George Melies was born on 8th December 1861 in Paris, His father was a wealthy shoe manufacturer. Young George was interested in sketching, and he liked to make sets for and perform his own marionette shows. His parents did not encourage these fanciful pastimes, and Méliès eventually found himself working in the family business. His fascination with art is what had led him at the Ecole des Beaux Arts a few years later, this is where he studied stage design and puppetry.
In 1844, when Melies was in London he had a keen interest in stage conjury after witnessed Maskelyne and Cooke’s work. This led Melies a few years later to purchase his own musical theatre which caused him to work fulltime at it.
When his father retired in 1888, Méliès sold his share of the business and bought the Théatre Robert-Houdin. He devoted himself to the running of the theater and would sometimes perform himself. Before long though, he would find a new obsession.
During 1895 Melies saw the Lumiere brothers and asked from their opinion about his invention however the both of them declined him and his work. This caused Melies to seek the help of Robert Paul about the understanding of moving pictures by demonstrating his invention; the camera projection machine which was firstly later screened on the 4th April 1896.
In autumn of 1896, Melies accidental discovered the stop motion trick which happened when his camera was paused for a moment then resumed. When Méliès looked at the film later, he noticed that at the moment of the break, the bus he had been filming suddenly disappeared and new vehicles replaced it. Making items appear and disappear by stopping and starting the camera would become one of his most commonly used film tricks. How lucky that he had the vision to make magic out of what would appear to many to be simply a technical problem. This made Melies to become a well known factor in cinematic history and was popular known as the first person to use exposures, photography and hand coloured paint in his work.
With Melies founded discovered it caused him to go under the name ‘Cinemagician’.
In 1902, only six years after starting work with the medium of film, Méliès produced its first masterpiece. A Trip to the Moon is believed to have been inspired by several works at the time that speculated about life on the moon. H.G. Wells and Jules Verne wrote about space travel, and Offenbach composed an opera about a trip to the moon. The public was ready to see the first science fiction movie. The film was a huge success in France, and Méliès hoped to make a fortune in the United States as well but soon after many other people tried to replicate his work for fame and fortune.
Many of the special effects in A Trip to the Moon, as in many of Méliès’s films, were created using the stop trick technique (also known as substitution splicing), in which the camera operator would stop filming long enough for something onscreen to be altered, added, or taken away.
My opinion on ‘A Trip to the Moon’ is that it’s very definitive and original in the sense that if you were shown the first few seconds of it. You’d be able to recognise its been done by George Melies right from the bat. The film itself reminds me of a dream sequence and takes me to another world through it’s great use of conveying power visual themes. The way in which Melies splices effects together really gives off a powerful ambience to the Sci-Fi genre. The whole theatrical piece reminds me of a silent fantasy film a little like the original ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ except with a more creepy unsettling vibe especially after the Moon appears with the human face.
Nekrojar of Design 