Méliès’s Trip to the Moon Essay

The film opens with a gathering of academics in a lash hall. They have robes, beards and pointed hats. They are standing at first in ranks in the room, five more manpower join them and are given telescopes by female servants. The leader enters and assumes a position at a blackboard on the left where he draws an image of the Earth and the Moon and a bullet-shaped craft landing on the Moon. They all being discussing or arguing about the project. The technique used for acting is found on what one might see acted out in the theater with no modern cinematography such as close-ups or zooms are used to focus the attention on a peculiar(prenominal) character. All the characters appear onstage and if there is whatsoever focus on a certain carry through is done through theatrical technique such as the females marching out and handing out telescopes and leaving.When the master(prenominal) character, seeming like a professor comes in the conference sort of comes to attention and stand let off at first while the professor speaks and draws on the board. Ones attentions shifts to the group again as they discuss and argue with over-large gesticulations in this tranquil film without written inter-titles. It is a silent stage drama recorded on film, else it would be mime theatre. The films scene changes virtually like a shift of scene in the theatre. There is a very excogitate-looking space abridgement that is being worked on and some of the astronauts try out the interior. There is a moment when someone fall into a shallow barrel. Possibly, this was meant to be a comic touch which would be at home subsequent in vaudeville. There is no camera movement. It is as if one had a good seat at the theatre and watching a series of tableaux vivantes.The film owes much more to the stage and picture books than to any already-developed film technique. The subsequent boarding of the space-bullet on the left with the cannon on the right looks e extraly fake and hand-drawn. Ther e is little aim at a believable set and much over-acting doffing their hats and so on to an imaginary group of spectators, actually us who are watching the living theater more than a film by todays standards. After the firing of the cannon, there occurs the use of something like special effects where the Man in the Moon, framed by clouds comes closer to the viewer and has human like expressions which manoeuvre the space vehicle hitting him in the eye. It is a real human looking like he has whipped cream on his face.