down the hallway and have it never
Speaker 1: addressed again like that. Okay, I guess this must this
Speaker 1: must mean we're done. I think so yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we have not. We've not given you an exhaustive history
Speaker 1: of of cinema here. That was, of course, but we've
Speaker 1: but hopefully we've given you like a grounding in where
Speaker 1: the motion picture came from, how it emerges from these
Speaker 1: other visual technological UM traditions that came before it, and
Speaker 1: in a sense of just why it is so pervasive,
Speaker 1: why it is so potent, and why we we continue
Speaker 1: to worship at the theater. Do you have early favorite
Speaker 1: films or early favorite filmmakers that we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: in today's episode. If so, let us know. I want
Speaker 1: to hear what else is out there. Absolutely, your thoughts
Speaker 1: on jump scares, your thoughts on pairing um, you know,
Speaker 1: new scores with old films. Anything we discussed in here
Speaker 1: is fair game. In the meantime, if you want more
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention while you can find us wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. We also have a website. It is
Speaker 1: invention pod dot com. You can go there and see
Speaker 1: the various topics we've been discussing. As always, the best
Speaker 1: way to support the show is to make sure you
Speaker 1: have subscribed to it and then write and review it
Speaker 1: wherever you have the power to do so. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: to our friends Scott Benjamin for research assistance on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and thanks to our excellent audio producer Torry Harrison. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at cont act at invention pod dot com.
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