评论
打印
All of this kinda connects to this.
所有这些电影都跟这部电影有关。
We added sound. It's a silent movie.
声音是我们自己加的。这部电影原来是个默片。
This chart shows all the movies directed or produced by legendary director D. W.Griffith in 1912.
这张图显示的是传奇导演D·W·格里菲斯1912年执导或制作的所有电影。
He was a Hollywood titan, but most of his movies?
他可是好莱坞的一大泰斗，可他的大部分电影呢？
They were about the same length.
片长基本都差不多。
Around 15 minutes, with the exceptions topping out around a half hour long.
都在15分钟左右，最长也就半小时左右。
Now look at the run time for 1915’s Birth of A Nation.
再来看1915年《一个国家的诞生》的时长。
What happened there?
这是什么情况？
The reason movies changed from 15 minute trifles to “featured attractions,” can be traced to one silent movie.
电影从15分钟的小短片变成“鸿篇巨制”，其原因可以追溯到一部默片身上。
It changed the game in a way that transformed all movies.
这部默片堪称一部洗牌电影，所有电影都因为它而有了新的面貌。
But it wasn’t invented in Hollywood.
但这部电影并不是好莱坞拍的。
It came from 6,000 miles away.
拍摄这部电影的地方距离好莱坞足足有6000英里。
This is a foot — here you go metric people.
一英尺是这么长——美妆博主上线。
Early silent film historians actually talk about these movies in feet.
研究早期默片的历史学者通常会用英尺来衡量这些电影的长度。
And it makes sense — the same way that measuring tape comes on a reel, movies come on reels too.
这也是情理之中的事，既然磁带是一卷一卷来衡量的，电影也是一样。
One reel of film is 1,000 feet, give or take.
一卷电影差不多是1000英尺。
That’s 15 minutes or fewer, depending on what frame rate you play it back at.
也就是15分钟或接近15分钟，具体要看你播放的帧频的大小。
In the early days of movies — the 1900s — almost all movies were about 1,000 feet.
在早期电影，也即1900年代的电影中，几乎所有电影都在1000英尺长左右。
One reel.
也就是一卷长。
15 minutes or fewer.
也即15分钟，甚至更短。
These short movies were usually screened in variety shows or a smorgasbord of short films.
这些短片通常会插入到综艺节目或短片大放送节目里播放。
You’d drop into a Nickelodeon — a lower-class theatre where you’d see a bunch of movies for a nickel — 5 cents.
后一种你得到五分电影院——一种低档剧院，花5美分就能连看好几部电影——去看。
You’d see Laura Comstock’s Bag Punching Dog, followed by The Trapeze Disrobing Act, followed by the first screen adaptation of Frankenstein.
看完Laura Comstock’s Bag Punching Dog就能看 The Trapeze Disrobing Act，接着还能看首部根据《弗兰肯斯坦》改编的电影。
The whole thing was 14 minutes long - 975 feet.
这三部电影一共才14分钟——975英尺长。
In America, some of this was enforced by East Coast movie trusts that controlled and licensed movie patents for film and projection.
在美国，控制电影和放映许可发放的东海岸电影信托公司也推行了这些规定。
They preferred single and double reel films.
相比其他长度的电影，他们更喜欢单卷和双卷电影。
But even renegade filmmakers out in Hollywood kept movies pretty short.
即使是好莱坞那些比较叛逆的电影人也会把电影长度控制在较短范围内。
And, with some exceptions, so did filmmakers across Europe.
欧洲的电影人也是如此，只不过也有一些例外。
It was just easier to transport and project one-reel films.
毕竟，单卷电影更方便运输，也更方便放映。
That chart, from the beginning...It’s not a chart of time, but feet.
本期视频开头给大家看的那个图……它的坐标其实并不是时间，而是英尺。
And this right here is a thousand feet - that one reel cutoff.
这个长度刚好是1000英尺，也即一卷电影的长度。
For the most part, movies were small.
那时的大部分电影时间都不长。
Until the Italians thought bigger.
直到野心勃勃的意大利人登场。
Italian movies were becoming spectacles in the 1900s.
20世纪初，意大利电影即将成为一大奇观。
They were breaking out of the standard 15-minute short, and trying new things.
他们不仅突破了标准的15分钟的片长，内容上也开始尝试创新。
By being outside the American system of high-powered movie trusts, one film in particular was able to rewrite the rules.
由于置身于美国强大的电影托拉斯体系之外，他们的电影，尤其是他们的某一部电影，才得以书写了新的规则。
That’s 1913’s Quo Vadis — an epic story of Romans in the time of Nero.
这部电影便是1913年的《暴君焚城记》——该片讲述的是尼禄时代罗马人的英雄故事。
To tell that story the Italian filmmakers took 2 whole hours - not 15 minutes.
意大利电影人用了整整两个小时——不是15分钟——才讲完这个故事。
It was 8,000 feet long!
也即这部电影足足有8000英尺长！
To get people to see it, Quo Vadis’s promoters needed to invent a new business model.
为了让观众去看这部电影，负责推广的工作人员就需要发明一种新的商业模式。
Instead of trying to force the long movie into those movie theaters playing a bunch of one-reel shorts,
他们没有强行把这部长电影塞到那些放单卷短片的影院，
promoters rented out classy concert halls for Quo Vadis alone.
而是专门给这部电影租了一流的音乐厅放映。
They did the same in the US, at the Astor Theatre in New York,
他们在美国，在纽约的阿斯特剧院也用了这一招，
and playing the “mammoth photodrama” everywhere from Arkansas to the future state of Hawaii.
到处播放这部“宏大的影片剧”，从阿肯色州一路放到未来的夏威夷州。
To draw crowds from nickelodeons into those big halls to watch just one really long thing, Quo Vadis needed to be special.
要把观众从五分电影院吸引到那些大厅去看这一部电影，这部电影必须得有它的独到之处。
It used real Roman locations, thousands of extras, and the first big stunts -
这部电影用了真实的罗马外景，成千上万的临时演员，和首批高难度特技——
like chariot races where the actors rode real chariots and gladiatorial battles with big hits and realistic weapons.
像战车赛跑，演员坐着真正的战车，真刀真枪地角斗。
The posters sold the spectacle — and sold out seats.
该片海报卖得很好，场场座无虚席。
And people noticed.
大家也注意到了这点。
In the years following the release of Quo Vadis, DW Griffith, increased the length of his own movies.
《暴君焚城记》上映后的几年里，D·W·格里菲斯也增加了自己的电影的长度。
Quo Vadis and other Italian epics were proof that big movies could work.
《暴君焚城记》及其他意大利史诗已经表明，大制作也是可行的。
Griffith’s movies like “Judith of Bethulia” crept into feature film lengths - 61 minutes, a full 4 reels.
格里菲斯的《贝斯利亚女王》等电影也挤进了长片行列——61分钟，足足4卷长。
He released Birth of a Nation in 1915.
1915年，他又发行了《一个国家的诞生》。
It was sold as the “mightiest spectacle ever produced” — and a long one clocking in at 12 reels.
该片宣称是“有史以来最伟大的奇观”——一部长达12卷的电影。
It had big stunts too, like many big battle scenes.
这部电影里也有高难度的特技，比如大量的战斗场面。
Now this movie was so controversial that people called it racist in 1915. I mean, the KKK are the good guys.
这部电影当年也引起了非常大的争议，被批判说存在种族歧视问题，毕竟，电影将3K党塑造成了正面角色。
But despite that, it brought the spectacle of Quo Vadis to Hollywood.
然而，尽管如此，它还是将《暴君焚城记》这样的奇观带到了好莱坞。
The trusts that wanted to keep movies short were already failing.
那些想要让电影继续保持简短的信托公司开始失势。
The public’s love of long movies kind of finished the job.
可以说，观众对长电影的喜爱让他们的路走到了尽头。
Birth of a Nation solidified single features as something worth funding and paying for.
《一个国家的诞生》巩固了单个长片的地位，让它们从此成了值得投资，值得付费观看的影片。
And even though today, we don’t measure movies in feet, Quo Vadis is not a relic.
尽管今天我们已经不用英尺来衡量电影的长度了，《暴君焚城记》也没有随着历史远去。
This chart shows average movie times for the most popular 25 movies each year, from 1930 on.
这个表显示的是1930年以来，每年最受欢迎的25部电影的平均时长。
This time here?
这个位置呢？
It’s 2013, 100 years after the 120 minute Quo Vadis came out.
这个位置对应的时间是2013年，也即时长120分钟的《暴君焚城记》面世的100年后。
The running time?
对应的电影时长呢？
121.4 minutes.
121.4分钟。
