Cinematic History of Motion Pictures

  • Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

    Sallie Gardner at a Gallop
    The bet was around 25,000 dollars and it's about a the theory that a horse wouldn't have all four feet on the ground at one point. Eadweard Muybridge decided to do an experiment and have a camera takes photographs of a horse galloping. He proved that horses will have 4 hooves off the ground
  • Beginning of Short Films

    Beginning of Short Films
    Thomas Edison originally wanted to do something with film, but proceeded not to. Then, the Lumiere Brothers got interested and started to produced short films in the late 19th century. Their shorts films ranged from 30-60 seconds and they were about simple things like a kid fishing in his fishbowl
  • Theatre Transformation

    Theatre Transformation
    Vaudevilles(theaters that produced comedy skits and were popular at the time and they started to have short films between acts of plays. They later transformed into Nickelodeons and started to have a lot of short films
  • The Great Train Robbery

    The Great Train Robbery
    Produced by Edwin Porter, this became the first movie to be longer than a minute. By fact, it was 12 minutes long and it had 14 scenes. The most groundbreaking revolution about this movie is that it had a plot that the audience can watch
  • Silent Era

    Silent Era
    Films were beginning to become their own industry as the 1910's started. A lot of companies started to produced so many films all at once, it would make your head spin. A lot of these movies were silent, except for one movie with synchronized dialogue
  • Charles Chaplin, the first popular film star

    Charles Chaplin, the first popular film star
    Charlies Chaplin is a very important figure in cinema history. Introducing his character, the tramp, he was able to get comedy and drama on to the big screen. Tramp was so popular that the character started to be in movies with the most iconic The Kid which starred young Jackie Cogan.
  • The Jazz Singer, the first synchronized film

    The Jazz Singer, the first synchronized film
    The Jazz Singer is about a jewish man who wants to defies his family's motives and traditions. This movie is iconic because it used synchronized music and singing that goes along with speech. This movie ended the silent era as other movies afterwards started to have sound
  • Golden Age of Hollywood

    Golden Age of Hollywood
    After the Jazz Singer was released, films start to explore a lot of different genres like horror, drama, comedy, thriller, and action-adventures. Big movie producers were made in this era like Alfred Hitchcock, Warner Bros, and Universal Studios. As such, most of famous movie lines started to come like "Here's looking at you, kid" from Casablanca. Movie studios were started to be made in LA which would be the town of Hollywood
  • Technicolor in film

    Technicolor in film
    As movies were getting extremely popular with the use of sound, the next big step was to use color. Color was seen in cartoons and even in Snow White, but the two movies that popularized it were Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. These movies are universally-acclaimed films now with everybody praising the use of color in these films made them stand out from the rest at the time
  • Competition with Television

    Competition with Television
    During the silent age of film, Philo Taylor invented the first television set in 1927. However, he kept it to himself which lead him not to show it off for 2 decades. The television was launched in the 1950s which made it the huge competitor for movies. Audiences thought it was better to have some sort of a "mini-movie theater" than to go out and pay tickets to see one on the big screen. However, the competition was short lived and the TV is sort of a successor to movie theaters
  • Highest Grossing

    Highest Grossing
    Steven Spielberg made Jaws which is an iconic movie to this day. Reasons are is that it became the first movie to make over 100 millions dollars (the highest grossing movie at the time) and the use of its animatronics made it memorable. Also, it came out around when the rating system of movies were starting to get more usage as with its PG rating . A lot of movies after Jaws started to make the 100 millions dollars which movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones for example
  • Titanic

    Titanic
    Titanic was a feature length film that was released in 1997 directed by James Cameron. While the movie is based on the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, its story is remembered as a tragedy love story. When it came out, it became the first movie to make a billion dollars at the box office, just beating Jurassic Park's box office success of 914 million dollars