Transcript Film History

FILM HISTORY
The Beginnings
Inventors
Early film is a result of inventors, not artists.
Persistence of Vision
• The ability of the brain to retain an image a split second
longer than the eye actually sees it.
• If we see 16 individual images in rapid succession the
brain connects them to make a fluid sequence of
movement.
Zoetrope
• Circular drum with slits
• creates illusion
of movement
• 1834
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Experimentation
• In many countries at the same time
• France, Germany, England, and the
U.S. all claim to have invented
the movies
PHOTOGRAPHY
Precursor to film
Photography Emerges
• 1816 - first photographic
images.
• 1839 - clear, sharp
images on silver
copperplate.
• Required 15 minutes
exposure time.
• 1841 - Only 3 minutes
needed for exposure.
Beginning of Film
• Originally, films were a series of
photographs shown one after another.
• The speed was too slow for continuous motion
• Eadweard Muybridge
• 1872 - Set up 12 cameras along a track, tied strings to
the shutters which were tripped as the horse ran down
the track.
• Created movement with photography.
Eadweard Muybridge
• **
George Eastman
• Developed celluloid film
(1884)
• made motion pictures
possible
• it was flexible
• allowed light to pass
through
• was durable (it didn’t break
in projector)
First American Motion
Picture (1889)
• Thomas Edison and
William Dickson filmed
a sneeze
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Edison’s Kinetoscope
• 1889
• in parlors
• dancing, juggling,
wonders of the
world, some reenactments
Open
Closed
• Kinetoscope for individual audiences
• Edison did not see future in mass
projection
• But contributed: sprocket holes on film, first
movie studio
Lumière Brothers
• 1895
• Worked on Edison’s
Kinetoscope
• Designed their own
machine within a year
• Solved projection for mass
audiences
Cinematographe
• Machine shot the
pictures, printed,
and projected
them.
• The camera was
portable.
• A hand crank
provided the power.
December 28, 1895
• First theater opens to the paying
public
• Basement of a Paris café.
• Lumières’ shows:
• Workers leaving the Lumière Factory.
• Arrival at Lyon.
• A Baby’s Meal.
Georges Melies
• One of the first to see
Lumières in Paris
• Saw opportunity
• Set up Europe’s first film
studio in 1897
- with artificially-arranged scenes
Le Voyage Dans la Lune
• 1902 - Voyage/Trip to the Moon
• Pioneer of illusion and fantasy:
• trick photography
• dissolves
• wipes
• stop-motion, slow-motion
• and fadeouts
Pixar Zoetrope