Buster Keaton

A train barreling straight for you, with no intentions to stop would certainly cause you to panic. An audience experienced this while watching the Lumière brothers Arriva of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) in France. These new moving images amazed audiences all over the world. Thanks to Thomas Edison, Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers, the great pioneers of film history. Silent films used camera effects, music, lighting, staging of props and the actor’s body language as a medium to create a…

The film for this week was “The General”. The main protagonist in this movie is Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton). In short, the film display an engineer, Johnnie, who has an internal conflict with his girlfriend, Annabelle, and at same time gets his train stolen by Union spies where he tries to retrieve it and succeed. To add with it, his girlfriend accidentally gets involved it as a prisoner of war. In the end, he saves his beloved train named “the General”, his lover, and is promoted to a…

Comedies have been a staple of the American film industry since the days of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton with the silent era, black and white, slapstick comedies. Movies themselves are a unique cognitive stimulus, so comedic movies are an individual slice of entertainment that combines the realm of comedy and of visual storytelling. Using the lenses…

Evolution is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as the process of slow change and development. There is no artform more influenced by the evolution of technology than film and specifically animation. Animation itself was born out of the evolution of technology, specifically photography. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a new way to capture motion with his photographs of animals and humans in motion, other advancements in the camera pushed film forwards, but it was the mistake of George Melies that…

When we first started doing the Mime Unit, I thought it would be super boring, but also super easy. However, I was proved wrong. This unit was surprisingly hard, as it was really hard to not talk. Trying to expresses everything your character is thinking with just facial expressions was difficult for me as I literally don't know how show emotion. You have to be very in touch with your emotions and facial expressions to do a successful mime. It was also hard trying to remember where you put…

Sherlock Jr. is a shy projectionist/janitor who wants to be a private detective. He wants to propose to a pretty girl but another man (the Sheik) wants to propose to her too. The Sheik tries to get rid of him by stealing the girl's father’s pocket watch and pawning it to buy her an expensive gift. He then slips the receipt into the projectionist’s pocket and the police find it. He doesn't have much luck in real life but in his dreams, he is the famous and heroic detective Sherlock Jr. who faces…

Silent cinema was the first leap into cinema. Even to this day it is beyond me how people could just see a movie with no sound and think oh yeah thats interesting. I wonder what it would just be like to be inside the mind of a film maker in that day and age. Did they even think of how much more it would really add to their movies if there was sound. People who just casually watch movies know a good movie when they see it but to really know why is a whole other story. Sound plays such a massive…

The films they made together were as the following ‘The Kid,’ ‘The Gold Rush,’ ‘City Lights,’ and ‘Modern Times.’ All these films made him popular and the most successful movie star of his time. Some fans compared him to the great Buster Keaton, who was a famous silent comedian. He also made a ton more films during the 30’s. He also invented a new style of movie, which are silent movies. In the late 30’s he also did his first talkie which was named ‘The Great Dictator.’ In this he offended…

The lost cause monument that I chose honors an incident called “Andrews Raid.” The actual monument is an “American” type steam locomotive engine named the “General.” The engine operated on the Western Atlantic Railroad line and serviced both freight and travel between Atlanta, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee. According to Russell S. Bonds in Stealing the General, “Chattanooga was an important rail junction that controlled food and supplies coming from the dep south headed to the…

The 1920’s saw a big boom in the entertainment industry. After World War 1 many Americans had money to blow and turned to entertainment as a way to spend their extra cash. Music, movies, radios, plays, and sports all became popular forms of mass entertainment during this time period. Music was a big part of the Roaring Twenties. In fact, the Roaring Twenties is also known as the Jazz Age. Jazz became big after New Orleans closed its ports and most musicians had to move north to find work.…