The Birth of a Nation
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The Birth of a Nation
The birth of a nation film was set during the American Civil war. It is a powerful story about two upper-class families, including the Stonemans family of the North and the Camerons family of the South (Griffith et al., 1915). It is a tender portrait of two families fighting for unity in war. It is also a romantic vision of the “Southern Legend” to depict the Reconstruction era. The film is shown in two parts, and it was separated by another movie innovation called intermission. It was the first film to have musical scores for an orchestra. However, it is a staged battle sequence and pioneered close-ups and fade-outs. It was the first movie to be screened in the White House, viewed by the then-president Woodrow Wilson.
Mise-en-scene is a technique of cinema that many people are familiar with. Ideally, after seeing a film, recalling the camera’s cutting or movements and the off-screen sound can be difficult (Dedjo &Yashar, 2016). The Gone’s costumes with the wind and bleak and the chilly lighting in Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu. Moreover, clear impressions of the misty streets are maintained in our minds. The actors necessarily use the use of makeup as their faces would not register on film stocks. Recently, the use of makeup is used by actors to enhance their appearance on the screen. Moreover, the filming was done in black and white colours. Today different colours are applied when filming movies and songs hence making it attractive. Cast shadows are used in film making like a few shadows imply an entire prison cell. Camera angles used in the film production are quite simple compared to the modern way of film technology with a superior inclination of camera lenses. The film’s social norms are quite decent compared to the modern movies in which there is a poor dress code. In summary, The Birth of a nation film shows the diversity of people’s characters and lifestyles.
References
Griffith, D. W., Dixon, T., Alden, M., Lewis, R., Siegmann, G., Gish, L., … & Cooper, M. (1915). The birth of a nation.
Deldjoo, Yashar, et al. “Recommending movies based on mise-en-scene design.” Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2016.