Special Effects in Early Film

A Trip to the Moon by Georges Melies is a film that displays many forms of early photography. The film was in black and white and looked similar to an animated film where drawings are placed in a flip book and when you flip through the book quickly it can create a motion picture. The movements in the film were slow and you can tell that it was a film composed of a group of photos. The film was blurry and you could see a thin white line or strip constantly running through the video. This line was found in many early photographs usually on the right side of the photo and represents the transition from one photo to the next. When I see these lines I also remember earlier photographs that used the wet plate process or collodion processes on metal or glass plates with chemicals. If you tried to forward the film you can actually see the photographs next to each other step by step. One major difference between the photographic camera and the film camera would be the clarity in the film and one major similarity would be the etching that is displayed in both photographs and the films.