Early Cinema

Week 1 Film

late 19th century

shift from agrarian life to industrial societies

• - Second Industrial Revolution

Major forms of mass entertainment

• - Theater

• - Circus

• - Vaudeville

U.S. domestic and foreign policies (late 19th century)

• - Post-Civil War westward expansion

• - Early stage of Progressive Era (es. under McKinley and Roosevelt)

• - Shift from relative isolationism to imperialism and interventionism

• - Domestic racism (Jim Crow) and xenophobia (migration)

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Persistence of Vision

• - Described by Peter Mark Roget in 1824

• - Retention of (after) images in the brain between 1/20 to 1/5 of a second, causing a “blending” of images

• - Challenged for decades: part of complex perceptual process

Phi phenomenon

• - Discovered by Max Wertheimer in 1912

• - Optical illusion of motion as response to alternating stimuli

Beta movement

• - closely related to phi phenomenon

• - Series of successive image perceived as one object in movement

• - Basis for traditional film and animation

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Optical illusions and toys (Pre-Cinema)

• - Shadow puppetry

• - Magic Lanterns

• - Thaumatrope

• - Phenakistiscope (and variants/successors)

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Magic lanterns

• - invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1659

• - Camera obscura

Thaumatrope

Introduced in 1825

Phenakistiscope (and variants/successors)

• - invented by joseph plateau in 1833

• - zoetrope (popular by 1860s)

• - praxinoscope (1877)

• - Stroboscopic effect

1877 Phonograph

Thomas Edison

1878 Series photography

• - Edward Muybridge

• - zoopraxiscope

1882 Chronophotographic gun

Etienne-Jules Marey

Late 1880s: First motion-picture camera

Louis Le Prince

1888-89 kodak film (celluloid)

george eastman

1880s -90s Kinetograph and Kinetoscope

Thomas Edison and WKL Dickson

Kineograph and Kinetoscope developed by

Thomas Edison and WKL Dickson

• - inspired by Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope

• - Edison notorious for patent claims

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Kinetograph (movement + write) =

camera

Kinetoscope (movement + sight ) =

“peepshow” viewer

Black Maria built in West Orange, NJ

• - First film studio

• - Initially: vaudeville acts, magic tricks, boxing, women posing

First Kinetoscope parlors open by 1894 in NYC

• - Spead across US quickly

• - Edison associates sell overseas as well

Lumiere Brothers (France)

• - Science of motion picture technologies

• - Develop the Cinematographe (early 1895)

• - December 28, 1895 (first?) paid public exhibition

• - 1896: World tour of the Cinematographe

• - Fall out of spotlight quickly; patents sold to Pathe

Cinematographe (early 1895)

• - Lumiere Brothers (France)

• - able to record, develop, and project film in one machine

• - film actualities

• - some early signs of humor and narrative

Paid public exhibition December 28, 1895

Lumiere Brothers (France)

• - Showcased lucrative nature of film production and exhibition

• - (Some New Yorkers predated this by about six months with Edioloscope)

1896: World tour of the Cinematographe

• - unlike Edison, protective of invention and would not sell license out

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Leon Gaumont

• - Initially interested in equipment sales

• - 1895-97: Opens (oldest extant) studio; transitions into filming

• - 1897: Promotes Alice Guy (secretary) to Studio Director

• - Studio is second in size and dominance to Pathe

Pathe

• - Open company dedicated to sales (phonograph, film equipment)

• - Studio by 1901; quickly becomes dominant manufacturer and film studio in the world

• - Innovative for renting instead of selling films; secures monopoly on film exhibition

Alice Guy

• - Pivots Gaumont toward narrative filmmaking

• - First female and narrative filmmaker

• - Trained future filmmakers at Gaumont, especially Louis Feuillade