Wednesday, February 8, 2012

1st Dissolve Transition




Cinderella (1899) - Georges Melies

This oldest known film adaptation of Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale is also the first movie to utilize a dissolve transition between scenes. Georges Méliès accomplished this by closing the lens aperture, rewinding the film, and then re-opening the aperture.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000230/

1 comment:

  1. We take for granted the use of a lap dissolve to show the passage of time and change of place in a movie, but it's not an obvious choice if it's never been done. My hat's off to Melies for coming up with it at a time when a dissolve was a technical achievement in and of itself.

    ReplyDelete