Jeff Holley
Richard Simpson
ENGL 342
September 1, 2020
Response paper: “Basic Concepts”
Comparing an "embryo in the womb" to photographic film's evolution is that each film-making component has a separate element or DNA. Inspiration for capturing motion from photography resulted from inventions like the phenakistoscope or a short time later. The daguerreotypes popularized in the mid-nineteenth century used them in the civil war.
To "understand the medium" properties of film-making are divided into two segments, "basic and technical properties" (144), and in its primary sense, much of photography is identical to film. Film, however, is more revelatory, lending it more capable of featuring and recording events.
Broadly the technical properties lie in the editing process. For example, a film needs to be "meaningful" and lend "continuity" in contrast to still photography. Photography can be a catalyst into inspiring film making, and since the beginning of the medium, "formative tendencies" were simultaneously being born. On the one hand, there was the prototype style of Lumiere, who was a "strict realist," and on the other, Melies, whose films were more "imaginative" (145).
In summary, the analytical sense of the "photographic approach" in either film genre exhibits a realization of "aesthetic principle." A cinematic quality comes from both the artistic approach to the more technical "educational" film that conveys a particular message or documentary film event.
Jeff, excellent overview of Kracauer's argument regarding the cinematic approach. It is interesting to think about the way formative qualities can be used to enhance realistic qualities, and how this approach is something that is or is not taken by film, or even documentary film, over the years. Keep an eye on how each filmmaker attempts or not to enact what Kracauer called the cinematic approach.
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