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Around minute 10:50 in the Lecture Video for Lecture #5: Cabin in the Sky (1943) with Vanessa Theme Ament and Richard Edwards, https://learn.canvas.net/courses/2206/pages/week-2-monday-an-historical-overview-of-the-second-decade?module_item_id=218041 Dr. Edwards brought up this subject - I believe it was Vincent Minnelli who brought editing into dance numbers to highlight certain moves. I remember something that Fred Astaire once said and emphasized about his own dance routines which is that often editing a routine was a way to "cheat" and that when those close-ups are shot it is not live but just that particular sequence and was "lazy" so to speak. So he, himself, insisted that his dance routines were shot in full frame and done as one continuous piece. So frankly, in my own humble opinion, I do not think that that "innovation" was something positive. To this day, I can't stand when they cut away to "body parts" during a dance. And while it might be true that this was something that could be done on film and not in the theater, remember that movies were a way of bringing the theater or Broadway experience to audiences who did not live in New York or large metropolises that would have the possibility of seeing those shows live. How do others feel?

Many Hollywood moguls were not impressed with film directors. David O. Selznick tried to mini-manage directors, even the great Hitchcock. The reoccurring Wars of animosity at Columbia between Harry Cohen and Frank Capra are legendary. It was left to the French, to really explain and prove why film directors are key to film production. Even though it's a collaborative art, Truffaut and others wrote in the Cahiers du Cinema that the film director who usually wrote the script and supervised the mise en scène was the chief artist of cinema. Hitchcock, has the reputation that he has today,in part, from the research and writings of Director François Truffaut. So this thread is about and for all film directors. The first question is: Who was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America? What about a two-fer? And who was the second woman to join the Directors Guild of America?

The feud between The U.S. against Roman Polanski has gone on long enough. President Obama gets to exercise that long historical practice of pardoning people of his choice at the end of his run as President. What better way for him to add to his legacy and do what should have been done long ago. And what a better way to put a close on this for good. Yes it's controversial and yes his enemies will cease on it as fuel for their fodder but who cares. It would just be another thorn in their sides to help them remember President Obama after he is gone. The motives for those who have always been behind this is at it's very core in question and should be looked into as far as individuals, their names and their affiliations. Once journalist start looking they may be surprised This has more to do with censoring a Director than the law.

It's interesting to recognize the differences in how film sensitivities, lighting and camera movement in early noir films helped create the genre and how those new films, processes and new lighting instruments joined in shaping and refining the look of noir films. Most early films that used artificial light relied on carbon arc lamps, the first commonly used lamps for street illumination before the development of incandescent lights After they were abandoned for common purposes, they continued to be used for specialized needs such as in movie projectors and searchlights. In film, the abandonment of carbon arcs and the development of Panchromatic film stocks - film stocks that were sensitve to a wider spectrum of color - freed directors and cinematographers from mostly stationary camera positions that 'staged' the action in a less visually dynamic ways and made the camera - and especially camera movement, on dollies and cranes an active participant in defining action and character and allowed for a new spatial and temporal depth in all film styles. Generally early films were visulally unexciting in terms of dynamic camera motion but together with faster Panchromatic film stocks, incandecent lights and new ways to change picture framing through movement-the camera was to bring a new dimension to the narrative.