Early History of Film 1878-1927
1878 Eadweard Muybridge, who was born in England in 1830, but moved to America in his twenties and worked as a photographer, began photographing horses to analyze their movement. In 1878, he conducted an experiment to produce a sequence of photographs taken in quick succession.He placed twelve cameras set along the side of the course. The shutters of these cameras were connected to tripwires that lay across the course, so that as the horse passed these wires, the shutter of the camera would open and a picture was taken. Using this apparatus, Muybridge was able to show what the motion of a galloping horse looked like when captured on film.
He wanted to show his sequence of photographs as a moving image projected by a magic lantern. He developed a machine known as the zoopraxiscope - it projected a series of images from a glass disc, which turned past the lens of the projector, and gavethe impression of a moving picture.
A disc for use in a Zoopraxiscope /
An image from a spinning disc in a Zoopraxiscope
Photos at this time were often made on glass – the glass was coated with a photographic chemical emulsion.
1882 Etienne Jules Marey (A Frenchman)
Marey wanted to show animals in motion. He invented a 'photographic gun', which carried a coated glass plate instead of bullets. When the trigger was pulled the plate rotated once a second, while the shutter opened every second. The photographer simply pointed the 'gun' at the bird, and continued to press the trigger while following the bird with the gun. The result was a plate with twelve different images set around the edge, which showed the different parts of a bird's flight.
Flying Bird
/Photographic gun
1885 - American inventors George Eastman and Hannibal Goodwin each invent a sensitized celluloidbase roll photographic film to replace the glass plates then in use.
George Eastman began to experiment with ways of making photography simpler. His first design was a roll-holder, which could be placed on the back of a camera and carry a roll of sensitized paper capable of taking up to 48 photographs. Later he designed a camera with the film holder inside. This camera appeared in 1888 and was marketed as the 'Kodak' camera. The following year, Eastman replaced his paper roll with a roll of transparent celluloid film. This was the material which allowed the development of moving pictures.1888 - Louis AiméAugustin Le Prince(a Frenchman) creates the first motion picture filmusing a single lens camera, which he invented, and, probably, sensitized paper film. It was shot in Leeds (UK). Le Prince is considered by many film historians as the true father of motion pictures.
Louis AiméAugustin Le Prince was a Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince conducted his ground-breaking work in 1888 in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK.
In October 1888, Le Prince filmed moving picture sequences Roundhay Garden Scene and a Leeds Bridge street scene using a single-lens movie camera he invented himself. This was several years before the work of competing inventors such as Auguste and Louis Lumière and Thomas Edison.
Roundhay Garden Scene (2.11 secs.)
Leeds Bridge (2 secs.)
Etienne Marey also builds a box type moving picture camera which uses an intermittent mechanism and strips of paper film.
1889 - American inventor George Eastman's celluloidbase roll photographic film becomes commercially available.
English photographer William Friese Greene also patented a movie camera in 1889, which could be used to produce short picture sequences, and is said to have made the first celluloid film, shot in Hyde Park in London in 1889. He was claimed as the 'father of the motion picture' by British film-makers.
1889 was also the year when Wordsworth Donisthorpe and W.C. Crofts, two Englishmen, patented a camera which used 'a sensitive film carried by a roll of paper or other material'. With this camera Donisthorpe took a very brief film of Trafalgar Square in 1890.
1889-1892
Edison and Dickson, both Americans, created the Kinetograph, a movie camera, and the Kinetoscope, a deviceto view movies. One person could watch the movie through a peephole viewer. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter.
Kinetoscope /
Customer viewing film /
Kinetoscope Parlor
1893
Dickson completes the construction of the first movie studio called the "Black Maria" in West Orange, New Jersey which produces many of the early Kinetoscope short films of the 1890s later seen in penny arcades the following year after the studio is completed.
The first film studio /The 1st commercially exhibited film and the 1st staged scene with actors performing a role, ‘Blacksmith Scene’, was filmed as a Kinetoscope film first shown on May 9, 1893. It was filmed entirely within the Black Maria studio at West Orange, New Jersey, in the USA, which is widely referred to as "America's First Movie Studio".
1894
The first commercial presentation of the Kinetoscope took place in the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City. This was the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history. It usedten Kinetoscopes. In 1895, Edison introduced the Kinetophone, which joined the Kinetoscope with a cylinderphonograph.
Charles Francis Jenkinsprojects a filmed motion picture before an audience in Richmond, Indiana. Earliest documented projection of a motion picture to an audience.
Thomas Edison experiments with synchronizing audio with film; the Kinetophone is invented which loosely synchronizes a Kinetoscope image with a cylinder phonograph.
Kinetoscope viewing parlors begin to open in major cities. Each parlor contains several machines.
1895
Birt Acres and Robert Paul, Englishmen, create the first 35mm camera in the UK and make the first British ‘dramatic’ film ‘Incident at Clovelly Cottage’, as well as documentaries like ‘The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race’.
In France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, design and built a lightweight, hand-held motion picture camera called the Cinématographe. They discover that their machine can also be used to project images onto a large screen. The Lumière brothers create several short films at this time that are considered to be pivotal in the history of motion pictures.
Cinematographe as camera /
Cinematographe as projector
First display of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumière (private screening). The film was La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière a Lyon
The first public showing of a film (by the Lumiere brothers) at which admission was charged was held by them on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds. This date is sometimes considered the debut of the motion picture as an entertainment medium.
A short documentary with the films can be seen here:
The ten films were:
- La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (literally, "the exit from the Lumière factory in Lyon", or, under its more common English title, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory), 46 seconds
- Le Jardinier (l'ArroseurArrosé) ("The Gardener," or "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), 49 seconds
- Le Débarquement du Congrès de Photographie à Lyon ("the disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds
- La Voltige ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds
- La Pêche aux poissons rouges ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
- Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
- Repas de bébé ("Baby's Breakfast" (lit. "baby's meal")), 41 seconds
- Le Saut à la couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
- La Places des Cordeliers à Lyon ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon"—a street scene), 44 seconds
- La Mer (Baignade en mer) ("the sea [bathing in the sea]"), 38 seconds
Birt Acres patents his camera, the Kineopticon, in Britain.
C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat demonstrate their Phantoscope, a motion picture projector, in Atlanta, Georgia at the Cotton States and International Exposition.
In Germany, Emil and Max Skladanowsky develop their own film projector.
1896
January - In the United States, the Vitascopefilm projector is designed by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Armat begins working with Thomas Edison to manufacture it.
January 14 - Birt Acres demonstrates his film projector, the Kineopticon, the first in Britain, to the Royal Photographic Society at the Queen's Hall in London. This is the first film show to a public audience in the U.K.
February 20 - In London:
Robert W. Paul demonstrates his film projector, the Theatrograph (later known as the Animatograph), at the Alhambra Theatre.
The Lumière Brothers first project their films in Britain, at the Empire Theatre of Varieties, Leicester Square.
April - Edison and Armat'sVitascope is used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City.
May 14 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia is crowned in Moscow, the first coronation ever recorded in film.
There was a big appetite for films of such grand events.
July 26 - "Vitascope Hall" opens on Canal Street, New Orleans, the first business devoted exclusively to showing motion pictures at a fixed location as a business.
Ad for Vitascope Hall /
Poster for Vitascope Movies /
Edisonia Hall
October 19 - "Edisonia Hall" in Buffalo, New York, the first building constructed specifically for showing motion pictures.
1897
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Procession filmed
1899
A ‘color’ film is produced by the Lumiere Brothers. But it is not filmed in color. The color is hand-painted onto the film after it is developed!
1902
Edward Raymond Turner a pioneering British inventor and cinematographer produced the earliest known colour motion picture film footage with a system he patented in 1899. This used color filters in the camera and projector. Though this process produces color on the screen, it is not an accurate reproduction of all colors.
1906
Another color filming technique was developedby George Albert Smith of Brighton, England. It was called Kinemacolor. This also used color filters in the camera and projector. Though this process produces color on the screen, it is not an accurate reproduction of all colors. It uses red and green filters to take two images of the same scene. They are then projected through red and green filters.
/ Kinemacolor colors!26 December - The world's first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, is released. This film lasts one hour. It was the longest film made up to that time. It was made in Australia.
(Part 1)
(Part 2)
1907
June 20 - L'Enfant prodigue, the first feature-length motion picture produced in Europe, opens in Paris.
1908
One of the first motion pictures filmed in in color was shown. It was filmed and projected using Kinemacolor. It was an eight-minute short filmed in Brighton titled A Visit to the Seaside.
1910
May 6 - The newsreel footage of the funeral of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom is shot in Kinemacolor, making it the first color newsreel. This was followed by film of several other big news events around the British Empire, for example, the visit by the English King and Queen to India in 1911, filmed in color.
These news films were very popular.
1913
The Squaw Man, the first Hollywood feature film, is made.
1914
February 2 - Charlie Chaplin's first film, Making a Living is released.
Thefirst dramatic feature film filmed in color is made: The World, the Flesh and the Devil . It is a Britishsilentdrama film, filmed using Kinemacolor.
1915
February 8:D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune's Auditorium Los Angeles and breaks box office and film length records, running at a total length of 3 hrs 10 minutes and earning $ 10,000,000.
1922
The first film in which the color was in the film print itself was produced by Technicolor. With Kinemacolor, and earlier versions of Technicolor, the color only appeared when the film was projected through color filters in the projector. The first film for the public using this newer technique was The Toll of the Sea.
1927
First commercial feature film with synchronized dialogue. The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film. This was the beginning of the ‘talkie’ and the beginning of the end for the silent film. Before that, many short films had been produced with synchronized music or sounds, though the synchronization was not always reliable, but this was the first movie released as a feature film ‘talkie’.
By this stage, all the elements of the modern movie industry were developed. Films were feature length, more and more were in color and had synchronized sound. There were many movie studios around the world and there were cinemas and a public who very much wanted to see this new form of entertainment and information, and were willing to pay. There was a strong demand for both ‘drama’ movies as well as for news or documentary movies. British, French and Americans were some of the main pioneers of early film technology. But American power soon came to dominate the British film industry. Next week we will look at a few early British films, 1900-1930 and prepare to watch parts of and talk about ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’(1939)