US 1920s Film Magazines Online

This is a list of US silent film magazines that you may read online through Googlebooks:

“The Aristocrat of motion picture magazines”: Photoplay

• vol. 10, June 1916
• vol 11, mars 1917
• vol. 13-14, dec.1917
• vol. 18-20, june 1920

“Service to Exhibitors”: Motion Picture News

• vol. 20-24, nov. 1919

Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers

• no. 3, 1916
• no. 4, 1917
• no. 10-11, 1920
• no. 12-13, 1921
• no. 14-15, 1922

8000 AND ONE !!

8001 hits to FLYCZ ! Now I’m impressed…This started as just a way to store thoughts and tidbits that I didn’t want to lose yet could not find a place to store. Half-baked cookies so to speak.Yet some 400 of you out there, come what may, visit this site every month. I realize that by Internet standard 8000 hits is a paltry, miserable figure, yet I’m impressed. And I’d be very curious to know what you have found of interest on this site, and where you think I could improve things.

(hint: don’t even try to tell me to get the site more organized, that’s a dead end right there)

As it is, the site is taking a back seat these days as I’m furiously finishing writing my dissertation (am doing 10 pages a day, feeling pretty good about it too). But I’ll be back posting soon you just wait and see.

Actually no, don’t just wait and see Take this as your opportunity to speak up and let me know about your experience here at FLYCZ.

And thanks for all those visits !!

AMIA: The Reel Thing XXII – restoration splendors

The Reel Thing XXII is one heckuva conference. Where else can you talk Moon landing and Snow White, how to recover petabytes and how to marry a millionaire ? Need I say more ?
It’s in Los Angeles and it’s August 21-22.

Titles and images on a silent image

Continuing this ongoing series dealing with the separation of written words and images (click on the intertitle tag below in the “What’s On” section). Was alerted today (by the resourceful Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment) to this passage in Lescarboura’s manuel on motion picture techniques first published in 1919:

A considerable amount of thought must be devoted to the audence’s understanding of the picture. The center of interest in a cartoon must always be played up prominently by subduing other features. For instance, if one of the characters throws a missile, it is necessary that there be no further movement of his arm after the missile begins to travel across the picture. The character–and every other character in the drawing, for that matter–must remain absolutely rigid so that the attention of the audience will not be distracted from the missile which at that moement is the center of interest. Then again, when a character is made to speak by the introduction of what is known as a “balloon” within which is hand lettering, there must be no motion in the cartoon until the audience has had time to read the legend which then disappears. (306)

Lescarboura is here talking about animation technique, an example of which could be this 1920 Mutt and Jeff cartoon (Mutt and Jeff Go on Strike) recently restored by a cooperation between the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the National Film Preservation Foundation, and which you can see online for free (also available on the same site, an alluring trailer for the 1922 Sin Woman in which she almost disrobes…need I say more?). But I’m tempted to apply his reasoning to the apparent ban (not always respected, as I’ve shown in the above-mentionned series, but quite wide-spread anyway) on mixing titles with moving images in live features: words flashed would be too distracting (though distraction is not the taboo that some would have us believe in a Hollywood film…but I’m getting ahead of myself).

For curiosity’s sake, I’d like to read what Lescarboura thought of that 1920 experiment….

ANDERSON Mark Lynn (2008)

ANDERSON Mark Lynn. “Taking liberties: The Payne Fund Studies and the Creation of the Media Expert”, in GRIEVESON Lee, et WASSON Haidee éds. Inventing Film Studies. Durham, Londres : Duke University Press, 2008, p. 38-66

Revient sur 2 figures des Payne Fund Studies : Frederick Thrasher et Paul Cressey. Les deux sont des diplômés de l’université de Chicago où l’influence de Münsterberg est importante dans les cours de sociologie, notamment sa conclusion en 1916 sur le pouvoir de suggestion du cinéma (pas forcément en mal d’ailleurs). L’école de sociologie de Chicago regarde le domaine urbain à la recherche des “zones intersticielles” = zones qui échappent à l’organisation sociale. Puisque dans cette vue darwinienne le changement social est dû à un processus de croissance où la désorganisation est nécessaire à l’organisation sociale. D’où l’étude des zones désorganisées: danses, cinéma, quartiers pauvres, etc. Alors que leurs études (notamment Cressley) montrent une remarquable capacité à se noyer dans l’anonymat des foules et à reprendre les concepts fournis par leur observation, l’objectif reste néanmoins didactique et normatif : comment réglementer ce qui ne l’est pas encore. Ainsi ces études créent l’expert en études des média (media expert) : celui qui aura analysé la “situation totale” empiriquement et sera donc l’autorité en vue d’une réforme. Reste que ces sociologues sont les premiers à ancrer le cinéma dans les études universitaires (cours de Thrasher à NYU en 35-36), même si leur voie (sociologique) va être rapidement oubliée au profit d’études textuelles du cinéma.