Film Theory

Film theory is an academic discipline, closely allied with critical theory, that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film criticism, though there can be some crossover between the two disciplines.

In some respects, French philosopher Henri Bergson's Matter and Memory anticipated the development of film theory at a time that the cinema was just being born as a new medium—the early 1900s. He commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image". However, in his 1906 essay L'illusion cinématographique (inL'évolution créatrice), he rejects film as an exemplification of what he had in mind. Nonetheless, decades later, in Cinéma I and Cinema II (1983-1985), the philosopher Gilles Deleuze took Matter and Memory as the basis of his philosophy of film and revisited Bergson's concepts, combining them with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Early film theory arose in the silent era and was mostly concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium. It largely evolved from the works of directors like Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, and Dziga Vertov and film theorists like Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs and Siegfried Kracauer. These individuals emphasized how film differed from reality and how it might be considered a valid art form.

In the years after World War II, the French film critic and theorist André Bazin reacted against this approach to the cinema, arguing that film's essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its difference from reality.

In the 1960s and 1970s, film theory took up residence in academe, importing concepts from established disciplines like psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology, literary theory, semiotics andlinguistics.

During the 1990s the digital revolution in image technologies has had an impact on film theory in various ways. There has been a refocus onto celluloid film's ability to capture an indexical image of a moment in time by theorists like Mary Ann Doane, Philip Rosen and Laura Mulvey who was informed by psychoanalysis. From a psychoanalytical perspective, after the Lacanian notion of the Real, Slavoj Žižek offered new aspects of the gaze extensively used in contemporary film analysis.[3] There has also been a historical revisiting of early cinema screenings, practices and spectatorship modes by writers Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen and Yuri Tsivian.

This is the link where you can download all the books :

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37145451/Concepts-in-Film-Theory
http://www.scribd.com/doc/1250569/Film-Theory

Moy & Bastie [1909]

At the age of 16, Ernest Francis Moy [c.1869-1926] was placed in charge of the lighting at London's Her Majesty's Theatre, one of the first electrically lighted theatres. He quickly progressed within the industry and met another electrical engineer,Percy Henry Bastie. In 1895, they set up a public company, Ernest F. Moy Ltd., to manufacture electric fuses, switches and circuit-breakers. They were introduced to the newly emerging science of cinematography through a customer, Robert W. Paul.

From 1897, Moy published various patents to produce cine items and the company began producing films on the flat roof of their London factory. The partners quickly formed a new company, the Cinematograph Company Ltd., to handle this side of their interests. In 1900 Moy and Bastie launched their own film camera with daylight loading. The camera was soon competing with Williamson, Darling and Prestwich. One of their cameras was taken on Captain Robert Scott's Antarctic Expedition of 1905. Then, in 1909, the company began producing its most famous camera, a well-made and practical design described in their catalogue as 'Simple - Efficient - Reliable.' It was a professional hand crank 35mm motion picture camera in the English 'upright style'. The camera was constructed from mahogany and had two internal 400 foot film magazines. Focusing was achieved by viewing the image through the film via a tube from the rear. The camera utilized a unique film transport featuring the 'drunken screw' movement to achieve film pull-down. The Moy & Bastie camera was well known for its impressive chain driven movement and brass gear wheels. The largest version had a price tag of £108, with an extra £5 for the Cooke lens. A 400ft external magazine, attached to the top of the camera, and a viewfinder mounted on the top right side were later additions to the original basic design. By 1911 Moy cameras were in constant use by British studios and topical film makers worldwide. It is said that the first picture shot in Hollywood was shot with a Moyer camera [also popularly known as 'Moy'].

Debrie 'Le Parvo' [1908]

Joseph Jules Debrie [1919] founded the Établissements J. Debrie in 1898 in Paris, France. [In 1918, his son André (1891-1967) took over the company.]

In 1908, Joseph Debrie developed the 'Le Parvo' camera, described at the time to be robust, compact and at the height of technology. The original models were constructed from polished hardwood, but the 'Le Parvo' series also included metal bodied cameras in a variety of model types designed for studio and location work, the 'L' [for studio work], the 'E' and the 'K'. The wooden casing was an enclosing shell. The gears, film gate, etc. were mounted on, and contained within a metal chassis. On the front panel was a brass knob to open the front of the camera and a further brass knob to unlock the shutter mechanism. The camera had a fold-out Newton finder and eyepiece. The rear of the camera featured a footage counter dial marked in feet, a cranking speed indicator marked 16fps and 24fps and a pull-out focusing eyepiece with diopter adjustment and an eyepiece light-trap cover.

Also on the rear panel was a spirit level to level the camera on a tripod. The camera front lifted up and the side panels were hinged to reveal the very impressive movement and two 400 feet co-axial metal film magazines.

The hand-cranked 'Le Parvo' [meaning 'compact' and of small dimension] was at one time the most popular European made camera. Even in the early 1920's, the 'Le Parvo' was the most used camera in the world. Famous users included F.W. Murnau [for his silent film 'Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens'] and Leni Riefenstahl to film the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

In 1921 followed the Super Parvo with an automatic dissolve facility.

The Debrie Parvo was a 35mm motion picture camera developed in France by Joseph Jules Debrie, in 1908. The camera was relatively compact for its time. It was hand cranked, as were its predecessors. To aid the camera operator in cranking at the correct speed, the camera had a built in tachometer.

The Parvo held up to 120 meters of film (approximately 400 ft) inside without the need for an external film magazine, yielding almost 6 minutes of film when cranked at the standard 16 frames per second silent film rate. It allowed the camera operator to focus the camera lens but - as all other cine cameras of its era - had a side optical viewfinder to be used during actual filming.

The Parvo was immensely popular in Europe during the silent film era, straight through the 1920's. Directors who particularly liked the camera were Abel Gance, Leni Riefenstahl, and Sergei Eisenstein. The latter's cinematographer, Eduard Tisse, would use the camera into the sound era, i.e. filming the duelling sequence in Alexander Nevsky.

Pathé [1903]

Charles Morand Pathé [1863-1957], who had earned his first 'capital' with selling Edison Phonographs, saw a new opportunity in the Edison Kinetoscope. In 1895 he went to London and bought pirated Kinetoscopes manufactured by Robert Paul and resold them to fairgrounds in France. His clients became tired of always seeing the same films, and the copies wore out rapidly. Pathé met the engineer and inventor Marie Henry Joseph Joly [1866-1945], who offered to make a camera in order to renew Pathé's stock of films. Pathé advanced the necessary funds and on 26 August 1895, Joly filed his patent for a camera capable of serving both the projector and Kinetoscope. In 1896, Pathé came to understand the importance of the camera-projector manufactured by Joly. He broke with the inventor but reserved for himself the rights to the precious camera and started to exploit the machine and its films, with great success. In September 1896, Charles and his brothers Émile, Théophile and Jacques founded their company Société Pathé Frères, whose office was at the rue de Richelieu, Paris. The aim of the company, at first, was to build cameras and projectors. A year later, the company became the Compagnie Générale de Cinématographes, Phonographes et Pellicules [Anciens Établissements Pathé Frères] under the direction of Émile for the phonograph and of Charles for the cinematograph. In August 1900 the company merged with the Manufacture Française d'Appareils de Précision to form the Compagnie Générale de Phonographes, Cinématographes et Appareils de Précision. From then on Charles Pathé developed both the manufacture of negative and positive film, the creation of factories and studios, and the making of cameras and projectors.

The camera above was built by Pathé around 1903. The design of the camera [hand-cranked (the crank handle projected from the back of the camera) - leather covered wood - 2x 400ft magazines on top] was closely based on that of the original Lumière camera, but it was rather larger, and also had a few extra features.

"The camera lens was mounted on a precision dovetail/keyway and focus change was actuated by an external lever against a calibrated scale. The lens iris was controlled by an external lever and scale. The opening of the rotary shutter was controlled externally. Originally the rotating shutter had a fixed opening but later refinements provided an adjustable opening shutter. Further refinements provided an adjustable shutter that could produce lap dissolves from an external control. The camera hand crank input could be used for the standard 16fps or variations thereof. A separate hand crank input access was provided for a single frame per turn for special effects or animation.

"Just before WW1 the Pathé studio camera was the most used movie camera in the world. In America the Pathé camera was copied by the Sigmund Lubin studio and by the Wilart Instrument Company. They both added metal bodies.

"With the introduction of the great Bell & Howell 2709 cine camera in 1911 the popularity of the Pathé began to wane.

"During the post war period there was still difficulty in producing a good copy negative from the original negative. Two negatives were required so that the second one could be expeditiously sent to Europe for that concurrent movie market. Often two cameras were operated at the same site so as to generate two original negatives. The Pathé was increasingly delegated to the second camera designation." [From article by Wes Lambert in the Summer 1994 issue of the 'Operating Cameraman'.]

The Studio model of the Pathé camera was still extensively used in Europe in the early 1920's, and even in America some impoverished [the price of the camera was $ 552] or conservative cameramen continued to use it.

"The Pathé camera was commonly called a cracker box, because of its light wooden construction. It might with more justice have been called a Pandora's box, for all the troubles it could loose upon a poor defenseless cameraman. Something was forever going wrong with these Pathé's, so something was forever having to be fixed, generally with the black sticky tape used by electricians." [Karl Brown in 'Adventures with D.W. Griffith', 1973.]

French producer, manufacturer

Charles Pathé, the third son of Jacques and Émilie Pathé, established pork butchers, was born at Chevry-Cossigny, a market town in the Seine et Marne Départment, on 26 December 1863. After what he later described as a difficult childhood and youth, lengthy military service and a hazardous journey in South America, Charles returned to France and, in October 1893, he married. While working for a meagre salary for a lawyer, he chanced on the novelty of the moment, the Edison Phonograph, which was a sensation at the Vincennes Fair on the east of Paris and with partly borrowed money, he bought one. On 9 September 1894 he returned with his wife to one of the best known fairs of the period, that of Monthéty to the east of Paris, and in the one day, at a charge of 20 centimes a listener, made 200 francs. Quickly seeing the advantages of selling rather than using the Phonograph, he bought three examples in London, and successfully resold them. Shortly after, another curiosity appeared - the Edison Kinetoscope. Charles, who had opened a shop at 72, cours de Vincennes in Paris, revisited London in 1895, bought pirated Kinetoscopes manufactured by Robert Pauland resold them to fairgrounds. Later in 1895, he was associated for a while with Henri Jolywho manufactured for him a camera to take films for the Kinetoscope.

But the future of Charles Pathé was decided by the arrival of the Lumière Cinématographe. On 28 September 1896, with his brother Émile, he formed the Société Pathé Frères, whose office was at 98, rue de Richelieu in Paris. A year later, the company became, thanks to a certain Claude Grivolas, the Compagnie Générale de Cinématographes, Phonographes et Pellicules (Anciens Établissements Pathé Frères) with the two brothers as directors. From then on, the company, under the direction of Émile for the phonograph and of Charles for the cinematograph, flourished, expanded and sold all over the world. 'I did not invent the cinema, but I industrialised it' wrote Charles Pathé later. A modest first factory had been installed since 1896 at Vincennes. Charles Pathé himself probably made the first films of the Société Pathé Frères such as Le Passage à niveau à Joinville le Pont and L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de Bel-Air. For several years the phonograph underwrote the success of the company. In 1898, a phonograph cylinder factory was built at Chatou, west of Paris and, in 1903, enlarged. In August 1900 the company amalgamated with the Manufacture Française d'Appareils de Précision, (Anciens Établissements René Bünzli et Victor Continsouza) to form the Compagnie Générale de Phonographes, Cinématographes et Appareils de Précision. From then on Charles Pathé developed both the manufacture of negative and positive film, the creation of factories and studios, and the making of cameras and projectors for sale worldwide.

From 1902, new film studios and new factories for the manufacture and development of film were constructed at Vincennes, at Montreuil sous Bois and at Joinville le Pont. The company then extended, creating branches all over the world: February 1904, Moscow; July 1904, New York, and so on. At the beginning of 1908 Charles Pathé decided to create centres of film production abroad more or less independent of the French parent company: in 1909 at Rome and Moscow, in 1910 in the United States at Jersey City, and later in Holland, in Belgium, etc. The number of films produced continued to increase growing from seventy in 1901 to nearly 800 in 1912. In 1907, Charles Pathé, following English and American practice, started to rent his films instead of selling them. A little earlier, he had undertaken, in collaboration with exhibitors, the construction of permanent halls of which the first, the Omnia-Pathé in Paris, opened on 15 December 1906. By now many Pathé films were hand-coloured, but very quickly, mechanical colouring processes were perfected in the company's laboratories and by 1912, the Pathé-Color process was used in at least one film in five. In 1912, Charles Pathé, who had proposed the idea in 1909, created the famous Pathé Kok, 'the home cinema' in 28 mm format that the Pathé-Baby was to supplant in 1922.

As the company had expanded, Charles had surrounded himself with numerous devoted collaborators: commercial travellers and branch managers such as Sigmund Popert, J. A. Berst, Hache; directors or producers such as Ferdinand Zecca, Albert Capellani, Pierre Decourcelle, Paul Gugenheim or Louis J. Gasnier; chemists or engineers such as Jacques Marette, Henri Garrel; experts like Dr J. Comandon and a whole galaxy of valued performers to whom Charles Pathé paid tribute in his memoirs. Charles Pathé, in addition to having the obstinacy and drive needed to create and lead the company that carries his name, was a shrewd and pragmatic businessman with an exceptional commercial talent. However, Charles Pathé, co-director in 1912 with his brother Émile, was obliged from early 1914, to attempt to restructure this huge empire. But four years of war provoked the breakup of the firm. In 1927, with the creation of Kodak-Pathé, Charles Pathé retired. He died at Monaco on his 94th birthday.

Prestwich Model 4 [1898]

Designed by John Alfred Prestwich [1874-1952] and manufactured by the Prestwich Manufacturing Company in London, England, in ca. 1898. The camera had 400ft external magazines.
The first cameras had the magazines on the outside of the camera, but Prestwich and all the other camera manufacturers, except for Pathé, soon decided that for reasons of light leaking on the film it was best to enclose the magazines inside the camera body.
When there are no second takes, reliability of the camera is of the utmost importance. This is the reason Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer and cinematographer of the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition, chose a Prestwich as his cine camera. In October 1914, Hurley sailed on the wooden ship Endurance from Buenos Aires for Antarctica. He had to abandon his camera when the ice crushed the ship on November 21, 1915.

John Alfred Prestwich (1874 – 1952) was an English engineer.

Famous as much for his creation of cinematography projectors as his J. A. P. engines. He worked with S.Z. de Ferranti and later the cinema pioneer William Friese-Greene. He founded the company JA Prestwich Industries Ltd in 1895. He was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal in 1919.

Léon Bouly

Léon Guillaume Bouly (1872 – 1932) was a French inventor who created the word cinematograph.

After devising chronophotography devices, Bouly applied a patent on a reversible device of photography and optics for the analysis and synthesis of motions, calling it the Cynématographe Léon Bouly on February 12, 1892. On December 27, 1893, he shortened his device name to cinématographe.

This device is able to perform both, shooting and projection. It uses a sensible film without perforations and all principles required by cinematography are available: the film's jerky sledding is synchronized with the shutter. Two of these devices are conserved in the French Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.

In 1894, Bouly could not pay the rent for his patents and the name "cinématographe" became available again, it was patented by the Lumière Brothers who are not its original authors. Today, modern historians agree on the fact Léon Bouly was, before the Lumière Brothers, the true original inventor of the term cinématographe.

Louis Lumiere & Auguste Lumiere

Louis Jean Lumiere
Louis Jean (5 October 1864, Besançon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol), were among the earliest filmmakers in history. (Appropriately, "lumière" translates as "light" in English.)

Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862, Besançon,France – 10 April 1954, Lyon)

HISTORY

The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, in 1862 and 1864, and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon.[3] Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.

It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera - most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. Thecinématographe itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory.

FIRST FILM SCREENING

The Lumières held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

It is believed their first film was actually recorded that same year (1895) with Léon Bouly'scinématographe device, which was patented the previous year. The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures — was further developed by the Lumières.

The public debut at the Grand Café came a few months later and consisted of the following ten short films (in order of presentation):

1. La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (literally, "the exit from the Lumière factories in Lyon", or, under its more common English title, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory), 46 seconds
2. La Voltige ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds
3. La Pêche aux poissons rouges ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
4. Le Débarquement du Congrès de Photographie à Lyon ("the disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds
5. Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
6. Le Jardinier (l'Arroseur Arrosé) ("The Gardener," or "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), 49 seconds
7. Le Repas ("Baby's Breakfast"), 41 seconds
8. Le Saut à la couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
9. La Place des Cordeliers à Lyon ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon"--a street scene), 44 seconds
10. La Mer (Baignade en mer) ("the sea [bathing in the sea]"), 38 seconds

The Lumières went on tour with the cinématographe in 1896 - visiting Bombay, London, New York and Buenos Aires.

The moving images had an immediate and significant influence on popular culture with L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat (literally, "the arrival of a train at La Ciotat Station", but more commonly known as Arrival of a Train at a Station) and Carmaux, défournage du coke(Drawing out the coke). Their actuality films, or actualités, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries. They also made the first steps towards comedy film with the slapstick of L'Arroseur Arrosé.

Lumiere Brothers

Lumière Cinématographe [1895]

The brothers Louis [1864-1948] and Auguste Lumière [1862-1954] were the most successful photographic plate manufacturers in France. They first saw an Edison Kinetoscope in the summer of 1894. Impressed by the demonstration but put off by the high prices demanded by Edison's agents, they decided to develop their own product. In February 1895, they patented a combined camera, projector and printer, which used an intermittent claw derived from the mechanism used in sewing machines to move the cloth. The intermittent pull-down of the film was accomplished by a claw driven by two cams, one of which produced the vertical motion of the claw, and the other its insertion into the sprocket holes in the film before pulldown, and then its withdrawal afterwards. The apparatus was called the Cinématographe. [The small box on top contained the unexposed negative.

The first public presentation was made at the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale in Paris on 22 March 1895. The public saw a one-minute film of workers leaving the Lumière factory in Lyons ['La sortie des usines Lumière']. Encouraged by its reception, further films were made and for the first time on 28 December 1895 an audience [33 persons] paid to see projected, moving photographic pictures in the 'Salon Indien' of the Grand Café, Boulevard des Capucins, Paris.

At the end of October 1895, Jules Carpentier [1851-1921] began to manufacture the Cinématographe [the first model had been built at Lyons]. The machine traveled to and fro between Lyons and Paris, for the final delicate adjustments, and the definitive model was finished by the end of the year. Lumière then asked Carpentier to make 200 of them. Carpentier continued to work with Lumière: at least 700 or 800 Cinématographes were eventually made.

Lumiere Film

Classic Motion Picture Camera

Bouly Cinématographe [1892]

Manufactured by Léon-Guillaume Bouly [1872-1932] in Paris, France. In the Bouly Cinématographe, the film is driven by a segmental roller, and stopped intermittently by a pressure pad. Bouly deposited a second patent, 27 December 1893, for a machine said to be capable of both filming and projecting. The Bouly bands were not perforated, and would not have given a steady projection.