Film Studies Daily Log

Wednesday, February 2

We watched "Winsor McCay and his Animated Pictures," then discussed the frame-by-frame construction which is shared by animation and all cinema and which enabled special effects trickery to proliferate in cinema's earliest years. We watched two of the 500 magic-show-influenced films which Georges Melies made at the turn of the twentieth century ("The Living Playing Cards" and "The Mermaid"), "That Fatal Sneeze"from the Hepworth firm, and finally "Onesieme the Clockmaker," a French comic tour de force which uses undercranking to speed up the pace of life.

HW due Thursday:
Prepare for a quiz over the packet on early cinema. Don't obsess over minor details, but do read the packet carefully.