A Brief History of Cinema

Photography

• The word "photography" comes from the Greek φώς (phos) "light" + γραφίς (graphis) "stylus", "paintbrush" or γραφή (graphê) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light." Traditionally, the products of photography have been called negatives and photographs, commonly shortened to photos.

The First Photograph and the Dauerrotype

• The first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1825 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce. However, because his photographs took so long to expose, he sought to find a new process.

• Working in conjunction with Louis Daguerre, they experimented with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light.

• Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work, eventually culminating with the development of the daguerreotype in 1837.

• Daguerre took the first ever photo of a person in 1839 when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be captured by the long exposure (several minutes).

Louis Daguerre

William Florence & William Fox Talbot

• Meanwhile, Hercules Florence had already created a very similar process in 1832, naming it Photographie, and William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret.

• After reading about Daguerre's invention, Talbot refined his process so that portraits were made readily available to the masses.

• By 1840, Talbot had invented the calotype process, which creates negative images. John Herschel made many contributions to the new methods. He invented the cyanotype process, now familiar as the "blueprint". He was the first to use the terms "photography", "negative" and "positive".

• He discovered sodium thiosulphate solution to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery in 1839 that it could be used to "fix" pictures and make them permanent.

• He made the first glass negative in late 1839.

William Fox Talbot

George Eastmen & Film

• Many advances in photographic glass plates and printing were made through the nineteenth century.

• In 1884, George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace photographic plates, leading to the technology used by film cameras today.

Chronophotography

• Chronophotography is a Victorian application of science (the study of movement), and art (photography). It is the technique precursor to cinematography.

• The word is from the Greek chronos and photography, "pictures of time."

• Chronophotography is divided into two separate processes: Motography (continuous exposure of the subject) and Strobophotography (intermittent exposure of the subject).

• Notable chronophotographers include Eadweard Muybridge, Etienne-Jules Marey, Georges Demenÿ, Ottomar Anschütz, Thomas Eakins, Harold Eugene Edgerton, who all used chronophotography for the scientific study of motion.

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

• Eadweard J. Muybridge (April 9, 1830 – May 8, 1904) was an English photographer, known primarily for his important pioneering work, with use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today."

Eadweard Muybridge

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVc68ucgT2o

Étienne-Jules Marey• Étienne-Jules Marey (March 5, 1830 – May 21, 1904) was a

French scientist and chronophotographer, born in Beaune, France.• His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical

instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of labor photography.

• He started by studying how blood moves in the body. Then he shifted to analyzing heart beats, respiration, muscles (myography), and movement of the body.

• To aid his studies he developed many instruments for precise measurements.

• In 1869 Marey became fascinated by movements of air and started to study flying animals such as birds.

• He adopted and further developed animated photography into a separate field of chronophotography in the 1880s. His revolutionary idea was to record several phases of movement on one photographic surface.

Marey’s Chronophotographic Gun

• Marey's chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, and the most interesting fact is that all the frames were recorded on the same picture, using these pictures he studied horses, birds, dogs, sheep, donkeys, elephants, fish, microscopic creatures, molluscs, insects, reptiles, etc.

Mary’s Films

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKlNZSnkvsg

The Movie Camera

• The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame". This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion.

– One of the first cameras

• Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (born 28 August 1842, vanished 16 September 1890) was an inventor who is considered by many film historians as the true father of motion pictures, who shot the first

moving pictures on paper film using a single lens camera

Accordion Player C. 1888Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwQcY1-XM6U

Cinematography

• Cinematography is the illusion of movement by the rapid projection of many still photographic pictures on a screen.

• A product of 19th century scientific endeavour, it has become an industry employing thousands of people and a medium of mass entertainment and communication.

Kinetoscope - Edison

• No one person invented cinema. However, in 1893 the Edison company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures.

• Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.

Kinetoscope

Edison kinetoscope films 1894 -1896

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIkLok-BYIk

Lumiere Bros - Actualities

• The first to present projected, moving photographic pictures to a paying audience were the Lumière brothers in 1895.

• At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes. They were shown at fairgrounds, music halls or anywhere a screen could be set up and a room darkened. Subjects included views of foreign lands, short comedies and events considered newsworthy. The films were accompanied by lecturers, music and a lot of audience participation - although they did not have synchronized dialogue they were not 'silent' as they are sometimes described

The Lumiere Brothers' - First films (1895)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nj0vEO4Q6s

Georges Melies

Georges Melies - Fantasy

• Georges Méliès (December 8, 1861 – January 21, 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema.

• He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films.

• Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with the cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the "Cinemagician."[

George Melies - The Conjuror 1899

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs5BBaNJ6mg

Growth of National Film Industries

• By 1914, several national film industries were established. Europe, Russia and Scandinavia were as important as America.

• Films became longer and story telling, or narrative, became the dominant form. As more people paid to see movies, the industry that grew around them was prepared to invest more money in their production, distribution and exhibition - large studios were established and special theatres built.

• The FirstWorld War disrupted the film industry in Europe, and the American industry grew in relative importance.

• The first thirty years of cinema were characterized by the growth and consolidation of an industrial base, the establishment of the narrative form and refinement of technology. (Light weight mobile cameras, lighting, sound recording equipment)

Introduction of Colour

• Colour was first added to black-and-white movies through tinting and stencilling as early as 1902. By 1906, the principles of colour separation were used to produce "full colour" moving images. Early processes were cumbersome and expensive and colour was not widely used until the introduction of the three-colour Technicolor process in 1932.

• The Wizard of Oz is commonly thought of as the first colour film, however historians have suggested Cupid Angling, a 1918 silent film is propably the first colour film.

The Toll of the Sea (1922)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH2bYHZWmLw

Sound

• Image from the Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894 or 1895), produced by W.K.L. Dickson as a test of the early version of the Edison Kinetophone,

combining the Kinetoscope and phonograph.

Sound

• The first attempts to add synchronized sound to projected pictures used phonographic cylinders or discs.

• The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronized dialogue, The Jazz Singer (USA/1927), used the Vitaphone system which employed a separate disk to replay the sound. This system proved unreliable and was soon replaced by an optical, variable density sound track along the edge of the film.

• By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length movies were presented with synchronized sound and by the mid-1930smany were in full colour too.

• The advent of sound secured the dominant role of the American industry, and gave rise to the so-called 'Golden Age of Hollywood'

The Jazz Singer

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WZRUIfHjo

35 mm film

• Thomas Edison had used 35mm film in the Kinetoscope, and in 1909 this was adopted as the industry standard.

• The picture had a height-to-width relationship, known as the aspect ratio, of 3:4 or 1:1.33.

• Although there were many experiments with other formats there were no major changes until the 1950s.

1950’s• The introduction of television in America prompted a number of

technical experiments designed to maintain public interest in cinema.

• In 1952, the Cinerama process, using three projectors and a wide, deeply curved screen was premiered. It created a sense of greater involvement and proved extremely popular.

• However, it was technically cumbersome and widescreen cinema was not extensively used until the introduction of CinemaScope in 1953 and Todd-AO in 1955, which both used single projectors.

• CinemaScope had optically squeezed images on 35mm film which were expanded laterally by the projector lens; Todd-AO used film 70mm wide.

• By the end of the 1950s, the shape of the cinema screen had effectively changed, with aspect ratios of either 1:2.35 or 1:1.66 becoming standard

Stereo Sound

• Stereo sound, which had been experimented with in the 1930s, also became part of the new widescreen experience.

• While the industry had some success in fighting the competition of television, it never regained the position and influence it once held.

• Although America still appears to be the most influential film industry the reality is more complex. Many films are produced internationally - either made in various countries or financed by multi-national companies. Today, most people see films on television (whether broadcast or on video), and

• very few films are made without money from the television and electronics industries.

Modern Film Advancements• Cinematography is still essentially a 19th century technology. • Today, the most important technical changes concern the interface

between film and digital imaging. • Non-optical or computer-generated images are now common

components of films shown in cinemas. • Large-format cinematography has seen something of a revival in

recent years and the use of 70mm for prestigious presentations in major urban areas is growing.

• Specialist large-screen systems using 70mm film have also been developed. The most successful of these is IMAX.

• Digital 3D is now a growing aesthetic trend particular in Blockbuster or Childrens films