Redefining Motion Pictures with the Camera

"Do you know…what we film tomorrow will strike the hearts of the world? Remember that, remember that when you go before the camera." Powerful words stated by one of history's most prominent directors, D.W. Griffith. With motion pictures having been through many changes in both cinematic style and in film content over time, numerous transformations of the cinematic world can be accredited to several different visionaries in this art. With Edwin Stanton Porter to George Melies, every visionary has illustrated and developed their methods in how cinema is viewed to this day. However, there are very few directors to this day that can be compared with David Wark Griffith. Griffith's influences to filmmaking along with the content of the film and style of camera techniques would alter the way forthcoming directors would create their own films.

Prior to Griffith's innovations with camera use, Hollywood filmed most of its features using consistently longer takes, less close-ups, and limited editing within scenes. The primary problem for the early cameraman was to simply achieve the shot needed for the picture. The main objective was to acquaint oneself to the tools of his trade. Because the moving picture camera was bulky, carrying it through the street meant a laborious task. Once set up, the camera was rarely if ever changed for another viewpoint; the whole subject was photographed in one shot, without any shift in the camera's position. Then came Melies who mastered camera tricks that allowed for double exposures, masks, stop-motions, reverse shootings, fast an slow motion, animation, fades, and dissolves. George Melies was the first to push cinema to a theatrical way, but it was Edwin S. Porter who pushed cinema toward the cinematic way. Melies listed scenes and roughly described their content, but Porter specified for the first time not only a full description of the dramatic action, but details of location, camera position, and transition.

Originally, D.W. Griffith did not want to create motion pictures, instead he wanted to become noted as a writer. Being ashamed for having to dabble in the film industry, he changed his name upon entering the industry, but only to later on recovering it and making it as much part of the film industry as the word "movie" itself. He further refined the art of cinema from Melies and Porter to contributing inventions of his own that allowed for greater unification, precision, and efficiency. From developing and expanding new techniques, to his improvement of motion picture composition, D.W. Griffith raised the bar for directors wherever films were made. While "The Birth of a Nation" changed the language of cinema, it represents the climax of visual strategies to communicate narrative that the film business has been striving to achieve since the beginning, despite the negative backlash it brought forth after its premiere bringing forth a divided nation.

With the production of "The Birth of a Nation", Griffith utilized several techniques in order to manipulate the audience's emotion and perspective of the movie. To invoke a notion of idealism, rather than an extended reality, Griffith used a technique known as "iris," though it is not known whether he created it or not, his use of this technique was distinct. On a darkened screen, a small dot would appear, slowly it would open and a beam of light revealed the action. As the drama unfolded, it was as if the viewer had the ability to penetrate the truth of life. Once the iris opened, special lighting would show a world where separations of good and evil were clear. Often heroes and heroines were bathed in light, while villains appeared dark and sinister in shadows. Griffith utilized this technique on several of the "black" actors whenever they were to come onto scene. This causes the audience to automatically perceive the African American characters as evil.

Feature films before were created under the notion that when audience member's paid to see an actor or actress, they would probably want to see the whole person. However, with Griffith, he realized that by positioning the camera closer to his subjects in what is known as a close-up, more intimate details were exposed on the individual's face, identifying the character's expression in a much more respected way. A more controversial close-up involves with the scene beginning with a close-up of slaves' hand harvesting cotton on a plantation, eventually followed by a close-up on a flower being grasped upon by the prosperous white male lead. Griffith creates these cuts with a purpose to set the mood of a slave harvest in a more positive outlook and to express the scene as being passive rather than oppressive. The final clip of the Klan rescue mission illustrated a format of editing that plays an imperative role in contemporary action films, and was used by Griffith in much the same way. The important cuts show two completely different sets of action, occurring in two completely different locations, but he cuts them together so as to give the effect that they are occurring simultaneously. Griffith uses this method of parallel editing to help audiences deduce that, even though the Camerons are confined in a secluded cabin and under siege from the army of blacks, the Klan members are on their way for a courageous rescue. Griffith depended upon the audience's capability to connect these two paralleled events as happening simultaneously. At the end of the clip, the Klansmen finally arrived, successfully taking those two paralleled shots of events together in one single shot, confirming the audience's deductions about their relation. Griffith's use of innovative techniques allows him to show a hierarchy of races with whites on top and non-whites below.

Production of the film's original budget was $40,000, but with Griffith's appeal to business, he quickly raised it to $110,000. With his money on hand, and 11 civil war movies already made; there was no reason to suspect that the twelfth would be any more controversial. However, the controversial film became a box office hit due to ticket prices being $2 for a screening. Prior to the filming of the movie, Griffith casted Lillian Gish for the role of Elsie. His choice for choosing her was due to her previous works in which she demonstrated her ability for playing innocent victims and she "offered an ethereal whiteness on screen that underlined the feminine purity of Elsie." Griffith also chose to not have many blacks featured in this film. To his dismay, this was one of the grounds that faced criticism later on. It showed Griffith's minimizing the role of African Americans in the movie. Griffith furthered his mistake because "instead of defending his decision not to use black actors in major roles in terms of their unavailability in California, or the expense of bringing them from the East Coast," he merely said that he preferred to work with the actors from his own company. This would cause many individuals into suspect that he was racist.

Despite the film's innovative cinematic techniques, it could not overcome the explicit racism that brought forth massive responses from individuals and organizations

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