George Méliès, A Trip to the Moon, 1902
In 1902, Georges Méliès released the first science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune). The filmmaker spared no expense for special effects. Review the approximately 11-minute long film and consider the following questions. Do any aspects of the film recall the practices of early photography? What are some differences and similarities between the photographic camera and the film camera?
There are many copies on the web of various degrees of quality. The quality of the following version on YouTube is very good.
Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon
Please submit your posts by Saturday, November 3.
First things first; The movie “Le voyage dans la Lune” was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.
There were a lot of fascinating things about this movie which made it special: 1- the fact that it was the first Sci-fi movie ever created, 2- how undeniably humorous it was, 3- how it changed the view of movie creators to become more creative, and 4- how it used the same methodology as photographic cameras.
The similarities between photographic camera and film camera of the early days was that they both had to be stable on a certain spot. If they moved the camera two possible things might have happen: 1-The vision could have come out blurry, 2- The motion couldn’t be captured on camera.
Another similarity between the two was the they couldn’t zoom in or out. That is why most of the movies from the past had the “landscape” kind of view.
The differences between the two is that this time, the still pictures were moving and You could easily see the interactions between people. They also added a lot of comical special effects to it which was hard to see in still photos.
Side note: As I mentioned at the beginning of my comment, I couldn’t stop my laughter while I was watching this piece. Some of the reasons were: It showed that it snowed on the moon, how they didn’t need oxygen mask in order to explore the moon, the ridiculously fast forward motions, the weird-hyper looking “aliens”, and the list goes on…
“A trip to the Moon” is an interesting black and white science fiction film. The story and some of the scenes are really funny. Like people see the moon in front of them after they arrived to the moon. In my opinion, I think this film can be recalling the practices of early photography. In this film, all scenes are take place in the same area and also stay in the view of landscape. This film shows that for the early photography camera people are not able to change the position and zoom in and out with the film camera.
The similarity between photographic camera and the film camera are they can both be produce. However, photographic camera can be share everywhere on the internet without producing on the disk. Photographic camera uses memory to store the images and do not have to be developed. For the film camera, it takes much more work to produce the film. Film camera use a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion to store the film. For this, People have to develop the film by using a chemical processes.
I think this movie is something we can recall as early photography. The quality of the movie is pretty poor compare to photographic camera. I somehow notice a little pause in some parts of the movie that makes me think they stopped the film maybe a NG? Like staged photographs films are also staged at the same time it can be natural.
this movie is just a testament on how far technology has come. also how fast the technology has improved. if you compare this movie to one of the early 1990s movie the difference is amazing. everything from the picture quality to the sound has improved in a superb way. but we cant forget that this is how it all started. and we would have never gotten this far without films like this.
I watched this movie with my younger brother and we both loved it and how funny some moments were, were are so use to dialogue and having the narrator or actors tell the story for us that I feel the next generation will not have much imagination when seeing something being acted out. But considering how imaginative and creative this film was and even though the special effects aren’t like today I’d say for their time they were very evolved, that I noticed how similar the techniques are to today’ effects, they still use those old techniques in movies now. The only difference is that things now are computerized and techniques are digital and much cleaner, there is one flaw that distracted everyone especial some film makers, they focus or relay on special effects to make their movies rather than the story it self and the acting of the stars. I think old movies are the best because of the stories and imagination put in the films which are lacking in today’s society.