In my presentation for today’s class I discussed the following:  Siegfried Kracaucer was one of the firsts to emphasize the value of the study of everyday life and was an author of German expressionist cinema. He felt that there was something beautiful about mirroring everyday life.  Overall, the main idea of his article was to express how the nature of the film is the intervention of the filmmaker’s formative energies in all dimensions in addition to creative efforts. The cinematic approach can work together to benefit the medium of film with its concern on the visible world.

Introduction: He discussed in his essay how the photographic film came to be and the craft behind it. (When reading this I thought of the film we watched in class-Man with a Movie Camera) He introduces the idea of recording real life events which is known today as documentaries or newsreels. There were also two tendencies to which he refers to: Realistic and formative. These tendencies must operate in both the medium of film and photography.  The realistic tendency discusses the ways the camera doesn’t have to be still because now they are now moving and editing devices are being used to help get the message across. It has been argued that staging a real life event would be more interesting than filming it as it happens because there is a stronger illusion of reality. The formative tendency discusses how films extend the dimensionality of characters and objects in ways that photography can’t. It explores the physical reality in front the camera, but also on the outset as well as the story and non-story film.

There can be clashes between these two tendencies when a director creates an imaginary universe from freely staged material and obligated to draw on camera reality. However, they are very inter-related because they need to be balanced when worked into a film.  Both tendencies shouldn’t overwhelm one another, but instead “follow the lead.”

Lumiere and Melies: These two directors pictured everyday life after photographs. Lumiere believed that cinematography was meant for scientific curiosity and didn’t focus on the artistic aspects of film. On the contrary, Melies began to make more artistic driven films that changed the everyday life genre. He focused on the attractive compositions and not the explorations of nature.