<P> The film's style, like that of most of Méliès's other films, is deliberately theatrical . The stage set is highly stylized, recalling the traditions of the 19th - century stage, and is filmed by a stationary camera, placed to evoke the perspective of an audience member sitting in a theatre . This stylistic choice was one of Méliès's first and biggest innovations . Although he had initially followed the popular trend of the time by making mainly actuality films (short "slice of life" documentary films capturing actual scenes and events for the camera), in his first few years of filming Méliès gradually moved into the far less common genre of fictional narrative films, which he called his scènes composées or "artificially arranged scenes ." The new genre was extensively influenced by Méliès's experience in theatre and magic, especially his familiarity with the popular French féerie stage tradition, known for their fantasy plots and spectacular visuals, including lavish scenery and mechanically worked stage effects . In an advertisement he proudly described the difference between his innovative films and the actualities still being made by his contemporaries: "these fantastic and artistic films reproduce stage scenes and create a new genre entirely different from the ordinary cinematographic views of real people and real streets ." </P> <P> Because A Trip to the Moon preceded the development of narrative film editing by filmmakers such as Edwin S. Porter and D.W. Griffith, it does not use the cinematic vocabulary to which American and European audiences later became accustomed, a vocabulary built on the purposeful use of techniques such as varied camera angles, intercutting, juxtapositions of shots, and other filmic ideas . Rather, each camera setup in Méliès's film is designed as a distinct dramatic scene uninterrupted by visible editing, an approach fitting the theatrical style in which the film was designed . Similarly, film scholars have noted that the most famous moment in A Trip to the Moon plays with temporal continuity by showing an event twice: first the capsule is shown suddenly appearing in the eye of an anthropomorphic moon; then, in a much closer shot, the landing occurs very differently, and much more realistically, with the capsule actually plummeting into believable lunar terrain . This kind of nonlinear storytelling--in which time and space are treated as repeatable and flexible rather than linear and causal--is highly unconventional by the standards of Griffith and his followers; before the development of continuity editing, however, other filmmakers performed similar experiments with time . (Porter, for instance, used temporal discontinuity and repetition extensively in his 1903 film Life of an American Fireman .) Later in the twentieth century, with sports television's development of the instant replay, temporal repetition again became a familiar device to screen audiences . </P> <P> Because Méliès does not use a modern cinematic vocabulary, some film scholars have created other frameworks of thought with which to assess his films . For example, some recent academicians, while not necessarily denying Méliès's influence on film, have argued that his works are better understood as spectacular theatrical creations rooted in the 19th - century stage tradition of the féerie . Similarly, Tom Gunning has argued that to fault Méliès for not inventing a more intimate and cinematic storytelling style is to misunderstand the purpose of his films; in Gunning's view, the first decade of film history may be considered a "cinema of attractions," in which filmmakers experimented with a presentational style based on spectacle and direct address rather than on intricate editing . Though the attraction style of filmmaking declined in popularity in favor of a more integrated "story film" approach, it remains an important component of certain types of cinema, including science fiction films, musicals, and avant - garde films . </P> <P> With its pioneering use of themes of scientific ambition and discovery, A Trip to the Moon is sometimes described as the first science fiction film . A Short History of Film argues that it codified "many of the basic generic situations that are still used in science fiction films today". However, several other genre designations are possible; Méliès himself advertised the film as a pièce à grand spectacle, a term referring to a type of spectacular Parisian stage extravaganza popularized by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery in the second half of the nineteenth century . Richard Abel describes the film as belonging to the féerie genre, as does Frank Kessler . It can also be described simply as a trick film, a catch - all term for the popular early film genre of innovative, special - effects - filled shorts--a genre Méliès himself had codified and popularized in his earlier works . </P>

When does journey to the moon come out