The Beginnings of Cinema History of photographic recording of still and moving images

Introduction Cinema is totally dependent upon technology and science. Substantial achievements in the following fields were required: chemistry, optics, high-precision mechanics.

Basics silver salts – photosensitive material (changes its structure when exposed to light), The chemical base for the black and white photography.

Developments of Photography Camera Obscura Leonardo daVinci pinhole camera

The Beginning of photography Joseph Nicéphore Niépce – French inventor. Made first permanent photograph with a modified camera obscura around 1826. First photograph 1829 - balcony.

Louis Daguerre 1 1839 – Louis Daguerre – first practical development in photography (“daguerreotype”). He invents the first commercially viable process for still photographs.

Daguerre 3

Talbot William Henry Fox Talbot – developed a system of negative recording (from a negative you can produce an infinite number of prints).

Eastman: celluloid film 1889 – George Eastman patented flexible photographic film developed for the role camera. Eastman: celluloid base coated with a photosensitive emulsion.

What famous company did Eastman fund?

Moving images

28th December 1895 – Grand Café in Paris August Lumière and Louis Lumière Invented the Cinematographe

First film screening The first official screening of a film. Formal birth of the cinema. The showing was organized by Lumière brothers. They recorded and screened films using the machine of their own production called “cinématographe.”

Cinematographe

Famous Lumiere Films La sortie des usines Lumière, 1895 Arrivée d'un train en gare à la Ciotat, 1895 Barque sortant du port, 1895 Repas de bébé, 1895 L'arrosseur arrosé, 1895 Demolition d’un mur, 1896

Lumiere films

Cinetoscope 1889 – Edison’s “Cinetoscope” (you had to look inside the box to see a short film) – nickelodeon.

Georges Méliès 1899—French magician Georges Melies becomes the first artist to tell a story with film. (first fiction films) He introduces trick cinema, special effects. He discovers the possibility to represent the reality that does not exist (science-fiction, horror etc.)

Georges Méliès - Un homme de têtes (early film, 1898)

A Trip to the Moon 1902—Melies releases short film titled A Trip to the Moon: the first science fiction-film.

Edwin S. Porter Started as a projectionist Went to work for Edison as a camera operator 1903—Edwin S. Porter releases The Great Train Robbery, the first movie to use modern production techniques, such as filming out of sequence. Strong narrative 12 different scenes in different locations introduction of editing, filming from different distances.

David Wark Griffith One of the greatest innovators of the early American cinema. Birth of the Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916) simultaneous editing (crosscutting) longer films camera movement

Intolerance (1916)

Birth of the Nation

Jazz Singer 1927 –first widely distributed sound movie.