A Trip to the Moon

A Trip to the Moon is a 12 minute short silent film and is a trip to the moon. It was directed by Georges Melles and is a science fiction, fantasy film.

The film is about men travelling to the moon and back. Throughout this short film we see them, not as wise and trusting but acting very childlike and destructive as they are seen destroying the peaceful aliens and stabbing the moon in the eye (which looks painful) when they arrive on it. They also capture an alien and bring it back as a sort of trophy which is not at all considerate of the alien and also the way they got back to earth was merely by accident also so these men are really fools.

The scenery and props of this film are designed beautifully and have a sort of mad, magical and fantastical element especially as shown when the people travel to the moon in an absurdly heroic, futuristic way. The ideas for space travel and designs of the spacecraft unique designs and show what people of the time must have thought about space travel as film was released (1902) and no one had travelled to space and no film had been attempted or anyone have any clue to what it would be like. Because of this, this film really pulls in audiences to a world they don’t know much of. The cuts are also simple but there are a few dissolve cuts which help blend the film together well.

The special effects in this film are also revolutionary for the time - which also links with the breakthrough of going to the moon - due to the use of stop motion cuts and camera trickery and is really a great thing to do especially if Melles wants to take the audience to the moon and back in a never seen before way.

This film is very unique and I love all the ideas of what the moon may be like. The use of the new effects and beautiful futuristic scenery makes this film so revolutionary in the world of film and definitely influenced film and helped it shape into what film is today. I also feel that this film also launched the basis for hand-drawn animated films. But, a downside of this film is even though it faces all of these amazing technological breakthroughs and elements of beautiful scenery etc. it is a bit confusing watching it for the first time, the basic storyline is clear but the what happens at the beginning and end is confusing and since there is no diegetic sound or titles of what the characters are saying, the audience have to guess what is going on at these points. Some parts especially in the beginning are quite boring and are prolonged too much (the building of the spaceship scene for example). It is also hard to watch because there is no colour to differentiate the people in this film and as there are quite a lot of people in each scene it is hard to keep track of who is who and does not give a relatable character experience to the audience.