Trick film

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Georges Méliès' The Infernal Cauldron, 1903

In the early

special effects.[1]

History

The trick film genre was developed by

James Stuart Blackton and Edwin S. Porter.[4]

In the first years of film, especially between 1898 and 1908, the trick film was one of the world's most popular

fast motion created by varying the camera cranking speed; the editing device called the substitution splice; and various in-camera effects, such as multiple exposure.[4]

"Trick novelties," as the British often called trick films, received a wide vogue in the United Kingdom, with Robert W. Paul and Cecil Hepworth among their practitioners. John Howard Martin, of the Cricks and Martin filmmaking duo, produced popular trick films as late as 1913, when he began doing solo work. However, British interest in trick films was generally on the wane by 1912, with even an elaborate production like Méliès's The Conquest of the Pole received relatively coolly.[6]

Elements of the trick film style survived in the

sight gags of silent comedy films, such as Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.[7] The spectacular nature of trick films also lived on in other genres, including musical films, science fiction films, horror films, and swashbuckler films.[4]

Style

Trick films should not be confused with short silent films that feature conventional stage magic acts ("films of tricks," in the words of the film historian Matthew Solomon). Instead, trick films create illusions using film techniques.[8]

Trick films generally convey a sprightly humor, created not so much by jokes or comedic situations as by the energetic whimsy inherent in making impossible events seem to occur.[2] As the philosopher Noël Carroll has pointed out, the comedy in Méliès's trick film style is "a matter of joy borne of marvelous transformations and physically impossible events," "a comedy of metaphysical release that celebrates the possibility of substituting the laws of physics with the laws of the imagination."[2]

Examples

References

  1. ^ a b Solomon 2006, p. 596
  2. ^ a b c Carroll 1996, p. 146
  3. ISBN 0822318393
  4. ^ a b c Parkinson, David (2012), 100 Ideas That Changed Film, London: Laurence King Publishing, p. 19
  5. ISBN 0300128703
  6. ISBN 9780415156479
  7. ^ Carroll 1996, p. 156
  8. ^ Solomon 2006, pp. 602–3

Citations

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Trick films videos.
  • Carroll, Noël (1996), Theorizing the Moving Image, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  • Solomon, Matthew (December 2006), "Up-to-Date Magic: Theatrical Conjuring and the Trick Film", Theatre Journal, 58 (4): 595–615,
    S2CID 194080442


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