La Voyage dans la Lune, translates to a Trip to the Moon, is a short black and white film directed and filmed by George Mellies in 1902. Mellies is in many ways a pioneer of a variety of modern special effects. He began his career as a stage magician before progressing into becoming a film maker. Mellies loved the magic of film making, and was in many ways obsessed with illusion. It was these illusions in his films that made them so impressive. On film he could perform many tricks a magician could but even easier and in completely different context. He discovered what became known as the "mid shot trick" when film jammed on one of his early cameras. This special effect allowed Mellies to give the illusion of the magician disappearing and reappearing a woman. Because Mellies was a master of stage arts and how to get the best out of a theatre production from his time running the Robert Houdan theatre, coupled with his knowledge of his special effects, his films really were ahead of their time in many ways. In one of Mellies films he is credited from using double exposure and splicing film back together, only he exposed the reel of film seven times. This is so significant for me as this effect that Mellies was using in the 1930's was still considered state of the art special effects when it was used by the special effects team working on Star Wars in 1977, thats how far ahead of his time Mellies was.
La Voyage dans la Lune was filmed with a mix of live action film and painting sets. Much the same as a theatre production uses a set and actors. This was Mellies signature style by this point. There were also a number of other points in the film that highlight it as Mellies, for instance the use of actors and actresses as the stars and other planets. Not only this but the short film, running only eight minutes long on 25 frames a second, has had a large influence in popular culture. Everything from rock group Smashing Pumpkins very Mellies inspired music video for the song tonight tonight to comedy from the Mighty Boosh making use of Mellies moon with a face.
No comments:
Post a Comment