THE HISTORY OF CINEMA

The Birth of Cinema

In the late 1880s, famed American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and his associate William K.L. Dickson in their laboratories in New Jersey set about constructing a device for recording movement on film, and another device for viewing the film. By 1890, they had designed and built a crude, motor-powered camera that could photograph motion pictures - called a Kinetograph. Without the Kinetograph, the phenomenon of ‘motion picture’’ would not be what it is today.

The motor-driven camera was designed to capture movement with a synchronized shutter and sprocket system that could move the film through the camera by an electric motor. The Kinetograph used film which was 35mm wide and had sprocket holes to advance the film. The sprocket system would momentarily pause the film roll before the camera's shutter to create a photographic frame (a still or photographic image). However, moveable hand-cranked cameras soon became more popular, because the motor-driven cameras were heavy and bulky.

In 1891, William Dickson also designed an early version of a movie-picture projector - an optical lantern viewing machine - called the Kinetoscope. In 1890, Dickson filmed his first experimental Kinetoscope trial film, Monkeyshines No. 1 - the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the United States. It featured the movement of laboratory assistant Sacco Albanese, filmed with a system using tiny images that rotated around the cylinder.

The first public demonstration of motion pictures in America using the Kinetoscope occurred at the Edison Laboratories in 1891, with the showing of Dickson Greeting. The very short film’s subject in the test footage was William Dickson himself, bowing, smiling and ceremoniously taking off his hat.

In 1894, a more advanced version of Edison's Kinetoscope began commercial operation. It was a floor-standing, box-like viewing device which was basically a bulky, coin-operated, movie "peep show" cabinet for a single customer, in which the images on a continuous film loop-belt were viewed in motion as they were rotated in front of a shutter and an electric lamp-light. This viewing device quickly became popular in carnivals, Kinetoscope parlors, amusement arcades, and sideshows for a number of years.

An early short film was the 34-second sequence entitled Blacksmith Scene, and showed three men going about the daily routine of blacksmithing. Even more bizarre was a short 5-second film showing one of Edison employees sneezing comically for the camera.

Many of the first films ever recorded were segments of magic shows, dramatic plays, vaudeville performances (with dancers and strongmen), acts from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, various boxing matches and cockfights, and scantily-clad women. Most of the earliest moving images, however, were non-fictional, unedited, crude documentary, "home movie" views of ordinary slices of life - street scenes, the activities of police or firemen, dogs terrorising rats, women dancing, or shots of a passing train.

Typically, patrons would pay a 25-cent admission charge to view films in five kinetoscope machines placed in two rows. Young Griffo v. Battling Charles Barnett was the first 'movie' to be screened for a paying audience in 1895, at a storefront along Broadway in New York City. More Kinetoscope parlors soon opened in other cities such as San Francisco, Atlantic City, and Chicago.

The Lumiere Brothers:

The innovative Lumiere brothers in France - Louis and Auguste - often called "the founding fathers of modern film", worked in a factory that manufactured photographic equipment. They were inspired by Edison's work. They created their own combination movie camera and projector - a more portable, hand-held and lightweight device that could be cranked by hand and could project movie images to several spectators. It was dubbed the Cinematographe and patented in February, 1895. The multi-purpose device (combining camera, printer and projecting capabilities in the same housing) was more profitable because more than just a single spectator could watch the film on a large screen.

As generally acknowledged, cinema (a word derived from Cinematographe) was born in December 1895, in Paris, France. The Lumieres presented the first commercial exhibition of a projected motion picture to a paying public in the world's first movie theatre - in the Salon Indien, at the Grand Cafe on Paris' Boulevard des Capucines.

The 20-minute program included 10 short films with 20 screenings a day. These factual shorts (or mini-documentaries), termed actualities, with the look and feel of typically bad home movies, included the following:

1. Workers Leaving a Factory
2. Trick Horse Riders
3. Fishing For Goldfish
4. The Garden Sprinkler
5. Baby Eating a Meal
6. Going For A Swim

The First Permanent
Movie Theatres

Films were increasingly being shown as part of vaudeville shows, variety shows, and at fairgrounds or carnivals. Audiences would soon need larger theatres to watch screens with projected images - opera houses and music halls weren’t suitable. The earliest 'movie theatres' were converted churches or halls, showing one-reelers (a 10-12 minute reel of film).

In 1897, the first real cinema building was built in Paris, solely for the purpose of showing films. It wasn’t until 1902 that downtown Los Angeles got its first cinema. The 200-seat Electric Theatre became the first permanent US theatre to exclusively exhibit movies - it charged patrons a dime, up from a nickel at the nickelodeons.

Georges Melies
French Cinematic Magician

Aside from technological achievements, another Frenchman - Georges Melies - expanded the possibilities of cinema with his own imaginative fantasy films. An illusionist and stage magician, and a wizard at special effects, Melies exploited the new medium of film with a pioneering, 14-minute science fiction work, Le Voyage Dans la Lune - A Trip to the Moon (1902).

It was his most popular and best-known work, incorporating surreal special effects, including the memorable image of a rocket-ship landing and gouging out the eye of the 'man in the moon.' Melies also introduced the idea of narrative plots, character development, illusion, and fantasy into film, including trick photography, dissolves, wipes, 'magical' super-impositions, the use of mirrors, stop motion, slow-motion and fade-outs/fade-ins. Although his use of the camera was innovative, the camera remained stationary and recorded the staged production from one position only.

Edwin S. Porter
The "Father of the Story Film"

"Moving pictures" were increasing in length, taking on fluid narrative forms, and being edited for the first time. Inventor and former projectionist Edwin S. Porter (1869-1941) was also using film cameras to record news events. Porter was one of the resident Kinetoscope operators and directors at the Edison Company Studios in the early 1900s, who worked in different film genres.

Porter began making short narrative films, such as the 10-minute long Jack and the Beanstalk (1902). He was responsible for directing the six-minute long The Life of an American Fireman (1903) - often alleged to be the first American documentary, docudrama, fictionalized bio-pic or realistic narrative film. It combined re-enacted scenes, the dreamy thoughts of a sleeping fireman seen in a round iris or 'thought balloon', and documentary stock footage of actual fire scenes, and it was dramatically edited with inter-cutting (or jump-cutting) between the exterior and interior of a burning house.

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

With the combination of film editing and the telling of narrative stories, Porter produced one of the most influential films of the time to reveal the possibility of fictional stories on film. The film was the 14-scene, approximately 10-minute long The Great Train Robbery (1903) - based on a real-life train heist. His film, made in New Jersey and not particularly artistic by today's standards - set many milestones at the time:

it was the first narrative Western film with a storyline, and included various western cliches (a shoot-out, a robbery, a chase, etc.) that would be used by all future westerns

it was a ground-breaking film - and one of the earliest films to be shot out of chronological sequence, using revolutionary parallel cross-cutting (or parallel action) between two simultaneous events; it did not use fades or dissolves between scenes or shots

it effectively used rear projection in an early scene (the image of a train seen through a window), and two impressive panning shots

it was the first real motion picture ‘smash hit’ establishing the notion that films could be commercially viable

In an effective, scary, full-screen close-up, a bandit shot his gun directly into the audience. The film also included exterior scenes, chases on horseback, actors that moved toward (and away from) the camera, a camera pan with the escaping bandits, and a camera mounted on a moving train.

Porter also developed the process of film editing - a crucial film technique that would further the cinematic art. Most early films were not much more than short, filmed stage productions or records of live events. In the early days of film-making, actors were usually unidentified and not even trained actors.

Nickelodeons – ‘Bums on Seats’

In the early 1900s, motion pictures ("flickers") were no longer innovative experimental films. They soon became an escapist entertainment medium for the working-class masses – many folk would spend a whole evening at the cinema for a cheap entry fee. Kinetoscope parlours, lecture halls, and storefronts were often converted into nickelodeons, the first real movie theatres. The normal admission charge was a nickel (sometimes a dime) - hence the name nickelodeon. They usually remained open from early morning to midnight.

One-reel short films, melodramas, comedies, or novelty pieces were usually accompanied by piano playing or vaudeville-type acts. Shows lasted between ten minutes and an hour. The demand for more and more films increased the volume of films being produced and raised quick profits for their producers.

Feature-Length Films

In the early years of cinema, producers were worried that the American public would not be able to last through an hour-long film – this delayed the advent of feature films (60-90 minutes in length) in the US.

According to most sources, the first continuous, full-length narrative feature film was writer/director Charles Tait's five-reel bio-pic about a notorious bushranger, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906, Australia), with a running time of between 60-70 minutes. Only fragments of the film survive to this day. Australia was the only country set up to regularly produce feature-length films prior to 1911.


Questions

1. In your workbooks, list four (4) things you know about the Kinetograph.

2. Which of the following is true of the Kinetoscope?

· Its base was fixed with wheels for portability
· Was commonly found in amusement arcades
· Shaped like a box
· Made of lightweight construction
· Coin-operated
· Designed for customers who were not married
· Images were lit by electrical light
· Its films would often run as long as 45 minutes

3. Correct the factual errors from question 2.

4. List four (4) things you might’ve seen if you looked into a Kinetoscope.

5. Complete the following statements.

The beauty of the Cinematographe was that it _______________________ which enabled _____________________________________________ .

Actualities are ___________________________________________________ .

6. Across the developmental years of cinema, record four (4) things Georges Melies pioneered.

7. Which is true of Edwin S. Porter?

· He filmed news events
· He worked as an usher at the Electric Theatre in LA
· He could operate a Kinetoscope
· He experimented with inter-cutting
· Melies incorporated him into his stage illusions

8. The Great Train Robbery (1903) was a remarkable cinematic achievement for many reasons. List four (4).


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http://filmpitch.blogspot.com/
http://thewesterngenre.blogspot.com/
http://whyproductplacement.blogspot.com/
http://filmcrewproductionroles.blogspot.com/
http://get-up-and-run.blogspot.com/
http://thefrenchnewwave.blogspot.com/
http://mockdoc.blogspot.com/
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