Graphic Novel: Film Analysis

For my graphic novel, I choose to do a non-fiction piece on a brief history of film. Choosing this allowed me to get outside of my comfort zone, as well as possibly learn something new in the process. In the graphic novel, I first talk about the very origins of film: what the first motion picture machine was and what the very first “film” looked like and why it was made. Next I look at the films of the early 20th century. They started off very short, as before 1912, it was not common to use multiple reels of film to make a motion picture. However, as time went on and technology advanced, so did the way films were made. By the time the era of silent films came about, “Hollywood,” as it was now called, was becoming a major American industry.

The most notable thing about the page is that it is a splash panel, completely taking up the last page of the graphic novel. I did this because I wanted to emphasize the fact that I think the future of cinema is large as well, and films will continue to evolve as humans come up with more ideas and also as the technology to make them changes. I also showed this idea by the fact that I choose to put a cutout of myself over all of the movies from this century that I decided to place on that last page. I did this, as I hope that as cinema evolves, I will be able to stick with it and keep up, getting to see all of the brilliance that I hope will come out of it. Also, I thought about making the last page in color, but I decided against it as it would wrestle against the theming of my use of black and white, to show that the past and present of cinema will forever be woven together. Finally, the background movies of this panel overlapping each other, is the perfect representation of how everything that we are creating is in some ways intertwined, just as the past and present are. Some many themes can be found in all kinds of movies. From love to hope to despair to perseverance, someone can find connecting themes in movies anywhere if they simply choose to

Though the subject was non-fiction, I attempted to make the delivery feel somewhat personal. Whether or not that succeeded, it would have not translate through text as well. However, since the history of film does slightly read like a textbook, it may have been easier to have just conveyed it as one if this were not a specific project. Personally, I don’t grasp historical information better if it is drawn out for me rather than if it is just in paragraph form, so I don’t know if this graphic novel would have helped me. One of the easiest thing for me about making this graphic novel was finding the information for it. The research was quite interesting actually and I had no difficulties on that front. The main problem I ran into was what to actually include in the graphic novel, as there is truly much more history then what I showed in my graphic novel. But, I could only create so much, so I decided it would be best if I just stuck to events that I felt had the greatest impact on film as we know it