Moving Images, Understanding Media

Chapter 5 Personal Expression and Studio Production 191

narrative and non-narrative elements in images and sounds to stimulate

audiences’ reactions to their movies.

The Development of Film Form

In the fi rst two decades of the cinema, almost all of the developments of the

communicative potential of moving images centered on narrative fi ction.

Within the technical limitations of this new medium, the most controllable

and lucrative method of producing motion pictures was through staged fi ction.

Filmmakers applied long-established and widely understood traditions of

storytelling—familiar through both the spoken and written word—to movies.

As you have seen in this text, directors made many breakthroughs as they

worked to use the perspective of the camera, expressive qualities of light,

arrangement of subjects, and the possibilities of editing to

devise ways of storytelling distinct to motion pictures.

It is certainly no surprise that the studios stuck to the most

widely accessible and familiar structure for their moving images

to be shown in given blocks of time: narrative fi ction. Th is was

also a format remarkably well suited to the most important

component of the moviemaking business: the star system.

Quite early in fi lm history, audiences reacted overwhelmingly

to certain actors that they saw in movies, and it became

quite clear that the marketing of these personalities—and

their faces and bodies—could form a lucrative aspect of

motion picture production. Th e identifi cation of audiences

with various actors grew quickly with the emergence of fan

clubs and the development of serials in which audiences

could return to watch their favorite actors in familiar roles.

Studios realized that they could craft personas for their stars

and they developed advertising campaigns and roles that

would satisfy the desire of audiences to see their heroes up

on the big screen.

Genres

Another manner in which producers developed interest in

their products and controlled marketing through a particular

set of expectations and values was the establishment of fi lm

genres. As studios began to produce fi lms, it was useful for

them to group productions according to particular needs

of setting and other logistical concerns. At the same time,

many traditions have existed in literature and other art

forms in which creators and the public have classifi ed types

of work according to a set of identifi able characteristics, so

it was natural for the cinema to adapt many of these basic

classifi cations, such as with tragedy or comedy. We s t e r n s,

comedies, horror fi lms, musicals, crime fi lms, and science-

fi ction could be geared to particular targeted markets and

Figure 5-23 Many serials featured

episodes that ended with the star in a

seemingly impossible situation, from

which the term “cliffhanger” derives. In

this contemporary version from Nash

Edgerton’s The Pitch, cinematographer

Tom Gleeson leans over the edge fi lming

stuntman Brett Praed while Andrew Horton

assists (photo by Louise Smith). (Courtesy Blue-

Tongue Films)

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