Our journey begins in the Far East.

Foreword

This booklet consists of materials and activities that can be used by the teachers and students of the third year of study to practice communication skills while studying the topic “Cinema”.

The booklet consists of seven parts: History of Cinema, Film Genres, Movie People and Show Business, Legends of World Cinematography, Film Festivals and Consolidation. Each part contains the materials on the suggested topic supplemented by the exercises that allow for continual assessment of progress. The sixth part is constituted by the exercises to check the general knowledge of the topic.

The booklet is not all-encompassing. The first objective of this booklet is to review essential information concerning the world of cinema. Then, using this information as a knowledge base, the booklet provides specific information about the development of cinema, the people who are involved in film-making, how a film is made and the most famous international and home film festivals.

This booklet has been prepared primarily for University teachers to be used at the lessons of conversational English and teachers of English at secondary specialized schools. The material compiled in the booklet was meant to serve not only as vehicles for classroom instruction but also as resources and self-study. In each part, the combination of texts, topical vocabulary and expansive exercises provides a complete and invaluable reference guide for the student. After students have gained exposure to the content area and have practiced reading skills and strategies, conversational practice in each part they move on to developing clear and effective writing skills.

Writing this booklet has been fun and challenging. We are indebted to many people who helped us in all kinds of different ways. Specifically, though, we want to express our appriciation and gratitude to:

L.A. Pashis, for her confidence and encouragement,

L.P. Rudakova, for her invaluable suggestions,

D.M. Kolesnyk, for her excellent and sharp-eyed production editing,

our colleagues and students, for contributing ideas and activities included into this booklet.

Part I. History of Cinema

This special report looks at cinema’s early development.

Where did it come from and who invented it?

Our journey begins in the Far East.

Moving images have always been popular. In China, for example, there were 'shadow plays' 5,000 years ago. These used firelight to project images of puppets onto screens. So projection is a very old idea. But cinema only became possible when this old Asian idea met a new European one – photography.

The two came together in the middle of the 19th century. That's when photos were first used in 'magic lanterns′. Before then, these early projectors had used glass slides. The pictures on these slides were painted by hand and very expensive. In comparison, photos were cheap and easy to produce.

So – by 1850 projection and photography had come together. But the result still wasn't 'cinema'. How could it be when the pictures didn't move? The solution to that problem came in several stages.

• The first, in 1877, came via English inventor Eadweard Muybridge. He discovered a way to take photos very quickly, one after the other.
• Eleven years later, an American called George Eastman produced the first celluloid film on a roll.
• By 1890, it was possible to take up to 40 photos per second.
• Next, in 1893, came another invention – Thomas Edison's 'Kinetoscope^'. The kinetoscope projected moving pictures, but it had three problems,

(a) It was noisy

(b) The pictures it produced were very low-quality

(c) Only one person could watch a kinetoscope at a time.

Before cinema could be born, one last invention was necessary – a quiet machine able to project high-quality pictures onto a large screen. And the men who produced that were two French brothers from the city of Lyons.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31