Film Studies:

Early Cinematic Origins of the Film Industry (1900-14)

(Nelmes, An Introduction to Film Studies)

Before Moving Pictures there were …

Toymakers• They used the theory of

“the Persistence of Vision”: The ability of the brain to retain an image a split second longer than the eye actually sees it.

• Toy makers used this theory to create hand held machines that were the basis of film development.

The Thaumatrope: Creating your own!

•Check out thaumatropes in popular culture

•Sleepy Hollow•The Prestige•“Guilty by association” music video by Louis XIV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9seu1Lxttg

Photography

Learn about the historical bet!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYKZif9ooxs

•1839 Daguerrotype•1878 Eadweard Muybridge’s series of photography

oSet up 12 cameras along a track, tied strings to the shutters which were tripped as the horse ran down the track.oCreated movement with photography.

More developments…

And then Edison creates the Kinetoscope (1879)

• Device which showed a series of moving images

• Contained in a box-a single peephole was provided

• One viewer at a time• Paved the way for bigger projectors

that could show movies to more than one person at a time

Late 1800s•Development of cameras and projectors•Captured series of still pictures on long strips of film made from celluloid

Exhibition until 1907

By 1894 the exhibition of moving pictures had been established in NYC with the introduction of the box-like kinetoscope. This allowed individual customers to watch a fifty-foot strip of film through a slit at the top of the machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUBVy_FFvkU&NR=1

Lumière brothers

• French inventors Louis and Auguste• “The founding fathers of modern film”• Invented the cinematographe in 1895

• Combination camera and projector• One of the first large-audience

projectors• Presented the world’s first commercial

exhibition of a projected motion picture to a paying audience• 30-60 second films

December 28, 1895• First theater opens to the paying public.• Basement of a Paris café.• Lumieres’ show:

• Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory.• Arrival of train.• A Baby’s Lunchhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=S1G6v4Ycmnk

Once projectors were available, single-reel films started to be shown in vaudeville theatres as novelties.

Exhibition outlets began to multiply and by the first years stores and restaurants were being converted to small scale cinemas or nickelodeons (cost was 5¢=nickel), an affordable cost for the working class audience.

1905 estimated 1,000 theatres in America1908 6,000 in America

Production until 1907

Until 1900 the average length of films was around 50 feet. Three major companies dominated production in the USA: Edison, Biograph and Vitagraph. Although filming on location was very common at this stage, as early as 1893 the world’s ‘kinetographic theatre’ or film studio was in operation. This was built by the Edison Company and called the ‘Black Maria”.

After 1900, films started to get longer, and by 1903, films of 300 to 600 feet were fairly common.Thus, by 1907, the American film industry was already organized into three main divisions: exhibition, distribution and production.

•Exhibition: Division of the film industry concentrating on the public screening of film.•Distribution: Division concentrating on the marketing of film, connecting the producer with the exhibitor by leasing films from the former and renting them to the latter.•Production: Division concentrating on the making of film.

The Silent Era

In the silent era of film, marrying the image with synchronous sound was not possible for inventors and producers, since no practical method was devised until 1923. Thus, for the first thirty years of their history, movies were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist.

By the 1920s, the U.S. reached what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800 feature films annually.

The comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clara Bow, to cite just a few examples, made these performers’ faces well-known on every continent.

Case Study: The General

The General is a 1927 American silent comedy film released by United Artists based upon the Great Locomotive Chase from 1862. Buster Keaton starred in the film and co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman. The film was a box-office disaster at its original release, but is now considered by critics as one of the greatest films ever made.