Trick Films and Georges Méliès

Trick films

Use camera techniques to create magic tricks or primitive special effects.

Stop motion photography was the first big camera technique to create tricks and used often afterwards. This was discovered by Georges Méliès accidentally.

Dissolve: an editing transition that was created by Georges Méliès where one shot fades out as another shot is coming into view.

The Life of Georges Méliès

He was born in 1861 in Paris, France and worked/managed a theater as a magician until he witnessed the Lumiere Brothers camera.

He bought a camera, created a film studio, and started writing/making films.

Here are all his contributions to film:  stop motion, slow motion, dissolve, fade-out, superimposition (the same as double exposure: adding an image over another image), and double exposure (meaning you can film once and then go back and film over it to have two simultaneous images).

How do you think they made the film faster or slower back then?

His films

From 1899 to 1912 Méliès made more than 400 films

Characteristics: surreal or magical, non-realistic, creative sets, fantasy storylines, made of multiple shots in different locations/sets, each shot often filmed from one angle with no close-ups, and the use of tricks

Méliès’ principle contribution to cinema was the combination of traditional theatrical elements to motion pictures - he sought to present spectacles of a kind not possible in live theatre. 

The commercial growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913. He returned to show business.

Why do you think that was? What was it about his films that people liked and didn’t like?

Life After Film

His theater was not doing well during the war.

In 1923 he was declared bankrupt and his beloved Theatre Robert Houdin was demolished. He and his wife lived from the proceeds of a tiny boutique selling toys and novelties on the Gare Montparnasse.

Méliès almost disappeared until the late 1920’s when his substantial contribution to cinema was recognized by the French and he was presented with the Legion of Honour and given a rent free apartment where he spent the remaining years of his life. 

http://www.victorian-cinema.net/melies

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/373930/Georges-Melies

http://www.melies.eu/English.html