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7/27 Film Study

In the second year of ITI, we don't have clubs anymore, whereas having elective courses. I've chosen film study in order to learn more about movie history and culture. In the first class, Oliver introduced the first movie " A Trip to the Moon" made in 1902. It's the first time that people tried to create a story rather than filming daily life. The plot and characters' outfits are hilarious. The main story is about a group of scientists creating a big bullet, and firing it to the moon carrying 6 of them inside. The scientists were dressed in wizard costumes, but mot laboratory clothing. After Oliver had shown the film to the class, I found that I've watched it before in an exhibition.

Later on, Oliver gave us homework to check one of the classic silent films "Metropolis" (1927), which influenced a lot of movies afterwards. It's a sci-fi story based on 2026, and people are divided into 3 classes. Rich and powerful people can live in beautiful, luxurious skyscrapers, on the contrary, workers can only live underground and have to work long shifts. The lead character, Freder, the son of the city ruler, saw a pretty woman from the underground named Maria, and fell in love with her. Freder followed Maria to the underground world and learned the differences between the two worlds. Maria asked Freder to become the mediator between the two classes, but at the same time, Freder's father wanted to destroy the relationship between them. The film surprised me a lot by its costume and background design. It's costume also affects the catwalks designers. Metropolis is also the first silent film I watched, and the acting is very different from today's films. Without verbal communication, actors needed to be more exaggerated to show the emotions of characters. Also, the written dialogue is not easy to present because they have to be powerful but short. Plus the right selection of fonts helps me to imagine how the actors are speaking in person. I was also amazed by the special effects. It was hard for me to imagine how they did all that in 1927. After 1 hour of watching, it became a little bit boring. The pace of Metropolis is much slower than the modern pace. It gave me the same feeling in the end. I usually expect a twist at the end, but it went smoothly till the end. Overall, it's still a nice history lesson.