The General - Atlee Watson

The use of cinematography in the general was quite masterfully done. The area where the film was shot had stretches of parallel tracks, which allowed scenes of Buster on his train (agilely scrambling over the cars, balancing on the roof to scan the horizon, chopping wood for the engine while armies pass unnoticed behind him) to be filmed from another train running alongside. Despite having both trains in motion, the shots and scenes are quite still which is a true testament to how far the cinema had come in such a short time. The evolution of the plot also contributed greatly to the execution of the film. Every shot contributed to the development of not only the film, but the characters themselves. Not only did the close-ups help for the audience to connect to the emotions of the characters, but their use of body language allowed the shot to continue without having to defer to the classic typed dialogue screen. These continuous shots allowed the audience to understand what the character was saying or what emotions the character was feeling.

I do think that the long shots and the angle at which some scenes were shot that added a grandness that allowed cinema to grow further. One scene in particular comes to mind when the train that was stolen by the North circles around and over Keaton's General. The scene was a very wide shot to be able to capture the entire scene, and was shot quite low to the ground. This made the scene seem so large and was amazing to see. It seemed as if you were in the shot because of the way the scene was shot you were able to look up and see the wood falling from such a great height. In the shorts we were able to watch before the film, while a few had degrees of angle and long shots (With the horses walking down the street), none had the magnitude or scale that just this one scene had. I feel like this scene alone showed how much film had sophisticated and matured from the early cinema, and how quickly cinema would be able to grow.