Holly老師的英語新天地

雅思閱讀想拿高分(甚至滿分!!) 的不二法門，除了學會課堂中有教授的重要技巧外，就是練習、練習、再練習！All in all, Practice makes Perfect.  ~  Let’s Roll!

Film History in the 1890’s

Thomas Alva Edison is credited for the invention of the Kinetoscope. Edison originally disliked the idea of the motion picture. He felt that the only people who would be interested in watching them were children, and they too would soon tire of them. It took the persuasion of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson to convince Edison that there was money in motion pictures. Dickson was an English engineer working under the employment of Edison.

As a fatherless teen, WK Laurie Dickson read about Edison’s work for the first time in a London newspaper in 1879. Two years later, he sent a telegram to Edison requesting work. Without thought, Edison declined. Regardless, in 1883, Dickson gathered enough money and came to America. Edison took him into his home until he found employment.

In 1888, Dickson found work with Eadweard Muybridge, one of the many people who were attempting to record motion. He got jobs with several others who were attempting the same task. Dickson also made contacts with people such as George Eastman (founder of Eastman Kodak).

In November, 1890, Dickson devised a crude camera and filmed his first rnotion picture of fellow assistant Fred Ott, entitled “Monkey Shines.” He presented what he called the Kinetoscope to Edison, who immediately put a team on it. The Kinetoscope was a box with a peep hole that allowed one person to watch an approximately five second long film.

Edison constructed the first movie studio in 1893. It cost $ 637 and was built so that it could turn to follow the sun. That year, Edison’s assistant Fred Ott sneezed in front of the camera. The film was entitled “Record of a Sneeze” and was the first film ever to be copyrighted. Kinetoscope parlous opened up in New York and soon San Francisco, Washington, Atlantic City, Baltimore, and Chicago.

Other inventors in Europe were working on a way of projecting motion pictures. In France in February of 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented a projector. They filmed a movie, in which the workers were leaving their father’s photographic factory in Lyons, entitled La Sortie des Ouvriers de l’Usine Lumiere. In March, they projected the movie in hope of attracting carnival showmen and such people. Their effort was a failure.

Eventually, in December, they rented the basement of the Grand Cafe. They hung posters (below) everywhere advertising the event. The admission was to be one franc. Out of the one hundred seats, only thirty three were taken. They showed their first film, along with several others. The brothers were the first to make a newsreel, filming delegates arriving at congress. Other films included a baby being fed and a train approaching. Many people fled from their seats at this shot, tearing the train would run them over. The most appreciated film was a comedy entitled “L’Arroseur Arrosee,” or “The Sprinkler Sprinkled.” By the middle of January, everyone in Paris was rushing to see these “animated photographs.”

Meanwhile, Dickson tried to convince Edison to develop a projector, but he saw no use in multiple people viewing a film and cancelled all experiments. When Edison was on vacation in 1895, he learned that Dickson was still at work developing a projection machine. Dickson was successful at building such a machine. They named it the Biograph, and it sparked a revolution. They built the first enclosed studio and called it the “Black Maria.”

Edison was furious that the patent did not go under his name, and he and Dickson parted ways. Dickson founded the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which launched the careers of such people as D.W. Griffith and Mary Pickford. Edison borrowed the Vitoscope, an invention of Thomas Armat, and called it his own.

Most music hail owners felt that motion pictures would fade in popularity. Actually, the demand for them became greater. Edison no longer objected to the Biograph as his only competition. George Melies, one of many early filmmakers, began experimentation with stopping the camera and starting it at other places. He used this technique to make a woman disappear in “L’Escamotage d’une Dame,” have his clothes disappear, his boots walk without him, a table and chair collapse, and a candle explode in “L’Auberge Ensorcelee.”

In 1898, the first propaganda film was made and named “Tearing Down the Spanish Flag.” It was created during the Spanish American War. The event that started the war was the explosion of the Battleship Maine. The explosion was recreated by Melies in “Viste Sous-marin du Maine,” where a divers pull a sailor out of a hole in the sunken ship.

Film plagiarism got its start a year later, when G.A. Smith made “The Kiss in the Tunnel” in which the kiss had shots of a moving train. A less sophisticated turn with the same plot and same title was filmed soon after by the Riley Brothers— “Bamford.”

Robert Paul made “Upside Down; or the Human Flies.” In his film, two couples dance on the ceiling of a room. One man drops his jacket, which proceeds to float to the floor.

With the 1890’s coming to an end, and a new century about to begin, the popularity of movies continued to grow year by year. The 1890’s began an industry which is more popular today than it ever was.

Questions

Choose on phrase (A—H) from the list of phrases to complete each key point below. The information in the completed sentences should be an accurate summary of points made by the writer.

NB      There are more phrases A—H than sentences so you will not use them all.

List of Phrase

1.   WK Laurie Dickson applied for a job with Edison...

2.   The Lumiere brothers filmed a movie and showed it for one franc...

3.   Dickson developed a film projector without Edison’s knowledge...

4.   The Spanish civil war was the background...

1. ____________________________           

2. ____________________________

3. ____________________________           

4. ____________________________

Answer key: 1.E  2.H  3.B  4.A