Trip to the moon

Moon

1. Melies
A Trip to The Moon analysis
A Trip to the Moon is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired
by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's novels From the Earth to the
Moon and Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to
the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule. They explore the Moon's surface, escape
from an underground group of lunar inhabitants, and return to Earth with a captive
lunar inhabitant. It features an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers, led by
Méliès himself in the main role of Professor Barbenfouillis, and is filmed in the overtly
theatrical style for which Méliès became famous.

2. Special effects
•At the start of the film there is a title screen announcing the name of the movie.
There is use of cutting and editing because as the scene changes the previous
scene fades away fading into the new scene. When they are on the moon there is
stars and planets which are being edited in to look like they are really there. There
is use of explosions and steam for example when one of the astronauts kills the
lunar inhabitant it explodes into smoke. When they are in the cave it looks like it
stretches out very far but really it is just a background on a stage.
•A tightly edited narrative combined with stunning visual effects helped A Trip to
the Moon become first international motion picture hit.

3. Special effects examples
This shows when some characters are holding something which turns into
chairs as they cut the movie and continue once they have new props in
their hands
This is a picture of when the
lunar inhabitant explodes
into smoke

4. Style
•The film's style, like that of most of Méliès's other films, is deliberately theatrical. The mise
en scéne is highly stylized, recalling the traditions of the 19th-century stage, and is filmed by
a stationary camera, placed to evoke the perspective of an audience member sitting in a
theatre. This stylistic choice was one of Méliès's first and biggest innovations. Although he
had initially followed the popular trend of the time by making mainly actuality films in his
first few years of filming Méliès gradually moved into the far less common genre of fictional
narrative films, which he called his scènes composées or "artificially arranged scenes.” The
new genre was extensively influenced by Méliès's experience in theatre and magic, especially
his familiarity with the popular French féerie stage tradition. In an advertisement he proudly
described the difference between his innovative films and the actualities still being made by
his contemporaries: "these fantastic and artistic films reproduce stage scenes and create a
new genre entirely different from the ordinary cinematographic views of real people and real
streets."

5. Images

6. Images