In the later years of his life, Melies worked at a booth in a train station selling toy trinkets and was bitter about his involvement in movies. But despite his innovations and contributions to the industry, his film company went out of business in 1913. Melies made over 500 films in his lifetime.
In America, Thomas Edison's film company was showing the film all across the country and making money off of it.
#Automaton hugo movie
The movie was copied and shown without Melies permission. Unfortunately, it made money for just about everyone other than Melies. Before the people who made Star Wars and Star Trek were ever born, Melies put out A Trip to the Moon. Based on two stories by author Jules Verne, A Trip to the Moon was the first science fiction movie ever. This movie figures prominently in the HUGO movie by the way. His most famous movie was called Le voyage dans la Lune or A Trip to the Moon which he made in 1902. Today he is known and revered in the Motion Picture community as The Father of Special Effects. He created and discovered many special visual techniques and uses of animation that we would call today 'Special Effects'. This would become Melies great contribution. This was based on DeKolta's famous illusion by the same name but Melies discovered that he could use the camera and the film to create the illusion rather than special props. In fact, his early movies were recreations of his magic routines. Luckily for Melies, other people in Europe and abroad were working on similar inventions and after seeing another version of a projector in London, Melies created his own.īy 1896, he was making movies and not the boring kind. Melies saw the potential of this new invention and tried to purchase it from the Lumiere Brothers but they turned him down. The early movies had no plot, no story, not what we think of today as movies. Though it must be pointed out that the very earliest movies were very short and were merely quick shots of a train pulling into a station, or people walking on a street. This was an early movie projector and Melies saw moving pictures for the first time. In 1895, Melies witnessed a demonstration of a new invention by the Lumiere Brothers called the Cinematographe. The theatre that Melies bought was none other than the famous Robert-Houdin Theatre! He began to present magic shows in this historic location. Years before, Robert-Houdin made magic a popular form of sophisticated theatrical entertainment in Paris and this was followed by other great French magicians, like DeKolta and Felician Trewey.
#Automaton hugo professional
A little theatre went up for sale and George Melies left the shoe business for good to become a professional magician. Then in 1888, the opportunity of a life time came. He studied with the Parisian magic dealer Voison and eventually even started building his own apparatus and automaton. His desire to stay in the shoe business changed and magic became his new obsession. It was also in London that young George Melies visited Maskelyne and Cooke's famous magic theatre. He learned the craft of shoemaking while in London. His father was a shoe maker and together with his two brothers he was trained in that business. He was born on December 8th, 1861 in Paris France. One of the main characters is a man named George Melies.
If you've not read the book, nor watched the movie, let me tell you about the true part of the book. For one, I was struck with how well the author had weaved a true story together with a fictional story. There were many elements about the book that fascinated me. I decided to pick it up and read it and I too found the book to be fantastic.
I first learned of the book from a fellow performer who raved about it. This week a wonderful new movie comes out called " HUGO" based on the book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznik.
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