The Beginning of Movies

The Beginning of Movies

What are movies

&

Where do they come from

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Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau• Blind Belgium scientist• 1829--publishes “Certain Properties of the

Impression Produced by Light Upon the Organ of Sight

• Persistence of Vision– the ability of the human brain to retain images

perceived by the eye for a brief period of time after they have disappeared from the field of vision



Persistence of Vision

• Know as far back as the ancient Egyptians and ancient Chinese

• Thaumatrope • Flip Book• Therefore--

– If you see something, and then it is taken away and a new image quickly replaces it (less than 1/10 of a second later), the two images merge together and appear to “move”



What are movies

• So what are you seeing when you walk into the movie theater or turn on your TV?

Movies

• A movie is nothing more than a progression of still images flashed on a screen in succession for brief periods of time

• 24 filmed frames alternated with 24 empty frames every second

• For TV, its 30 frames per second



Thomas Alva Edison

The Wizard of West Orange



1847-1931

Edison

• Where do many people believe

movies were “invented?

• New Jersey!!

• Edison had already invented the phonograph and wanted a device that would, “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”.



Edison: The Inventor of Movies• Met with Eadweard Muybridge in 1888 to

discuss idea• Edison gave the task of creating with

motion picture machine to his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson

• Dickson invented the Kinetoscope. A device that could showed some of the first movies.

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Edison and New jersey• 1892--the first film studio in the world is

created in West Orange, NJ.– Called “The Black Maria”



The Black Maria

• Edison brought in popular vaudeville performers and filmed their acts

• The Black Maria had an open roof to allow in sunlight

• Also, the building rotated to follow the sun all day

Edison and the Public

• Edison sold Kinetoscopes to entrepreneurs who opened their own movie parlors and began showing films

• Some of the more famous early movies:– Fred Otto’s Sneeze(1894)– Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show(1894)

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Problems with the Kinetoscope

• Only one person could view it at a time– So what’s wrong with that?

The Vitascope

• Invented by Thomas Armat in 1896 and then sold to Thomas Edison

• Could project the image so that many people could view it at the same time



The Nickelodeon

• You pay a nickel and you get to see a movie!!

• Showed mainly “actuality” films. Films of live events recorded

However--

• Edison was not the only inventor of movies

• In Europe, others were experimenting with the same principals

• Most notably--Auguste and Louis Lumiere developed the Cinematographe(1895)– They held a public screening of their movies in

1895 considered by many to be the first movie theater in history

Film as More

Growth and Development from Early recordings to full narratives



Actuality Films

• From roughly 1895-1900 actuality films were the most prominent type of films

• These showed famous speeches, boxing matches, theater performers and other motion pictures from everyday life

Geroge Melies (1861-1938)• French director

• Created about 500 movies in his life

• Most notably--Cinderella(1899) and A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902)



More Melies

• One day when filming passing traffic in the streets of Paris, his camera jammed.

• Melies cleared the aperture and resumed filming.

• When he watched the projected image he made an amazing discovery--– A bus changed magically into a hearse!!

Melies Magic

• Melies continued to experiment with the ability of the new film medium

• Began using motion picture tricks– Multiple exposaure– Slow motion– Time-lapes– Dissolves– Hand tinting of the film

Edwin Stanton Porter(1869-1941)• Former Kinetoscope engineer for Edison• Began directing his own films in 1903 with Life of

an American Fireman• Most famous story--The Great Train

Robbery(1903)– Lengthy 12 minute film that scared the crap out of

audiences

• Porter’s Rescued From an Eagle’s Nest(1907) stars a young unsuccessful writer and encyclopedia salesman named David Wark Griffith

D.W. Griffith(1875-1948)

• Created the first full-length motion picture– The Birth of a Nation (1915)

• Extremely racist film about the beginning of the KKK in the post-war south.



Innovations of Griffith• Panning--moving camera left and right while filming• Close-ups--while not the first filmmaker to use close ups,

he was the first to se them effectively• Different camera angles• Long-shots--used to introduce action• Fade in/out--used as a transition• Costumes--period piece costumes• Authenticity--shot on location with authentic images• Original score--featured its own musical score• Length--12 reels, or almost 3 hours

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)

• Introduces the idea of film montage

• Montage--literally, "putting together"; refers to a filming technique, editing style, or form of movie collage consisting of a series of successive short shots or images that are rapidly juxtaposed into a coherent sequence to suggest meaning;

Kuleshov Experiment

• Leo Kuleshov--shows audience an image of a man with a smile and then three other images--a bowl of soup, a child and a knife

• Audience interprets the man’s smile in relation to what is also shown

• Result--film through editing becomes contextual--everything is understood in its context with other images

German Expressionism

Style of painting and theater that was unrealistic and stylized

Typically expressionism showed distorted figures, slanting buildings and uneasy grounds

Expressionism tried to convey inner emotions of characters through visual images

Famous Expressionist Directors:Robert Wiene--The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1919)F.W. Murnau--The Last Laugh(1926)Fritz Lang--Metropolis(1926)





Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari

Der Letzte Mann

The Beginning of Movies

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