1. The Invention and Early Years of Cinema 1880s - 1904
Film History
The Invention and Early Years of Cinema
1880s

2. How do we see Movement?
Persistence of Vision makes it possible for humans to see movement in a film when in reality a film is just a series of still images shown in rapid succession.
Definition: The retention of a visual image for a short period of time after the removal of the stimulus that produced it: the phenomenon that produces the illusion of movement when viewing motion pictures.
Explain how films are an optical illusion. There is no real movement, just a sequence of still pictures shown in rapid succession, there are 24 frames per second in a film.

3. 1833 The zoetrope
The Zoetrope was an optical toy that gave an illusion of movement by using a small number of drawings, each altered somwhat.

4. How it Works
The zoetrope cylinder would be spun around by hand while the viewer observed the pictures through one of the small holes on the outside of the device. However, this is far from the technological advances needed to create a motion picture. Cameras that took still images per second needed to be invented as well as projectors that could show that many images in a second.

5. 1891 Edison, Dickson and the kinetoscope
By 1891 Thomas Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson had invented the kinetoscope viewing box. A device that allowed viewers to see a twenty second short film. The Kinetoscope ran the film through its gears and each frame stopped for a fraction of a second and was projected through viewing eyepiece. Example of a kenetoscope video through youtube.

6. Kinetoscope Films

7. 1894 The lumiere Brothers and the Cinematographe
In 1894 the famous Lumiere Brothers invented a small 35mm camera called the cinematographe. The cinematographe could also be used to project the films it recorded.
The first film the Lumiere Brothers made was in 1895 and called “Workers leaving the Factory” This was the first film to ever be projected to a mass audience.

8. Georges Melies
One of the most important early directors was a man named Georges Melies also known as the Magician of Cinema.
Melies used the first form of stop motion photography to create magical scenes in his films. Actors and props would disappear and reappear by stopping the film camera changing the scenery and starting the camera again.
For the first few decades films mostly were just representations of actual events. There was no narrative storytelling in these early films. A trip to the moon is possibly Melies most famous film and one of the first to cut from one scene or location to another.

9. Editing and The Great Train Robbery
In the late 1800s most images were novel, one-scene clips. Machines such as the kinetoscope would show a series of moving images like a horse running or a woman dancing.
Moving images changed in 1903 with the debut of The Great Train Robbery. Produced by Thomas Edison, and directory by Edwin Porter. The film began to shift the focus from novelty films to plot-based cinema.

10. The Great Train Robbery
The Great Train Robbery was one of the first crime dramas and archetype of the western genre. The film introduced moviegoers to robberies, chase scenes, and gun shoot offs. The film was also one the first to incorporates a full cast of actors and to shoot on locations
New techniques in film editing also helped to establish the movie as a pioneer. It used cross-cutting to show two events occurring simultaneously.

11. The great Train Robbery
The film also uses panning shots, where the camera follows the characters, to focus viewers’ attention. These simple techniques help to establish continuity between scenes and increase suspense for the viewer.

12. D.W. Griffith and Continuity Editing
D.W. Griffith revolutionized the art of editing. He filmed various shots from different angles and edited them together to create what is known as Continuity Editing.
Griffith freed the camera from the conventions of stage perspective by breaking the action of scene into many different shots and editing these according to the emotional and narrative rhythms of the action. For example, cutting from full-figure shots to a close-up accentuated the drama, and matching the action on a cut as a character walks from an exterior into a doorway and then enters an interior enables Griffith to join filming locations. He was creating the “Language of Film”
The Girl and Her Trust 1912

13. SerGei Eisenstein
Russian Filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein believed that editing was the foundation of the film art. For Eisenstein, meaning in cinema lay not in the individual shot but only in the relationships among shots established by the editing. Conflict was essential to the political films of Eisenstein and shows in his shot changes, which give his silent films a rough, jagged quality. His shot editing was not the smooth quality of Griffith but instead clashed and banged shots together.

14. Sergei Eisenstein
Thus, Eisenstein’s montages were eminently suited to depictions of violence as in his film “The Battleship Potemkin.”
Montage in cinema is the juxtaposition of two or more shots to create a third meaning.
Oliver Stone is an enormous fan of the use of montages in his films. Especially, in “Any Given Sunday”
Now you could say that any two shots cut together create a third meaning. For example, One person looking and the camera cuts to another person. The third meaning is simply that they are looking at each other. But, Montages creating deeper meaning. (Talk about and show clip from Any Given Sunday)

15. Sergei Eisenstein Battleship Potemkin 1925
It is a tribute to the early Russian revolutionaries and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of international cinema.
The film is based on the mutiny of Russian sailors against their tyrannical superiors aboard the battleship Potemkin during the Revolution of However, the insurgents only made it as far as the Odessa Steps before they were slaughtered by Cossack Militants

16. Battleship Potemkin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TgWoSHUn8c
“The Untouchables” 1987 Union Station Scene

17. History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uahjH2cspk
The history of cinema and editing
The History of Frame Rate
These documentary style videos will review some of the topics we talked about over the past three classes.