Section C
Today I would like to talk about the early days of movie
making in the late nineteenth and early (36) centuries.
Before the (37) films of D. W. Griffith, film makers were
limited by several (38) questions of the era. According to
one, the camera was always fixed at a viewpoint (39) to that
of the spectator in the theatre, a position now known as the long shot. It was
another convention that the (40) of the camera never changed
in the middle of a (41) . In last week’s films, we saw how
Griffith ignored both these limiting (42) and brought the
camera closer to the actor. This shot, now known as a full shot,
was considered (43) at the time. For Love of Gold, was the
name of the film in which the first use of the full shot. After progressing from
a long shot to the full shot, the next logical step for Griffith was to bring in
the camera still closer, in what is now called the close-up. (44)
, as for example, in Edqaed Asport’s The Great Train Robbery, which
was made in 1903. But not until 1908 in Griffith’s movie
(45) . In the scene from After Many Years that we are about
to see, pay special attention to the close-up of Annie Lee’s worried face as she
awaits her husband’s return. In 1908, this close-up shocked everyone in the
Biogress Studio. But Griffith had no time for argument. He had another surprise
even more radical to offer. Immediately following close-up of Annie, he inserted
a picture of the object of her thought--her husband east sway on a desert aisle.
(46) .