Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Blog #3
Referring to Marilyn Fabe's essay, "The Beginnings of Film Narrative: D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation" describe three characteristics of early film, using at least two scenes from Edwin Porter's Jack and the Beanstalk (1902). Where (and how) does Porter attempt to develop cohesive spatial and temporal relations between shots?
Using at least two scenes from D.W. Griffith's The Girl and Her Trust (1912) and Fabe's essay, describe how Griffith's use of the cross-cut and setting impacts the film's realism and storytelling capabilities.
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Some of Griffith’s early techniques are used in Edwin Porter’s Jack and the Beanstalk. The first one would be the Mise-en-scene, and you can tell that Porter has this because he chose costumes for the characters to wear. Porter also had painted background, an example can be the scene where Jack is climbing up the beanstalk and in the background there are mountains painted. Another characteristic is the enframed image, and that is when there is a close-up on one of the character’s or a long shot that is showing what is going on. Most of Jack and the Beanstalk was in a long shot frame. Another technique that Fabe describes that Griffith used was Editing. The match cut, which was the smooth transition from one shot to the next, was something hard to accomplish back in the early 1900’s. In the film you could notice when there was transition because the frame would “jump”.
The cross-cut was used very efficiently in this film. I’m going to use the scene in the beginning of the film, because I thought the transition with the cross-cut was clean. It shows the girl thinking about what to do after she got kissed, and then it goes to the guy thinking about if maybe he should apologize or maybe he should leave. It’s interesting to see how it first started back in the early 1900’s. It also does a good job telling the story with the bad guys when there hiding. The cross-cut is showing the bad guys and then going to the guy and girl talking about how there is no danger around there. The setting in the country makes it feel very real because unlike Jack and the Beanstalk, it doesn’t have any painted backgrounds.
Robert Aldrich
Porter's film, "Jack and the Beanstalk" has very many characteristics of early film according to Marilyn Fabe's essay, "D.W. Griffith's: The Birth of a Nation". For example, the first shot is very long, as described in the essay. A characteristic of early film is long shots, often as long as 90 seconds. This is exemplified in most of the scenes in this film, but specifically the first one. Another prevalent characteristic of early film in this essay is that the camera is at a fixed distance from the action. For example, the scene in the bedroom when the girl is sleeping shows all of the action very far from the camera. It is also a "long shot", meaning the human fills only a small portion of the lower quadrant of the shot. Another characteristic of early film exemplified in that scene is the ambiguity of the story line. It is very difficult for the viewer to understand the significance of the birds in the bedroom. To develop cohesive spatial and temporal relations between shots, Porter uses an effect that fades each scene to a black screen.
Cross-cut is used in "A Girl and Her Trust" when the train arrives. We understand that he is leaving the room inside because we have already seen that the train is pulling up outdoors simultaneously. The setting also makes the film more realistic because the train is set outdoors instead of on an indoor set.
As Fabe points out, early films were strictly silent, thus a director could not use dialogue to enhance a scene. Another aspect of early film was the use of a static, fixed-distance camera, which is evident in the scene of Edwin Porter’s Jack and the Beanstalk in which Jack trades the cow for the magic beans. Greater emotional meaning could have been added to the scene if the viewer could see Jack’s face more clearly during the transaction, but early film techniques did not allow this. Early films also featured cuts between scenes that were temporally and spatially inaccurate. However, Porter attempts to create cohesive temporal and spatial relationships. For example, when Jack comes home with the beans, it is day time. In the next shot, it is night. Also, when Jack climbs the bean stalk, he moves from the bottom of the screen to the top. In the next shot, he moves in the same direction. Also, after being told where to find the giant, Jack exits to the right. In the next shot, he enters from the left.
In The Girl and her Trust, Griffith adds to the realism of the film by using a realistic telegraph office/train station as the setting, as opposed to just using painted backgrounds. According to Fabe, Griffith believed artificial sets “undermined the realism of filmed fictions.” Griffith also uses the cross-cut, defined by Fabe as “an alternation from one line of action to another,” to add to the realism. For example, when the girl rejects the railroad worker, he leaves the telegraph office and then there is a cross-cut between the office and the rest of the station, showing that it is more than just a one-room set. Griffith pioneered what are now every day film practices.
Joseph Otterson
In Edwin Porter's film "Jack and the Beanstalk" many techniques discussed in D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" are seen. The match cut technique of editing is the most notible, as all of the movement is cohesive throughout the film. When Jack is climbing the beanstalk, his climbing always stays bottom-to-top of screen, and in this scene another technique is seen: the mise-en-scene. Clearly, at the time when this film was made, full shots of mountain ranges weren't possible, so he had to paint a background to make it appear -though not very convincingly- that Jack was very high up. Another classic early film technique is the long shot. When one is trying to tell a story that is only 7:39" long, close-up shots aren't a good choice, especially when there is no dialogue.
In "A Girl and her Trust" cross cutting can be seen very early on, as in the scene where the telegraph girl is kissed by the man. After she sends him away and he is in the next room, time keeps on progressing at the same rate between the two rooms. Also, when the train arrives, though we know that the building is not really next to the train, the use of cross cutting makes it seem as though it is. This adds much more realism than that of Jack and the Beanstalk.
The beginning scene lasts about fifty seconds, characteristic of the long, continuous takes common in early film. In fact, Fabe reports that some scenes lasted up to ninety seconds (p. 2). There is obvious splicing as shown by the sudden appearances of the fairy, the “resetting” of the rake handle in the background, and the accompanying “jerkiness” of the camera movement. Also, the actors gesture excessively to compensate for the lack of dialogue, particularly in the scenes with Jack’s mother and the giant.
Porter narrates mainly by long, continuous shots in strict chronological order shot from a stationary point of view. It is essentially a “film” version of theater.
Griffith, on the other hand, makes extensive use of actual structures/landscape and innovative editing to build up his films’ credibility and narration. For instance, from the time the vagabonds sneak up to the telegraph station to the time they actually steal the trust box, the camera view cuts intermittently between them and Grace. Whenever the vagrants begin to look through the window, the camera cuts to inside the telegraph office, where the audience can see them peeking inside (most often with the protagonist’s back turned). As soon as she turns around, however, the camera cuts back to them as they duck down.
The chase in the last part of the movie clearly takes place on a real cart on actual train tracks traveling through an outdoor setting. There are no theater props here. The characters are able to move into the distance or toward the viewer, not just laterally. Thanks to this fluid flow of events within familiar settings, the plot is fairly evident and there is no need for excessive theatrics.
Hannah Mann
Early films share many similar characteristics, some that are still used and some that are outdated. One of them is transition between scenes. They are either choppy or overdramatic. In Jack and the Beanstalk, they would either just cut right to the next setting or they would have the big black fade (like when it went from the scene of the beanstalk on the ground, to jack up in the sky. Another characteristic is an excessive amount of stage tricks. Throughout Jack and the Beanstalk, the fairy was disappearing and reappearing all over the place. I think the director was just using this to show that he could. And another characteristic is that these films focus more on the visual spectacle than on the story itself.
Porter attempts to develop cohesive spatial and temporal relations between shots by adding in those long fade transitions. He used them a few times in the film.
“The Girl and Her Trust” shows how crosscut and setting affect realism and storytelling. In the first scene they keep cutting back and forth to the two different rooms. You are forced to imagine that there is a hallway between them; you are not shown. This is also shown in a later scene when she has a hammer and they keep alternating between her side of the door and theirs. This makes it more for you to imagine and less real overall.
-Ryan Bender
In the beginning of Edwin Porter’s Jack and the Beanstalk one characteristic that is very apparent is the permanent camera position was the camera is set up. The scene depicts a woman standing near a bridge. The guy comes waltzing over the bridge and begins speaking to her. I think Marilyn Fabe’s says it best in her essay Birth of a Nation , “ They comprised of loosely spliced scenes or tableaus, shot with a static camera in long takes (sometimes lasting up to ninety seconds) with the camera remaining at a fixed distance form the action.” After the stalk grows and Jack climbs to the top the film makers cut to a scene with the boy napping and the fairy is perched up on the “moon.” The scene starts with the fairy attempting to get down form the “moon.” Eventually the airy gets down but the film makers had to cut the film. As I quoted the Fabe’s essay before, “They comprised of loosely cut scenes and tableaus.” Editing, along with fixed camera positions and the lack of sound were some of the greatest characteristics of early film making.
While Jack is climbing to the top of the beanstalk and camera shows three different angles at different levels of the stalk. The film maker’s use of temporal relations indicated the journey the kid took up the been stalk.
In the film The Girl and Her Trust Griffith cuts to the train arriving in between the scene of the girl and the security guard talking. Griffith’s use of cross-cutting creates anticipation and realism. Realism because Griffith is using an actual train and not a prop. During the scene of the robbers trying to break into the office where the girl is uses cross-cutting to display both sides of the door. (approximately 9:25 into the film) While showing both sides of the door the story is better understood. Especially without sound.
In Edwin Porter's Jack and the Bean stalk, there are a techniques found that are similar to Griffith's style. First would be the amount of editting used throughout the film. One scene in particular that stood out to me was the scene when Jack climbs up the stalk and the fairy removes the moon and shows a "crystal ball" like image of the other people. This was extreme editing of the time. Another technique I saw was the lighting. There was alot of key lighting thoughtout the film that made key areas stand out.
The cross cutting that I noticed was the scene were the guy was loading the gun and the girl seemed a little nervous, then it cuts to a train pulling into the station and sets the upcoming scene up by cutting to some guys getting of the train. Once they get off, it cuts back again to the guy and girl in the house. Another scene that was slightly comical but set the scene up nice, was when the guys are fighting outside the door, and the girl is locked inside and takes the bullet and strikes it with a hammer to make it fire. The cutting between inside and outside the room was very clean and set the feeling of the scene well.
After watching Edwin Porter’s Jack and the Beanstalk, there are several characteristics of early film that apply to Porter’s film. The first characteristic of film that I noticed in Jack and the Beanstalk is the use of Mise-en-scene. About 30 seconds into the film, a prop bull comes into the screen. The two characters in the scene are dressed in very elaborate costumes. The background looks like the set of a play. There is a fake waterfall, a cobblestone type bridge, and a house. This use of props, costumes, and fake scenery is a direct relation of film to mise-en-scene.
The next film characteristic I noticed was the use of fading in and out. After the first scene, there is a fade to black to denote a transfer in location and time. When the screen fades from black there is a new setting. The use of these fade outs in between scenes also develops spatial and temporal relations between the scenes. “Griffith also used these transitional devices to signal that time has elapsed form the end of one sequence to the beginning of the next.” When Jack begins to climb the beanstalk, he disappears from the top of the screen. The shot then fades to and from black to Jack, high in the sky, climbing the beanstalk. The fades exemplified the relation from the previous scene as he is now been climbing the beanstalk for sometime.
A third film characteristic is the use of dramatic irony. When Jack enters a ladies house after climbing the beanstalk. He hides in a pot as a giant man comes into the house appearing to be the husband. The audience knows that Jack is in the pot but the big man does not. This is a perfect example of dramatic irony.
In The Girl and Her Trust, the first example of setting affecting the storytelling is the first scene between the girl and the two men. The setting of the girl’s room is very light toned with a window and a clock. The girl is dressed in light clothing to match the room and it gives her a sense of innocence. The next room over is dark and rugged, and later in the film it is where the tramps will break into. Also, the use of an ordinary train station, rather a fake setting helps give the film a sense of realism.
An example of crosscutting is used when the tramps are escaping on the train tracks with the woman on board. There is a crosscut to the man in the beginning of the film walking when he looks into the distance shocked. We know that he has spotted the tramps escaping because of the previous shot shown. There is also a crosscut between the tramps on the tracks and a train moving on the tracks moving in the same direction. This use of crosscutting creates suspense in the audience and lets them know that the train is coming for the tramps.
Kyle Probst
The three characteristics of early film that Fabe talks about are mise-en-scene, the enframed image, and editing. The mise-en-scene of early film is apparent in Edwin Porter’s Jack and the Beanstalk (1902). The use of costumes, props, and scenery was an effective way to relay the information of a narrative visually. The opening scene of Jack and the Beanstalk (1902) is a very good example of this technique. The motion of the waterfall is a pleasant and slightly magical opening setting that compliments the detail of the background. In the foreground the flamboyant physical gestures of the actors, as well as their detailed costumes, relay information that starts the narrative off. The evidence of the enframed image in Jack and the Beanstalk (1902) is in every scene. The camera never moves left to right and stays far away from the action, which allows the film to explain the narrative through long shots. Fabe describes early narrative editing as “photographing the action in one lengthy, static, long shot”. This description correlates to the editing of Jack and the Beanstalk (1902). The transitions between scenes are made easier by the length of the shots and their relative distance from the action. This makes the entire story flow better in terms of relaying information to the audience. They could easily follow the narrative as though it were a play. It is with the detail in settings and props, the camera’s consistent distance from the action, and the lengthy takes that Porter attempts to create cohesion between his shots.
The cross cut is used effectively in D.W. Griffith’s The Girl and Her Trust (1912), especially in the beginning of the film. The cuts allowed for more action when the men walked in and out of the woman’s room. This effects the realism because the viewer is aware of things happening in more than one place at a time. After the man kisses the woman and leaves the cuts between the two rooms tell the story from the point of views of both characters. This increases the story telling capabilities of the narrative.
Nathaniel Winter
One of the first things that you notice while watching Edwin Porter's Jack and the Beanstalk like many early films there entire lack of sound. The film does not have any music or dialogue, it relays on visual effects only. In the opening scene of the film Fable’s reference “fixed distance from the action” where the camera is in a permeant position. Scenes had a lack of realism with sets using painted backgrounds of the hills like outside the house. Due to the “series of loosely spliced scenes” the scenes appear very jumpy and don’t flow well from one to the next. In an attempt to show cohesive spatial and temporal there is the shot of Jack climbing the bean stock where its divided into three shots once at the base, another somewhere in the middle and than the last when he finally reaches the top.
Griffith's gives us the sense of realism by using actual scenery for its setting. When the scene is in a house everything on the walls is are existing and when the scene is outside you can see real landscape. During the last scene of the train he uses a train riding off into the rural distance by using actual props and not painted scenery it gives more realism. He uses cross-cuts in house scenes as the camera shows characters walking through a door way into another room. This gives us the sense of a real house that each character is able to move freely about the rooms.
Zachery Holder
Porter separated the scenes of Jack and the Beanstalk basically, using identical shots of different backgrounds. He created cohesive space by separating Jacks home and “Beanstalk Land” by Jack climbing up the beanstalk thus ending up away from home. Early film characteristics can be found in the transition between jack running away from the giant and his mother peering up the beanstalk, porters fades out of the giants home. The long shot is also utilized almost excessively, and is another early film characteristic before Griffith popularized the close-up. The Mise En Scene of the film was very basic, but consistent throughout the film and depicted each scene and actor appropriately.
There is a cross-cut between the Girl telegraphing another train station for help, the tramps trying to break into the room and the receivers of the telegraph in a panic to reach her. This builds great tension and interest within the plot of the story. Another crosscut is between the tramps getting away on the rail car with the girl while there is a locomotive chasing behind them, and the two are slowly incorporated into the same scene. Griffith did this purposely to build suspense among the audience.
Nick Edmonds
In early fiction films it was common to see the use of the long shot where the actor only takes up a small portion of the screen, usually in a corner of the screen. The camera would be kept stationary and far away from the action. This is seen in most of the shots in “Jack and the Beanstalk” which consists of mainly of long shots. I felt that the scenes and shots all seemed very similar. I almost felt like I was watching a theatre performance from how the film was shot. When transitioned from shot to shot it almost looked like I was looking at the same location. From Marilyn Fabe’s article it is shown that D.W. Griffith established most of the early filming and editing techniques. One major technique that Griffith liked to use was a close up shot. This allowed viewers to see emotions of the characters so it was easy to relate to how the character was feeling. This is not seen in earlier films such as “Jack and the Beanstalk”. You also notice that in these earlier films most of the props are 2-D. In “Jack and the Beanstalk” this is seen when we goes up the beanstalk and meets the fairy. In the background you notice that the trees in the back are simply 2-D. One last thing that you notice is that each scene would be a longer, around 90 second, single shot.
One thing that I notice right away when I watched the film “The Girl and Her Trust” is the fact that there are real props. For example you can see the clock in the background moving at the beginning of this film. The use of these real props allows viewers to be fooled that this film is simply fictional. I also loved the transitions in this film. When characters moved from room to room the shot would immediately transition to make it appear that the characters really are moving to the next room. This use of the cross-cut transition makes it easy for viewers to watch because it flows very nicely.
-Logan Lovett
In Edward Porter's Jack and the Beanstalk, there are many characteristics of early film to be had. For example the frame rate is slowed down which gives the character's movements a faster look. In may scenes he uses painted back drops to give the illusion of sky or a mountain range; things that in the early film era were not commonly filmed on location because of budget and technological limitations. Porter also used string machanics to give the effect of the floating beans. String mechanics are still used today, however actually being able to see the strings in the shot is a characteristic of early film.
Griffith uses the cross-cutting technique in the scene with the woman and the train when she is talking to the security guard. By using an actual train, he adds realism to the shot. Griffith's use of cross-cutting has opened the door for huge break throughs in filmmaking.
Edwin Porters techniques are seen later in film through film makers such as Griffith. He is one of the filmmakers on the forefront of the art. Porter used painted backgrounds a characteristic seen in early film. For example rather move the camera when jack arrives at the top of the bean stock, change the background, from a mountain background to a crescent moon. Porter also used cross-cut editing a technique that was improved upon later by filmmakers. The film is jumpy from scene to scene. There is also there is general long shot frames a classic characteristic seen in the films of the early 1900's. The camera, which is always stationary, seems as though it is mounted within a studio. The backgrounds change the props change the people change but the camera seems to always be in the same place. These techniques are all good examples of how Edwin S. Porters work was improved upon and utilized in the work of D.W. Griffith's many films.
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