» » Spiders on a Web (1900)

Spiders on a Web (1900) Online

Spiders on a Web (1900) Online
1900 George Albert Smith
Original Title :
Spiders on a Web
Genre :
Movie / Documentary / Short
Year :
1900
Directror :
George Albert Smith
Type :
Movie
Time :
1min
Rating :
7.0/10

Watch online HD Download HD

Spiders on a Web (1900) Online

An early POV experiment from Smith featuring two large spiders crawling.

The film is notable for its early POV shots and masking, something that Smith worked with in other efforts. It was one of at least 3 films that Smith made in 1900 using these techniques. It is also notable for its early closeups, something that most early films did not feature. According to Michael Brooks on BFI Screenonline the film was "less formally ambitious" than Smith's "ground-breaking multiple closeup study "Grandma's Reading Glass".


User reviews

Barit

Barit

I don't see any web in this 12-second film, but it's an interesting piece of work anyway. It's by George A. Smith, the Englishman who seems to have done the work that evolved into much of the photographic grammar of film. Here's it's a close-up of two spiders moving against a faint grid.

Are they large spiders in medium close-up? Tiny spiders in extreme close-up? It's impossible for anyone but a spider expert to tell, because 1900 was right in the middle of the time when Smith was experimenting with close-ups.

Smith distributed his films through Charles Urban's Warwick Trading, but he was an entrepreneur on his own, patenting Kinemacolour, one of the earliest color film technologies. He was another individual of foresight and talent whose contributions to cinema have been forgotten, washed away in the simple narrative of legend.