Madame ou Monsieur, do you remember the first time you saw magic? For many people it was likely an older member of the family, like a grandfather performing a simple trick and it would generally go something like this: he’d show you his hands, Okay, the hands are empty you’d think. Then he would wave those hands around, what’s next?! you would wonder in anticipation. He’d then reach behind your ear, …okay…. you’d quietly say as your heart rate increased, not knowing what it was that was about to blow your mind. All of a sudden …Wooosh… the hand would appear again, this time accompanied by a shiny silver coin, wow…. You would sit there in amazement, your eyes wide open, taking slow gulps; amazed, confused. That was likely one of the first times you’ve ever felt that distinct sensation of wonder.
As you grow older and figure out the world, “magic” seems to become less impressive - we become skeptical. After, or even during a trick we tend to be more focused on figuring out how the trick is done, rather than just accepting it for what it’s supposed to be: magic. This tends to be the nature of today’s society; requiring an easy answer to everything. Adults who observed magic one-hundred years ago were like us at the age of five - blown-away and bewildered. If something appeared to be incomprehensible it was viewed as a more of a miracle rather than a Rubik’s cube waiting to be solved.
A few weeks ago I was watching Michel Gondry clips on You Tube. Watching most things by Gondry evokes that same sense of wonder that those magic tricks provided me as a kid. Now, even though I’m constantly blown away by Gondry’s work, often finding myself tripping some serious balls wondering, how does he do it, I have the ability to easily find out his methods. I can go online, or I can pop Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Science of Sleep in my DVD player and check out the extras section, filled with director’s commentaries. I, the humble observer am able to find out this cine-magician’s secrets (I’m in your head Gondry!). This doesn’t make his work any less amazing, the fact that he uses hand-made/low-tech methods to perform his trickery rather than relying solely on CGI or other special effects makes me respect him all that much more, but it’s not miraculous. Imagine actually seeing these same/similar special effects that Gondry uses, one-hundred years ago. I’m not sure what the term for “tripping balls” was back then, but if you saw something similar to what Gondry does now, you would definitely “trip late 19th/early 20th century balls". All over the place.
Enter Parisian filmmaking pioneer Georges Melies, who certainly would have conjured up more than a few “ball trippings” and “sacre bleus!” during his time. Melies, whose career lasted from 1896 to 1914, is considered to be the original Cine-magician, and without him who knows what filmmaking would be like today. Michel Gondry, for instance, would probably only exist in name.
So what makes Melies such a pioneer? Well, he was the really first person to see a potential in filmmaking that extended beyond just simple story-telling. His desire and passion to create these visually stunning movies - mostly influenced by his work as a stage-magician - led Melies to realize that movies as a form of entertainment should, and could be more enchanting. Melies introduced his brand of hocus pocus, waved his wand, pulled a rabbit out of the hat, (insert your own magical cliché here), and gave “voila” to Victorian cinema, by developing several special effect techniques which are still used today.
A few of these techniques are:
Stop Trick/Substitution –Today this is considered to be a simple effect, but was revolutionary at the time. This is a special effect where an object is being filmed, and then the camera is turned off. The object is then moved out of sight, and the camera is turned on, giving the illusion that the object has vanished into thin air. Melies discovered this technique while filming traffic in Paris. His camera jammed briefly, and then he managed to get it working again a short while later. When Melies screened the footage later, he was astonished to see that a bus had turned into a hearse.
Double Exposure – Another of Melies' cool techniques was using double exposure, which can be seen in a multitude of his films. This is a technique where a piece of film is exposed twice, to two different images. When played back, it appears that a second image is superimposed over the first, allowing two different images to co-exist together.
Time Lapse Photography – This technique was first used in a feature film in his 1897 piece, Carrefour De L’Opera. This special effect is where you film something at a rate much slower than it will be played back. Take an apple for example. You film a frame of the apple everyday for two weeks as it slowly rots. When you’re done filming, you play each frame of film at a normal speed, providing the audience with the impression that time is moving faster, therefore lapsing. For this particular example, the audience will see an apple rotting in ten seconds, when in actuality, it took two weeks for the apple to rot.
Melies used these and other techniques throughout his career, which saw 531 films made, leaving those who were witness to them completely dumbfounded. The most notable film was Une Voyage dans la Lune, which almost every student who has taken a film or science fiction class has seen. In Une Voyage dans la Lune, considered to be the first science fiction film, every one of Melies brilliant and magical techniques are on display, a giant “abracadabra” to the world.
Even though most of Melies films were made over a century ago, I am continually amazed when watching his work. Today his films stand out with the same prominence of contemporary filmmakers, and in an industry that has evolved so much, especially technologically, that is a huge testament to his work. I am convinced that without Georges Melies injecting his brand of magic into filmmaking, the movie watching experience wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it is today.
Merci, and a tip of the hat to Monsieur Melies for his incredible work, his influence on the film industry and amazing directors such as Michel Gondry, but mostly for adding a bit of magic into the world, allowing each of us to once again feel a five-year-old's sense of wonder.
