History of cinema

THE HISTORY OF CINEMA; A BRIEF OVERVIEW -KHANSA RAHIM Introduction Even though we start to trace the history of world cinema from the names of the Lumeire brothers and their significant works which marked the era of motion pictures, most people overlook to talk about man’s fascination about motion pictures from the earlier days. We are talking about flipbooks, magic lanterns and kaleidoscopes. The concept of motion pictures was first introduced to a mass audience through Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope in 1891. However, it wasn’t until the Lumiere brothers released the cinematograph in 1895 that motion pictures were projected for audience viewing. The illusion of film or motion picture is based on the phenomenon called persistence of vision and the phi phenomenon which is, the former is the capacity of the brain to retain an image cast on the retina for a fraction of a second even after the disappearance of the image in the field of vision and the latter means when successive images are shown at a speed faster than 1/16th of a second then it appears to be moving. Hence a motion picture is created. The Pre-Film Era Now let us try to take a look at inventions and ideas that gradually led to the present day Cinema, as we see and enjoy them today. The Phénakisticope The Phénakisticope (better known as phenakistiscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. 1831 saw the invention of phenakistiscope. Dubbed "Fanta scope" (Stroboscopic discs) by its inventors, it has been known under very many other names until the French product name became common. The phenakistiscope is regarded as one of the first forms of moving media entertainment that paved the way for the future motion picture and film industry. Like a GIF animation, it can only show a short continuous loop. The Zoetrope: A Zoetrope was invented in 1834. Zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. It was invented by William George Horner. It was basically a cylindrical variation of the phénakisticope, suggested almost immediately after the stroboscopic discs were introduced in 1833. The definitive version, with easily replaceable picture strips, was introduced as a toy by Milton Bradley in 1866 and became very successful in the markets. Daguerreotype The daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. Invented by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839. To make the image, a daguerreotypist(s) would polish a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish, treat it with fumes that made its surface light sensitive, expose it in a camera for as long as was judged to be necessary, which could be as little as a few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or much longer with less intense lighting; make the resulting latent image on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor; remove its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment, rinse and dry it, then seal the easily marred result behind glass in a protective enclosure. The image is on a mirror-like silver surface, normally kept under glass, and will appear either positive or negative, depending on the angle at which it is viewed, how it is lit and whether a light or dark background is being reflected in the metal. The darkest areas of the image are simply bare silver; lighter areas have a microscopically fine light-scattering texture. The surface is very delicate, and even the lightest wiping can permanently scuff it. Some tarnish around the edges is normal. Calotype Calotype or Talbo-type is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Talbot made his first successful camera photographs in 1835 using paper sensitized with silver chloride, which darkened in proportion to its exposure to light. This early "photogenic drawing" process was a printing-out process, i.e., the paper had to be exposed in the camera until the image was fully visible. A very long exposure—typically an hour or more—was required to produce an acceptable negative. THE LATE 19TH CENTURY INVENTIONS AND EXPERIMENTS The Horse In Motion: The Horse in Motion is a series of cabinet cards by Edward Muybridge, including six cards that each show a sequential series of six to twelve "automatic electro-photographs" depicting the movement of a horse. Muybridge shot the photographs in June 1878. An additional card reprinted the single image of the horse "Occident" trotting at high speed, which had previously been published by Muybridge in 1877. The series became the first example of chronophotograph, an early method to photographically record the passing of time, mainly used to document the different phases of locomotion for scientific study. It formed an important step in the development of motion pictures. In 1888 Reynaud developed the Theater Optique, an improved version capable of projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. From 1892 he used the system for his Pantomimes luminesces: a show with hand-drawn animated stories for larger audiences. It was very successful for several years, until it was eclipsed in popularity by the photographic film projector of the Lumière brothers. Etienne Jules Marey Marey was a French physiologist who has contributed his invention to the field of chronophotograph. He is often claimed to be the ‘inventor of Cinema’ Marey's chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, with all the frames recorded on the same picture. Using these pictures he studied horses, birds, dogs, sheep, donkeys, elephants, fish, microscopic creatures, mollusks, insects, reptiles, etc. Some call it Marey's "animated zoo". His invention could record multiple images on the same camera plate. THE BIRTH OF CINEMA The Kinetograph and the Kinetoscope: The Edison Manufacturing Company is accredited with this achievement in history. Patented by Edison’s assistant Dickenson in the mid 1890’s. As photography was innovated and refined over the next few decades, it became possible to replace the phase drawings in the early optical toys and devices with individually posed phase photographs, a practice that was widely and popularly carried out. The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, 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. Driven either by a motor or hand cranked cameras since motor driven were huge and bulky. It was in 1891 Dickenson designed the early version of a movie picture projector which he called kinetoscope. Monkeyshines no1 is the only surviving earliest films from the cylinder kinetoscope. It is the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the states. The film public demonstrated motion picture is Dickenson Greeting showed on May 20 1891. It was patented on August 31, 1897. The Black Maria The Black Maria was Thomas Edison's film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It is widely referred to as "America's First Movie Studio". The studio, a single room that rotated on a track to follow the sun, was used to create films for the Kinetoscope, one of the earliest versions of a motion-picture projector. Kinetoscope parlors, in which the public could view these early motion pictures of vaudeville acts and other entertainments on a type of peep-show device for individual viewing, debuted in 1894. Given below are some of the cinemas shot at the Black Maria. Blacksmith Scene (1893) Washing the Baby (1893) Fred Ott's Sneeze (1894) The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894/95) Fun in a Chinese Laundry (1896) Prof. Welton's Boxing Cats Sioux Ghost Dance Buffalo Bill's Shooting Skill Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene The Lumiere Brothers: The first to present projected moving pictures to a paying audience were the Lumiere brothers in December 1895 in Paris, France. They used a device of their own making, the Cinematograph, which was a camera, a projector and a film printer all in one. The very first films were very short, sometimes a few minutes or less they could be shot in the morning edited by afternoon and could be projected in the evening. They were usually shown in huge fairgrounds, theatres and music halls were the lights could be dimmed. The film subjects were usually day to day happenings that of a minute or long. The first film was the 50 second shot “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat”. Some of their movies are given below Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, 46 seconds The Sprinkler Sprinkled, 49 seconds the dis-embarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon, 48 seconds Horse Trick Riders, 46 seconds fishing for goldfish, 42 seconds Blacksmiths, 49 seconds Baby's Breakfast, 41 seconds Jumping Onto the Blanket, 41 seconds Cordeliers Square in Lyon—a street scene, 44 seconds bathing in the sea, 38 seconds. Let us now try to look at some of the renowned films of all time. The Kiss in the Tunnel The Kiss in the Tunnel, also known as A Kiss in the Tunnel, is a 1899 film British short silent comedy film, produced and directed by George Albert Smith, showing a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel, which is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing in the history of Cinema. Execution of Mary Stuart The Execution of Mary Stuart is a short film produced in 1895. The film depicts the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is the first known film to use special effects, specifically the stop trick. The 18-second-long film was produced by Thomas Edison and directed by Alfred Clark and may have been the first film in history to use trained actors, as well as the first to use editing for the purposes of special effects. The film shows a blindfolded Mary (played by Mr. Robert L. Thomae, male actor in Shakespeare-Tradition also for female cast) being led to the execution block. The executioner raises his axe and an edit occurs during which the actor is replaced by a mannequin. The mannequin's head is chopped off and the executioner holds it in the air as the film ends. A Trip to the Moon A Trip to the Moon is a 1902 French adventure short film directed by Georges Melies. The film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenite (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. It features an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers, led by Melies himself in the main role of Professor Barbenfouillis, and is filmed in the overtly theatrical style for which Melies became famous. Its unusual length, lavish production values, innovative special effects, and emphasis on storytelling were markedly influential on other film-makers and ultimately on the development of narrative film as a whole. A Trip to the Moon was named one of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century. The film remains the best known of the hundreds of films made by Melies, and the moment in which the capsule lands in the Moon's eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema. It is widely regarded as the earliest example of the science fiction film genre and, more generally, as one of the most influential films in cinema history. The Great Train Robbery The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent short Western film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. Porter produced (i.e. supervised; the job title "film director” had not yet been developed) and photographed the film in New York and New Jersey in November 1903; The cast included Justus D. Barnes and G. M. Anderson, who may have also helped with planning and staging. Porter's storytelling approach, though not particularly innovative or unusual for 1903, allowed him to include many popular techniques of the time, including scenes staged in wide shots, a matte effect, and an attempt to indicate simultaneous action across multiple scenes. Camera pans, location shooting, and moments of violent action helped give the film a sense of rough-edged immediacy. A special close-up shot, which was unconnected to the story and could either begin or end the film depending on the projectionist's whim, showed Barnes, as the outlaw leader, emptying his gun directly into the camera. Battleship Potemkin Battleship Potemkin was released at the end of 1925 as a project handed to Sergei Eisenstein by the soviet government. It was his second full length film which is an elaboration on the real life mutiny which took place in the ship in 1905 Eisenstein believed that the rapid and jolting juxtaposition of images was the best way to manipulate the emotional response of an audience. Soviet filmmakers of the period became obsessed with the power of editing; and their films tended to feature more shots than those of their Hollywood counterparts. Eisenstein cast mostly non-professional actors, preferring an ensemble which reflected the look and feel of common folk. He also put into practice the developing Soviet theory of montage, using new editing techniques to illustrate character traits and communicate ideas without making them explicit with title cards or other methods. The film is composed of five episodes: "Men and Maggots", "Drama on the Deck", "A Dead Man Calls for Justice", "The Odessa Steps", "One against all" Man with a Movie Camera Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film, The Man with the Movie Camera, documents life in a Russian city while also telling a story about filmmaking. The film is a dazzling mix of imagery and technique, inviting the viewer to see the city through the eyes of the cameraman, and to share his perception of the events and visions that he encounters through the filmmaking process. This avant-garde style of filmic storytelling became popular in the form of the “city symphony” genre. Dimendberg explains that the genre encompasses “around twenty titles and relies heavily upon montage to represent a cross-section of life in the modern metropolis” In adhering to this genre, The Man with the Movie Camera does away with the traditional trappings of the documentary and becomes something different. There is no narration, no conventional narrative or plot elements, but rather a succession of rhythmic imagery detailing the inner workings of a city. Graf describes the genre’s structure as having a “dawn to dusk strategy in the search for a pure film form”  REFERENCE: https://www.ukessays.com Man_With_The_Movie_Camera; Israel, McGavin https://www.gradesaver.com https:// culturedarm.com https:// encyclopedia.britannica.com