One thing I that find endlessly fascinating is the development of film as its own specific art form. The earliest experiments in film go back way further than we might initially imagine; if we consider the invention of moving imagery as the first step in the direction of cinema then film history has its roots in a piece of 5200 year old pottery recovered from an archaeological site in Iran called Shahr-i Sukhteh.
When spun, the patterns on the outside of the pottery create the short animation above. But how did humans first come up with the idea of combining images to create movement? The answer to this perhaps goes back even further...
It's been theorised that some of the early European cave paintings, such as the Trois Freres paintings (which are estimated to be somewhere between 14 000 and 40 000 years old) may have been deliberately transformed into animations when they were lit by flickering fire. For a demonstration on this, see the video above.
Eventually, of course, the combination of this long-held knowledge with the 19th century invention of photography led to cinema itself - see here for a lesson based on the very first 'proper' films from 1875.
Experiments in Editing: Life of an American Fireman
We take a lot in filmmaking for granted now but there are certain editing techniques that didn't come naturally to the first directors and editors. It was their innovations in the earliest days of silent cinema that created the film grammar we now rely on to create narratives on the screen.
Below is Life of an American Fireman, a six minute film directed by pioneering American director Edward S. Porter in 1903.
In the film, a group of firemen respond to a call and rescue a family from the second floor of their burning house. Porter wanted to depict the action from multiple perspectives, showing the helpless family inside the house as they were rescued by the firemen and the firemen as they climbed up the ladder outside and brought the family down to safety.
Today a director would show these multiple perspectives by cross-cutting back and forth several times. Porter, however, lacked access to this technique as it hadn't been invented yet. Often referred to as 'parallel editing', the idea of portraying concurrent sequences at the same time by cutting between them did not really solidify on film until 6 years later with D.W. Griffith's A Corner in Wheat.
Porter attempted to solve the issue in Life of an American Fireman by first showing the events within the house and then replaying the events afterwards from the outside.
It isn't the best way to show things happening at the same time. A modern audience finds it jarring to see events repeated in this way, and so it doesn't really work for us when creating a narrative. We can, however, see Porter attempting in his film to grapple with the concept of parallel editing. Even though he would not be the one to invent the technique of cross-cutting, Porter at least realised that - unlike the theatre - the medium of film had the potential to show events in multiple locations and to suggest that they were happening at the same time.
Film critic Mark Cousins calls this concept the 'meanwhile' of film grammar; we see something happening meanwhile something is also happening somewhere else. It was a radical jump in the crafting of film narratives as previously films had been content to portray events in a strictly linear fashion. This was the 'and then' of film grammar - it meant we would see one scene cutting to another to suggest that something happened and then something else happened next.
Students: Purpose and Methods
Getting students to understand film grammar is an intrinsic part of learning how to craft a film narrative. And understanding the history of this helps to highlight why taken-for-granted techniques such as cross-cutting are so important. One effective way of exploring film grammar with students is to have them film a relatively simple series of events (silent is better... introducing dialogue just makes things too complicated at this point). Students then edit their raw footage in multiple ways to show their understanding of cross-cutting and the differences between 'meanwhile' and 'and then'. By reflecting on this afterwards, students are able to develop their ability to articulate some of the terminology and reasoning behind editing and narrative-writing in general.
It's beneficial for students to learn this for a range of reasons, and not just for the sake of developing their understanding of film or visual literacy. In terms of writing, the formulation of a narrative in this medium forces a degree of reflection that helps develop imagination and critical thinking.
For More on Film Grammar
See also: The 180 Degree Rule.
See also: The Close-Up.
See also: Teaching Film as Language.
