1. Film History
The Beginnings

2. Persistence of Vision
The ability of the brain to retain an image a split second longer than we actually see it.
Seeing a number of individual images in rapid succession, our brain connects them to make a fluid sequence of movement.

3. Zoetrope
Circular drum with slits
Creates illusion of movement
1834 *

4. Experimentation In many countries at the same time…
France, Germany, England, and the U.S. all claim to have invented the movies

5. Photography
Precursor to film

6. Photography Emerges 1826 - first photos
camera obscura
clear, sharp images on silver copperplate
required 15 minutes exposure time
only 3 minutes needed for exposure
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

7. Beginning of Film
Initially, films were a series of photographs shown one after another.
The speed was too slow for continuous motion
Eadweard Muybridge
Set up 12 cameras along a track, tied strings to the shutters which were tripped as a horse ran down the track.
Created movement with photography.

8. Eadweard Muybridge **

10. George Eastman Developed celluloid film (1884)
made motion pictures possible
flexible
allowed light to pass through
was durable (didn’t break in projector)

11. First American Motion Picture (1889)
Thomas Edison and William Dickson filmed a sneeze

12. Edison’s Kinetoscope 1889 in parlors featured: dancing, juggling
‘wonders of the world’
re-enactments
Open
Closed

13. Kinetoscope: for individual audiences
Edison didn’t see future in mass projection
But contributed: sprocket holes on film, first movie studio

14. Lumière Brothers 1895 Worked on Edison’s Kinetoscope
Designed own machine within a year
Able to project for mass audiences

15. December 28, 1895 First theater opens to the paying public
Basement of a Paris café
Lumières’ shows:
Workers leaving the Lumière Factory
Arrival at Lyon
A Baby’s Meal

16. Georges Méliès One of the first to see Lumières in Paris
Saw opportunity
Set up Europe’s first film
studio in 1897
- with artificially-arranged scenes
Show video*

17. Le Voyage Dans la Lune (13m)
1902 – Voyage (or Trip) to the Moon
Pioneer of illusion and fantasy:
trick photography
dissolves
wipes
stop-motion, slow-motion
and fadeouts

18. Pixar Zoetrope