FILM HISTORYThe 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 illusionof movement

• 1834• *• *

Experimentation

• In many countries at the same time• France, Germany, England, and the U.S. all claim to have inventedthe movies

PHOTOGRAPHYPrecursor 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

*

Edison’s Kinetoscope

• 1889• in parlors• dancing, juggling, wonders of the world, some re-enactments

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