History of Film

By Dylanb120

  • How it all started

    Edward Muybridge started the film process with a bet during a horse race. He was watching the race with his rich friends, when he decided to make a bet. He bet that when a horse is in full speed, at some point, all of the horses legs are off the ground. so they lined up several cameras and shot pictures of the running horse at sped past them, and created the first Kinetoscope.

  • The Lumiére Brothers Cinematographe

    The Lumiére brothers created the same thing Thomas Edison did not want to unveil, a projector. They started showing short 30-60 second films in a theatre for a bigger audience. The first film to be shown was a train coming straight at the camera, which actually caused some injuries, because the audience members were trying to get out of the way of the "moving train."

  • Peephole Kinetoscope

    Thomas Edison invented the Peephole Kinetoscope specifically for one audience member. His idea was purely with the intention of making a lot more money.

  • Vaudeville Nickelodeons

    Vaudevilles are small theaters that show short skits, often dramatic, comedic, or musical. The owners of the vaudevilles started showing these short films in between the skits and musical acts, to beat out the competition, and named these theaters Nickelodeons.

  • Nickelodeons

    People started going to nickelodeons as more of a museum. sometimes here would be an orchestra, or a few men making sound effects since they did not have sound in their movies yet.

  • The Great Train Robbery

    In 1903, Edwin Porter made the first movie titled, "The Great Train Robbery." It was 12 minutes long, and was the first film to be over 60 seconds long.

  • Mercury Lamp

    Cooper Hewitt mercury lamps make it practical to shoot films indoors without sunlight.

  • First Cartoon

    The first animated cartoon is produced

  • Nickelodeon's Attraction

    By 1910, it was recorded that about 26-million people visited the nickelodeons a week. This caused some film makers to start thinking about how much more money they could make. One of these people was Thomas Edison

  • Movie credits

    Credits begin to appear at the beginning of motion pictures.

  • Universal Studios

    Carl Laemmle organizes Universal Pictures, which will become the first major studio.

  • The Jazz Singer

    The Jazz Singer was the first feature film Talkie. A talkie is a film that uses a disc for audio. In the Jazz Singer the first words are spoken on camera.

  • Gangster Movies

    American gangster films like Little Caesar and Wellman’s The Public Enemy became popular. Dialogue now took superiority over slapstick in Hollywood comedies.

  • Technicolor

    Audience can could now see Two color films in theaters with the technicolor.

  • First Feature Film

    Walt Disney’s first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is released.

  • McCarthyism

    Hollywood felt threatened by McCarthyism, when they recieved accusations of communism. The Hollywood Ten refused to divulge any communist leanings and were imprisoned for contempt of court.

  • Widescreen

    With the invention of television, film needed to up its game. New widescreen processes to produce bigger and more exciting films were the answer.

  • First 3-D Movie

    The first 3-D film, relying upon stereoscopic technology, achieved wide release in 1953. Earlier attempts had been made, but the 1950s saw the popularity of 3-d.

  • Actor's Contracts

    Seven-year contracts with actors are replaced by single-picture or multi-picture contracts.

  • Movie Rating

    Motion picture ratings were introduced in 1968, with G, PG, R and X. PG-13 came significantly later. The X rating will later be replaced by NC-17.