Conquest of Light is a 1975 short film (11 minutes) directed by Louis Marcus.
It is a short documentary about the production of Waterford Crystal
glass in Waterford, Ireland. The film starts with a narrator explaining that Waterford crystal is made entirely by hand. The rest of the film then shows how they do it. Workmen heat lead glass in a furnace, and, via pipes, blow it out into molten bubbles of various sizes. They then craft the molten glass into various shapes (one worker is shown slicing off the end of what will become a carafe, with a pair of scissors). Once the glass has cooled, the artisans use tools of various sizes to carve either large or finely detailed designs.
Tropes:
- Blade-of-Grass Cut: A montage shows a river and the things that live next to it: grass, flowers, spiders on webs. That montage is intercut with the designs carved on glass that are taken from the flowers and plants along the river.
- Documentary: A documentary short showing the techniques used to make Waterford crystal.
- Hall of Mirrors: This effect is done with an arty closeup of a crystal goblet with an intricate design, as other crystal goblets are rotated around it. The result is a series of reflections captured within the glass.
- Hard-Work Montage: Basically the whole movie, as the camera documents craftsmen blowing glass, molding it into shapes, and then carving designs on it.
- The Ken Burns Effect: A camera pans over old woodcut drawings of craftsmen making glass, demonstrating that people have made glass by hand in Waterford for a long long time.
- Match Cut: A match cut goes from a closeup of the burning sun to a mass of molten glass being spun in a furnace, as part of the theme that the makers of crystal glass are conquering light.
- Narrator: Only briefly. A narrator is heard at the beginning observing that in Waterford, skilled craftsmen make crystal glass by hand. Then the narrator is not heard from again until the end, when he muses that the men who make glass "conquer light".
- Reveal Shot: A short segment shows how the flowers and plants of the river are used as inspiration for glass designs, first showing the plants, then showing how they've been carved in crystal. One panning shot shows the leaves of what looks like a fern, until it keeps panning left to show the glass lying next to the fern, the blades of the leaves having been carved into the glass.
- Title Drop: The narrator returns for the end of the short, observing that the glass craftsmen have captured the sun, and that "It is the triumph of man's quest to conquer light."
- The X of Y: Conquest of Light
