Analysis Of The Movie ' The Great Train Robbery '

When Thomas Edison asked Edwin S.Porter to make The Great Train Robbery (1903) little did either realise that this film would be the beginning of not only the Western genre but an entire movie industry. The silent classic, The Great Train Robbery depicts a famous railroad robbery by a notorious

Most people think of movies as art. Art forms like dance, music, and literature go back thousands of years. But because the movie camera was invented roughly 100 years ago the motion picture is in fact a recent art form. The movies we know and love today would not be possible without significant advancements in technology.

In chapter two of The Cultures of American Film, the main focus is the establishment of studios. As demand for films rose in the early 1900’s, production companies needed to expand; this lead to the creation of large scale studios.

No matter who a person thinks invented the motion picture camera, whether it was Louis Lumiere or Thomas Edison, I'm sure they had no idea what it would become at the turn of the century. Motion pictures, has become an entertainment medium like no other. From Fred Ott's Sneeze to Psycho to Being John Malkovich, the evolution from moving pictures to a pure art form has been quite amazing. Different steps in filming techniques define eras in one of the most amazing ideas that was ever composed. Silent to Sound. Short to long. Black and white to color. Analog to Digital. All were important marks in the History of Motion Pictures. "It's different than other arts. It had to be invented"

This paper was prepared for Introduction to Film History, Module 1 Homework Assignment, taught by Professor Stephanie Sandifer.

The director is a storyteller first, claims Scorsese. He quotes Raoul Walsh: “If you haven’t got the story, you haven’t got anything.” Documentary style films were always a secondary to fiction. This has improved as the industry matured, but still holds true today. “For better or for worse, a Hollywood director is an entertainer. He is in the business of telling stories,” Scorsese tells us. He outlines the birth of the classic American genres, ones that moviegoers take for granted today. Directors, producers, and fans alike love familiar tropes and genres. Similar themes pervade all movies, recycled and reworked into new

In the time period, the use of backdrops, editing, and the approach in cinema all became apparent. Due to editing, movies became more refined and told a story. During editing, directors were able to make their material by changing angles of a scene, or just by taking the shot of the scene over.

The idea that films could be a source of education helped to encourage the attendance of the bourgeois. As well, as making sure that films were kept optimistic with a happy ending, a must. Films, therefore, had to evolve bringing a new complex narrative that still catered to the working-class but attracted the bourgeois.

During this time the film studios grew in power, new stars and directors were discovered and the eight major studios produced more than 7500 feature films. “These films were released by the studios to audiences eager to be entertained. More than 80 million people attended at least one film per week. This period enjoyed the greatest collection of talent gathered in one place.” (Motion Pictures, The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2001)

In 1894 they created what was called a Cinématographe. With the birth of the cinema camera a new medium of expression was born. Thus allowing artists to capture life in a new light.

What makes a person tick? Why does he do the things that he does? These questions, commonly asked about criminals, are relevant when evaluating Edward Pierce’s motives behind “Great Train Robbery.” Throughout The Great Train Robbery, Pierce refused to give up his plan for an “impossible” robbery, due to his incessant need to do something that it was deemed impossible.

Hollywood cinema is primarily subjected to telling stories. The inclination of Hollywood narratives comes not just from good chronicles but from good story telling. The following essay will discuss Hollywood’s commercial aesthetic as applied to storytelling, expand on the characteristics of the “principles of classical film narration” and evaluate alternative modes of narration and other deviations from the classical mode.

It was Thomas Edison who was also responsible for the invention of Motion pictures . Thomas created equipment that would record and playback images so that they could be watched later on.

Porter had found inspiration from various European film makers and had studied in depth the effect it would have on is target market, when he finally released is first attempt, The life of an American Fireman (1903), he hadn’t polished it as well as he had hoped. However when he released The Great Train Robbery it was clear that he had introduced the west to a new style of film making and changed how narrative was expressed within film forever.

The cinematographic camera industry emerged in fact more than 100 years ago, it was only until recently that significant digital changes took place, apart from minimal technological improvements. Before the invention of digital cameras the main medium for shooting a movie was on celluloid film in which the quality of the image was very high from the beginning. However these cameras had some inconveniences. The cinematographer would have to set the lighting and frame to the directors vision and make sure that it was right. He could not see immediately if the scene was shot as desired and this caused the workflow to be very complex and time consuming which most producers would see limited. The developing, processing, transferring, editing and conforming the film normally took a day and the director along with the cinematographer would sit