HISTORY OF FILM

History of film is linked up with photography. In 1873 a former California governor, Leland Stanford, hired a well-known photographer, Eadweard Muybridge in order to prove and win a bet that a horse in full gallop had all four feet off the ground. In 1877, Muybridge arranged a series of still camera along a stretch of racetrack. Each still camera took its picture as the horse sprinted. The photographs won Stanford his bet while at the same time, they sparked an idea of motion pictures in Muybridge. This eventually led to the invention of zoopraxiscope by Muybridge. Zoopraxiscope is a machine for projecting slides onto a distant surface.

Muybridge met Thomas Edison in 1888 and was inspired by Muybridge segmental action photographs. William Dickson, a scientist with Edison embarked on the task of developing a better system of filming and came up with Kinetograph-a workable motion picture camera in 1889.

By 1891, Edison built a crude motion picture studio called “Black Maria”, which started the commercial motion picture industry in America. From Black Maria came a series of very short films, which were shown, on a large contraption called a Kinetoscope. The next advance on film was made by two French men the Lumiere brothers. Auguste and Louis were brothers who worked with their father’s manufacturing photographic plates and film. Using the technology they learnt from Edison’s work, they succeeded in developing a camera much more portable and less cumbersome than Edison’s own that could print and project pictures with a crude yet intermittent motion. The invention was named the cinematogrape-a device that both photographed and projected action.

Recognizing the advantage of the cinematographe over his kinetoscope, Edison acquired the patent for an advanced projection developed by U.S. inventor Thomas Armet and Francis Jenkins. The vita scope, as the device was called was premiered in New York City on April 23, 1896, and the American movie business was born.

Following this, a Frenchman, Georges Mêlées began making narrative motion pictures in about 1897. He also added special effects to film making. Mêlées most famous film, “A Trip to Moon”, showed a group of scientist and chorus girls launching a rocket to the moon. Some special effects which Mêlées incorporated in the film include the earth rising on the horizon and a trick photography scene of moon people disappearing in smoke.

Another brilliant contributor was D.W.Griffith. He introduced innovations such as scheduled rehearsals before final shooting and production based on close adherence to a shooting script. He lavished attention on otherwise ignored aspects of a film such as costume and lighting and used close-ups and other dramatic camera and angles to transmit emotions. He also displayed mastery in his editing techniques of all the films produced by Griffith; he displayed the greatest talent in “The Birth of a Nation” (1914) and in “Tolerance”.

In 1927, sound was introduced to motion pictures. This development made possible new genres like musicals. Actors and Actresses now had to really act and film production became much more complicated and expensive. Film flourished even through the Great depression of the 1930s. Profits were plowed back into bigger productions and lavish sound stages. World War II promoted the boom. Then in the 1950s, film met a new competitor- Television.