Mid Term

1. Explain the psychology of entertainment. (Assignment No.2) Please define the similarities between painting, sculpture, sporting events and cinematography.

People didn’t even start thinking about entertainment until they could think about leisure and trying to find something to consume their excess time. When man finally figured out how to do things efficiently this was possible, and thus entertainment was “created”. Painting, sculpting, sporting events, and cinematography were all happened upon because of leisure time and people were bored. People wanted something to give them pleasure and to entertain them, so they did these types of things for that purpose in their leisure time.

2. After watching about 20 minutes of The Dock of New York, a silent drama, explain what are the elements that substitute the sound?

There is text that describes what is going on currently in the film. There is music playing the whole time, so there is some sound. The visuals are much more telling, detailed, and drawn out. The actors really over exaggerate body language and facial expressions so you can feel what’s going on.

 3. What has changed in the movie industry with the coming of sound? Why did producers fear the coming of sound?

Many people thought of film as simply a visual art form, but it wasn’t until they were able to put sound properly with the visual film that people started seeing it as being possible for it to be seen and heard.

Producers were fearful of having sound with the film because they weren’t sure of how to work with it and make their films just as good and correctly, since they had never worked with sound before.

4. What were the changes that took place in entertainment media with the coming of color?

5. Innumerate the innovations that took place in entertainment media in 1960s.

In the 1960s the film industry dramatically shifted and started focusing on the growing youth market, and to this day the average moviegoer is a teenage boy. Media companies started to combine and grow and do everything from movies to books, and etc.

6. Name people (at least 7) that can be credited with the development of cinematographic tools that revolutionized the movie business. (Sound, color, special effects) Please explain why their innovations were significant.

·      Christiaen Huygens, Dutch scientist, invented the magic lantern, the forerunner of the modern slide projector, in 1659 to project medical drawings to an audience.

·      Eadweard Muybridge, photographer, was hired to help settle a bet on how a horse runs. He lined up 24 cameras along the edge of a racetrack, with strings attached to the shutters. When the horse ran by, it tripped the shutters, producing 24 closely spaced pictures that when flipped through made it seem like a moving picture.

·      In 1876, a French physiologist, Etienne-Jules Marey, was the first person to take moving pictures with a single camera. He built his camera in the shape of a rifle with a circular photographic place that rotated after he snapped the shutter and he was able to take 12 pictures a second.

·      In 1923, Lee De Forest, an American inventor, demonstrated the practicality of placing a soundtrack directly on a filmstrip. He invented the Phonofilm, where he combined his amplifier and picture to record sound on film.

·      The DeMilles brothers came to California from New York in 1913. They brought the Laskey Feature Play Co with them and they recorded the first feature film from California, The Squawman.

·      Thomas Edison invented the Kinetoscope, which was the movie viewing system.

·      Louis Lumiere invented the Cinematograph, which was a self-contained camera and projector. It was the first apparatus for making and showing films.