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INVENTION AND EARLY YEARS OF CINEMA (1880-1904) - Coggle Diagram
INVENTION AND EARLY YEARS OF CINEMA (1880-1904)
Introduction
19th century
visual forms of popular culture
began to spread, such as circuses and amusement parks
cinema
also developed during this period
the working class could begin to see dioramas, that are painted backdrops with three-dimensional figures depicting historical events
it offered a
simpler
and
cheaper
way to entertain the masses > directors could film actors' performances and show them to audiences around the world
films became the most popular form of virtual art in the late
Victorian era
it was invented in the 1890s thanks to the
Industrial revolution
Preconditions for motion pictures
Scientists
they understood how the human eye could perceive movement as a series of slightly different images placed close together in rapid succession about 16 per second
they had to study and invent optical games to give the illusion of movement, such as the
Zoetrope
> series of drawings on a narrow strip of paper inside a revolving drum
they had to invent technologies to project a rapid series of images onto a surface >
"magic lanterns"
they had to develop photography as well as the sewing machine, which made it possible to create gears that would later be used in movie cameras
Invention of cinema
it is difficult to attribute the invention of cinema to a single person as contributions were made by several people from the US, Germany, England and France
England
Paul
> a producer of a photographic equipment, sold the copies of the Kinetoscopes as the ones designed by Edison, because Edison did not patent the Kinetoscope outside the United States; he was important because he provided filmmakers with cameras to make cinema develop
Thomas Edison
created machines to create and display moving pictures with his assistant Dickson, using strips of flexible films > they created the
Kinetoscope
he created the first small camera called the Cinematographe, using the intermittent mechanism of a sewing machine > the first film made through this system was
"Workers leaving the factory"
(1895)
Germany
the Germans Max and Emil
Skladanowsky
invented the Bioscope
France
the
Lumière brothers
invented a projection system that made cinema a commercially viable enterprise internationally
one of the most famous film screenings in history took place in the
Grand Café
in Paris, through 2 films by the Lumière brothers showing
Auguste and his wife feeding their baby
the "Watered Waterer": a comic scene of a boy stepping on a hose to cause a puzzled gardener to squirt himself
US
Latham
worked on a camera and the
projection system
that could make film last a little bit more than others
through
Armat
we arrive at the starting point of commercial films through a further improvement of the Kinetoscope by Edison: the
Vitascope
, than marketed "Edison's Vitascope"
another major invention was the
Mutoscope
by
Casler
: a flip-card device that concentrates on projection and makes it better
Early Cinema
at first films had subjects such as nonfiction or
actualities
and included scenics or short travelogues, offering views of a distant land
news events
(like short clips of nowadays television news programs) might be depicted in brief topicals
the cinematographers covered news events in the locations where they occured
the cinematographers recreated events in the studios to save money
audiences probably did not believe that these faked scenes were actual records of real incidents, they accepted them as representations of those incidents comparable to engravings in newsmagazines
fiction films
were shot outdoors, but then they started using simple painted backdrops in studios
most films in this period consisted of a
single shot
; the camera was set up in one position and the action unfolded during a continuous act with the same subject
shots were treated as separate films and exhibitors could choose if they wanted to buy the whole series of shots and run them together in a multishot film or if they wanted to buy just one scene
they could create unique
programs
> they had musical accompaniments by a pianist or an orchestra, o exhibitors had noises synchronized with the actions on the screen
early films had no credits at the beginning or intertitles to explain the action, so the exhibitor would announce the titles
France
Promio
, on of Lumière's operators, invented the
moving camera
, by placing a camera on a moving gondola in Venice
George Méliès
was a magician that decided to add films to his program and build his own camera, making fantasy movies, through camera tricks and painted scenery
he used the stop-motion and other special effects for films such as
"The Vanishing Lady"
or
"A Trip to the Moon"
Silent era
there were no archives devoted to preserving films, therefore the great majority of the films are now lost or incomplete
many films had no titles
copyright was not a problem at the time so many films had been preserved by printing every frame on a long roll of paper (paper prints) and many of them were discovered in 1940s at the Library of Congress in the US, while some of the Lumière's negatives were preserved in France