Keywords for Lectures March 25 & April 1st

Keywords: Visual Language & Early Film; Image and Audience
(March 25, April 1, 2009)

Buster Keaton, “Sherlock, Jr.” (1924)
“Dream Sequence” in Sherlock, Jr. Mimicking imagination.
film within a film
Cecil B. De Mille
vamps
consumption dramas, elegant settings
special effects, movie magic
film as guide to life
Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916)
“The photoplay obeys the laws of the mind rather than those of the outer world.”
Sigmund Freud, identification and projection.
Muybridge & Eakins
Nickelodeons
film audiences as communities
working class audiences (interactive)
the sound of silence
gesture vs. speech
Edwin S. Porter, “The Kleptomaniac” (Porter/Edison, 1905)
social facts, the capture of the real
static camera position (camera as a neutral witness)
D.W. Griffith, “The Corner in Wheat” (American Biograph, 1909)
middle class audiences (spectatorship)
active camera position (camera as interpreter, outlook of individual eye)
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922)
montage; juxtaposition
close-ups