THE HISTORY OF SHORT FILMSBy Chloe Pearson

Films started to be produced around the 1880s.

In the beginning all films were short.

The earliest cinema audiences may not have been aware of this as they marvelled at seconds long scenes that were produced.

Films began to get longer when the 20th century was dawning.

The very first films were presented to the public in 1894 through Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope.

The films were usually from day to day life.

The best-known film from this time is perhaps the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895).

Bryony Dixon, the BFI national archive’s silent film curator and director of the British Silent Film Festival said that: “The major outlets for entertainment at that time were music halls and fairgrounds, where programmes were made up of a variety of different acts lasting up to about 20 minutes. Most early films imitated other entertainment media already in existence: magic lantern shows, illustrations, variety acts, tableaux presentations. So short was the norm.”

As the demand for films became stronger the use of equipment for recording and editing improved drastically so by the 1900’s film-makers are able to produce longer, multi-shot films.

However most films before the 1930’s were silent.

The movie theatre became a simpler, easy way for the audiences entertainment.