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The First "Moving Picture"
In 1877, Eadweard Muybridge was employed to prove that while galloping, there was a period of time where a horse had all four hooves off the ground. Muybridge set up 12 camera's in succession with wire triggers across a Sacramento race-course, and as the horse galloped down the track, the horse's hooves triggered each shutter to capture a picture. These 12 pictures were put on a rotating disk and attached to a projector, creating the first ever "moving picture." https://youtu.be/heRuLp7CyTM -
Thomas Edison and the Kinetograph
After inventing the phonograph in 1877, Thomas Edison quickly sought a way to bring visual accompaniment to the most popular home-entertainment device in the country. In 1888, he employed William Dickinson to create the first ever motion picture camera which combined a long strip of film that was synchronized with shutters of the lens. The Kinetograph created film that was run through the Kinetoscope, a single person peep-show viewing device that was meant to accompany sound from the phongraph. -
The Lumière Brothers and the Cinématograph
An exhibition of the Kinetoscope in Paris in 1894 inspired Auguste and Louis to invent the first commercially viable projector, the cinématograph. This hand-cranked, lightweight machine ran at a speed of 16 frames per second and functioned as a camera, printer, and projector. The accessibility of these machines changed the content of films, as Kinetoscope productions were quite grand, while early cinématograph films were mainly films of nature or life as it is. -
Le Voyage dans la Lune
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) was a silent french film directed by Georges Méliès. The film was a 30 scene narrative adapted from a 1865 novel by Jules Verne and it was an enormous success. It was the first film to be distributed internationally, allowing the short adventure film to establish fiction as cinema's mainstream product, dethroning the Lumières’ cinema of actuality. Eventually, Méliès lost his audience in the 1910's to other filmmakers with more sophisticated techniques. -
The First Multiple-reel Films ("feature" films)
While multiple-reel films began appearing in the United States in 1907, they did not receive commercial success or acceptance until the release of "Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth" in 1912. Later that year, Enrico Guazzoni’s nine-reel Italian film "Quo Vadis?" appeared in legitimate theaters all across the country with admission prices set at $1. Film exhibitors soon realized that feature films were more profitable than shorts and the industry reorganized itself around feature films. -
D.W. Griffith - "The Shakespeare of the Screen"
D.W. Griffith has been renowned as the "the father of film technique" for his utilization of film as a persuasive power and for his innovative narrative techniques. Griffith was the first director to effectively take shots from multiple camera set-ups (long shots, full shots, medium shots, close shots, and close ups) and combine the separate shots into a single scene. The persuasive narratives of his films and his innovative techniques revolutionized the role that film had in society. -
Conclusion.
The advent of motion picture began purely as an experiment to prove that horses had all four hooves off the ground while galloping and turned into something that would revolutionize entertainment in America. The development of motion picture soon progressed rapidly to appease the publics' desire for entertainment. Once Edison and the Lumière brothers developed more sophisticated technology, filmmakers in the early 20th century soon raced to create more advanced narratives and filming techniques. -
Bibliography
https://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/8-2-the-history-of-movies/#:~:text=The%20movie%20industry%20as%20we,of%20human%20and%20animal%20locomotion
https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture/Melies-and-Porter
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pickford-early-history-motion-pictures/#:~:text=In%201888%20in%20New%20York,a%20primitive%20motion%20picture%20camera.
https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/very-short-history-of-cinema