The Evolution of the Movies

Evolution of the movies: what will come next?

Comparing A Trip to the Moon, Mélies (1902); The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith (1915) and Nosferatu, Murnau (1922); we have a complete view of the development of the art of the movies all over the world: all of them show a unique trait that makes it different than the other and each one offers a new hint.

--The first characteristic to notice, is the year of release of the movie that makes both The Birth of a Nation and Nosferatu more advanced in technique. However, A Trip to the Moon, with Mélies' creativity; led to a new vision of film-making inserting the first special effects: from here directors created their movies knowing how reality can be changed by the usage of magic and particular frame-cutting.

--Mélies has been the first person that surprised the audience with magic, but it also helps making real situations that need effects to reproduce a dangerous event: its usage, in fact, goes along with the plot of the movie and the director purpose. D.W. Griffith wants to recreate the Civil War and give the impression that black people was the cause of the problems between North and South America and so he needed to keep every situation as real as possible: who would understand and believe in his message if the movie did not show reality for what it is? So, in Nosferatu, where the main aim is to scare people and give the impression of supernatural, the usage of special effects is wide: a crucial example of that, is Nosferatu's death that reminds of Mélies special effects in the moon with smoke. On the contrary, in The Birth of a Nation, the main special effect is cutting the frame when Flora Cameron jumps off a cliff to replace her with a dummy.

--Along with this difference among the movies' plot, even camera angles and technique change. In A Trip to the Moon, unfortunately, the director does not have enough tools and knowledge to diversify camera angles but he tries anyway to insert a elementary zoom in by pausing the camera and putting the object closer every shot; on the contrary, in The Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffith innovates camera angles by introducing different distances between the lens and the character (medium shot, close up, extreme close up, long and extreme long shot); and, in Nosferatu, Murnau adds details like low angles on the vampire to magnify his power. In relation to this, camera techniques have different characteristics: in A Trip to the Moon, by the usage of the black velvet Mélies can arise in addition more frames; instead the most important two in The Birth of a Nation are the cross cutting to create a logical connection between different shots and the color red in the frames that represent the KKK to sharpen their importance and power; and in Murnau's film it is interesting to notice how he symbolizes supernatural by making some country side in negative and creates a jerky and scaring

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