Annual School Project
Joshua Krish Carvalho, Vth C, Roll No. 3
Chapters Pages
- The First Movie Making Devices – 1800s ………………4-9
- The First Ever Movie : The Horse In Motion………….10
- The Cinematograph and The First Filmmakers………11,12
- The First Feature Film…………………………………………13,14
- The First Ad Film………………………………………………..15
- How Backdrops Started……………………………………….16
- Earlier Movie Theatres…………………………………………17,18
- The First Film Studio …………………………………………..19
- Arrival of Special Effects, Color Tinting, Editing …….20-24
- The Great Train Robbery………………………………………25-27
- The First Movie Theatres – Nickelodeon Era…………..28
- The First Cartoon Films………………………………………..29-30
- End of Silent Movie Era – 1930s……………………………31
- 1930’s – The Golden Age of Hollywood…………………..32
- From Black & White To Color Films………………………33
- Movie – Making Post-World War II………………………34-35
- Television Boosts Film Making…………………………….36-37
- Split Screens – 1960s………………………………………….38-39
- Era of Blockbusters – 1970s………………………………..40-41
- Indian film industry is christened Bollywood ……….42-43
- CGI & 2-D Movies………………………………………………44
- Launch of the Steadicam – 1976………………………….45
- Era of VCR & Sequels – 1980s……………………………..46
- The Digital Camera – 1980s…………………………………47
- 1990s : Special Effects & Animated Films……………..48,49
- The 21st Century – DVDs & IMAX Films……………….50,51
- Increasing Globalization……………………………………..52Resources……………………………………………………………53,54
Acknowledgements…………………………………………….55
Chapter 1
The First Movie Making Devices – 1800s
Phenakistoscope: created by several different inventors in the early 1800’s. This was a plate sized slotted disk with sequences of images that when spun, the person looking though the slots of this device saw a moving image.
When 16 identical drawings are put in the sectors, one sees a stationary image, when looking through the slits at the revolving disc in a mirror. Instead of putting 16 identical images in the sectors Joseph Plateu (1832) drew 16 images, which change little by little. The images seen in swift succession suggestion movement is created.
1834 – Zoetrope was introduced by William George Horner. The Zoetrope used the same principle as Plateau’s Phenakistoscope but instead of discs the pictures and slots are combined in a rotating drum. Zoetrope’s were widely sold after 1867.
Thaumatrope created by John Ayrton in Paris in 1862. This was a round card attached to a string, while one side was a a picture of a horse and the other a picture of a man in a riding position. When the card was spun, it seem as if the man was riding the horse.
The first machine patented in the United States that showed animated pictures or movies on a deviced called the “wheel of life” or “zoopraxiscope”. Patented in 1867 by William Lincoln, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit in the zoopraxiscope. However, this was a far cry from motion pictures as we know them today
In 1891, the Edison company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. Later in 1896, Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S
In 1912 Thomas Edison developed and introduced the Home Projecting Kinetoscope for domestic use. This machine was an early example of Home Entertainment, many many decades ahead of its time. Because film prints were so expensive to purchase Edison offered direct mail rentals of short films, shipped and returned through the post office, similar to online video libraries like Netflix. But the home projector failed due to the high cost and lack of consumer interest, only 500 were sold and Edison abandoned the idea in 1914.
Chapter 2
The First Ever Movie : The Horse In Motion
In the year 1872, a man named Eadweard Muybridge began experimenting on capturing moving images. He placed twelve cameras on a racehorse track, spread thread across the track, and attached the thread into contact with a camera’s shutter. Once the horse ran across the track, it’s legs broke the threads, causing the cameras to operate in sequence. The ending results were 12 photos showing a horse’s gait. With the Zoopraxiscope, he was able to quickly project these images, creating what is known as motion photography and the first movie to ever exist.
Chapter 3
The Cinematograph and The First Filmmakers – Lumiere Brothers – 1895
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean are credited to be first filmmakers in history. They patented the Cinematograph which unike the Kinetoscope, allowed viewing by multiple people at the same.
The first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory and was called `Sortie de l’usine Lumiere de Lyon’ is considered the first real motion picture in history.
One of the most famous film screenings in history took place on December 28th, 1895. The venue was the Grand Cafe in Paris and customers paid one Franc for a twenty-five minute programme of ten Lumière films. These included Feeding the Baby, The Waterer Watered and A View of the Sea.
Chapter 4
The First Feature Film
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897), a filmed boxing match, reported to be 100 minutes in length (the longest film ever to be released by that date), and shown by the Veriscope Company, had its debut on May 22, 1897 at the Academy of Music in New York City. Some consider it the world’s first feature film. It included all fourteen 3-minute rounds of the bout, in addition to a 5-minute introduction, and non-stop filming during the one-minute rest period between rounds. Running commentary was provided by an expert sports announcer from the side of the ring – the first of its kind.
Chapter 5
The First Ad Film
One of the earliest projects the Edison Studios created (probably in July of 1897) was the advertising film Admiral Cigarette (1897), promoting the slogan “We All Smoke.” The 28 second-long silent film was the first prototype commercial for the Admiral Cigarette company. Edison’s film was the first advertising film, or commercial, to be submitted for copyright, on August 5, 1897.
Chapter 6
How Backdrops Started
The Spanish-American War in 1898 drew camera operators to Cuba, but they were shut out by the US Army. Since they could not capture the battles on film, many went into studios and created them using models and painted backdrops — the start of scale-model effects.
Chapter 7
Earlier Movie Theatres
The earliest ‘movie theatres’ were converted churches or halls, showing one-reelers (a 10-12 minute reel of film – the projector’s reel capacity at the time). The primitive films were usually more real life situations and comedies.
The world’s first permanent movie theatre exclusively designed for showing motion pictures was the Edisonia Vitascope Hall, a 72 seat theatre which opened in downtown Buffalo, New York on Monday, October 19, 1896 in the Ellicott Square Building on Main Street.
It was created by Buffalo-based entrepreneur Mitchell H. Mark, a supreme visionary of the future of motion picture theaters.
Chapter 8
The First Film Studio
Parisian French film-maker Georges Melies, expanded development of film cinema with his own imaginative fantasy films. When the Lumiere brothers wouldn’t sell him a Cinematographe, he developed his own camera (a version of the Kinetograph), and then set up Europe’s first film studio in 1897. It was the first movie studio that used artificial illumination, a greenhouse-like structure that featured both a glazed roof and walls and a series of retractable blinds. It was an influential model on the development of future studios.
Chapter 9
Arrival of Special Effects, Color Tinting, Editing
Georges Melies – 1902
1902 Georges Méliès produces his magnificent “Voyage to the Moon”, a fifteen-minute epic fantasy parodying the writings of Jules Verne and HG Wells. The film used innovative special effect techniques and introduced colour to the screen through hand-painting and tinting.
Méliès first film based on a trick of substitution (one of the earliest instances of trick photography with stop-action – an early special effect) was Escamotage d’une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin (1896) (aka The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of Robert Houdin). The roots of horror films (and vampire films in particular) may also be traced back to Georges Méliès’ two-minute short film Le Manoir du Diable (1896) (aka Manor/House of the Devil, or The Devil’s Castle, or The Haunted Castle), although it was meant to be an amusing, entertaining film.
Melies became the film industry’s first film-maker to use artificially-arranged scenes to construct and tell a narrative story, with his most popular and influential film to date, Cendrillon (1899) (aka Cinderella).
He created about 500 films (one-reelers usually) over the next 15 years. He developed techniques such as stop-motion photography, double and multiple-exposures, time-lapse photography, “special effects” such as disappearing objects (using stop-trick or substitution photography), and dissolves/fades.
An illusionist and stage magician, and a wizard at special effects, Melies exploited the new medium with a pioneering, 14-minute science fiction work, Le Voyage Dans la Lune – A Trip to the Moon (1902). It was his most popular and best-known work, with about 30 scenes called tableaux.
He incorporated surrealistic special effects, including the memorable image of a rocketship landing and gouging out the eye of the ‘man in the moon.’ Melies also introduced the idea of narrative storylines, plots, character development, illusion, and fantasy into film, including trick photography (early special effects), hand-tinting, dissolves, wipes, ‘magical’ super-impositions and double exposures, the use of mirrors, trick sets, stop motion, slow-motion and fade-outs/fade-ins. Although his use of the camera was innovative, the camera remained stationary and recorded the staged production from one position only.
George Smith
In 1903 British film maker George Smith makes Mary Janes Mishap which was praised for its sophisticated use of editing. The film uses medium close-ups to draw the viewers attention to the scene, along with wide shots. The film also contains a pair of wipes which signal a scene change.
Smith’s short films from 1897 to 1903, pioneered film editing and close-ups, and his development of the first successful colour film process, Kinemacolor.
Edwin S. Porter
Inventor and former projectionist Edwin S. Porter (1869-1941), who in 1898 had patented an improved Beadnell projector with a steadier and brighter image, was also using film cameras to record news events. Porter was hired at Edison’s Company in late 1900 and began making short narrative films, such as the 10-minute long Jack and the Beanstalk (1902).
He was responsible for directing the six-minute long The Life of an American Fireman (1903) – often alleged to be the first American documentary or realistic narrative film. It combined re-enacted scenes, the dreamy thoughts of a sleeping fireman seen in a round iris or ‘thought balloon’, and documentary stock footage of actual fire scenes, and it was dramatically edited with inter-cutting (or jump-cutting) between the exterior and interior of a burning house.
Chapter 10
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
With the combination of film editing and the telling of narrative stories, Porter produced one of the most important and influential films of the time to reveal the possibility of fictional stories on film. The film was the one-reel, 14-scene, approximately 10-minute long The Great Train Robbery (1903) – it was based on a real-life train heist and was a loose adaptation of a popular stage production. His visual film, made in New Jersey and not particularly artistic by today’s standards – set many milestones at the time:
- it was the first narrative Western film with a storyline, and included various western cliches (a shoot-out, a robbery, a chase, etc.) that would be used by all future westerns [Note: the same claim was made for the earlier 21-minute Kit Carson (1903)]
- it was a ground-breaking film – and one of the earliest films to be shot out of chronological sequence, using revolutionary parallel cross-cutting (or parallel action) between two simultaneous events or scenes; it did not use fades or dissolves between scenes or shots
- it effectively used rear projection in an early scene (the image of a train seen through a window), and two impressive panning shots
- it was the first ‘true’ western, but not the first actual western [Note: Edison’s Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene (1899) was probably the first western.]
- it was the first real motion picture smash hit, establishing the notion that film could be a commercially-viable medium
- it featured a future western film hero/star, Gilbert M. Anderson (aka “Broncho Billy”)
In an effective, scary, full-screen closeup (placed at either the beginning or at the end of the film at the discretion of the exhibitor), a bandit shot his gun directly into the audience. The film also included exterior scenes, chases on horseback, actors that moved toward (and away from) the camera, a camera pan with the escaping bandits, and a camera mounted on a moving train.
Porter also developed the process of film editing – a crucial film technique that would further the cinematic art. Most early films were not much more than short, filmed stage productions or records of live events.
In the early days of film-making, actors were usually unidentified and not even trained actors.
The earliest actors in movies, that were dubbed “flickers,” supplemented their stage incomes by acting in moving pictures.
Chapter 11
The First Proper Movie Theatre – Nickelodeon Era
Around the year 1905, an inexpensive way to view movies was created – the 5-cent movie theatre! The period of time in which these theatres were built was called the Nickelodeon era, due to the cost of 5 cents for viewing. No longer would people have to see a movie in an upscale vaudeville house. By creating the 5-cent movie theatre, the general appeal of movies greatly increased, making movies more available and affordable to watch.
Chapter 12
The First Cartoon Films
- 1914Gertie the Dinosaur is widely considered the first animated short to feature a distinguishable character, as animator Winsor McCay brings a walking, dancing dinosaur to life.
- 1919Felix the Cat makes his debut and becomes the first famous animated cartoon character.
- 1922Walt Disney animates his first animated short, Little Red Riding Hood.
- 1928Mickey Mouse makes his debut in the six-minute short Plane Crazy. (The character would not speak until the following year, in his ninth film.)
Chapter 13
End of Silent Movie Era – 1930s
Vitaphone as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of the nearly three-hour-long Don Juan; the first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its soundtrack contained a musical score and added sound effects, but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film.
Chapter 14
The 1930’s is known as The Golden Age of Hollywood
What set apart the 1930’s in film history from any other decade was the use of sound in movies. It was the age of the “talkies” and some of the most well known documentaries.
Most of the early talkies were successful at the box office, but a majority were of poor quality. They were dialogue dominated play adaptations with inexperienced actors and an unmoving camera or microphone.
The 1930’s were also the birth of many new film genres such as gangster films, musicals, newspaper-reporting films, historical biopics, social-realism films, light-hearted comedies, westerns and horror flicks.
Chapter 15
From Black & White To Color Films
The earliest attempts to produce color films involved hand-painting the negative or tinting it with dye.
Kinemacolor was the first process to capture natural color on film stock. It was a two-color additive color process, photographing and projecting a black-and-white film behind alternating red and green filters.
Beginning in 1932, Technicolor introduced a new color process—“Process 4”, with one negative for each primary color and a “matrix” to improve contrast. This became the standard for the major Hollywood studios.
Chapter 16
Movie – Making Post-World War II
The 1940’s brought about new advancements in the film industry. Film=makers introduced new ideas such as sound recording, special effects, color use, and lighting, that made movies more popular and enjoyable to watch.
Horror films used techniques such as fog and stop motion to capture their audience and pull them into the terror. In order for the film producers to successfully do stop motion, the actress/actor would have to sit still for hours, upon hours while the makeup was gradually applied. Can you imagine the patience and discipline that would take!
They used this in films such as The Wolf Man to make it appear as if the man was really turning into a werewolf. Early 1940’s horror films used the effect of what you don’t see is scarier than what you do see, to place fear in their audience. In addition, dim lighting and thematic scenes were used in many 1940’s films to scare the audience. Tricks which are still used in today’s films.
An orchestra plays in the background to set the thematic scenes of all different types of movies. Of course, films back in these days were not nearly as advanced, and did have the issue of continuity.
In other advancements, film director Orson Welles, was the first to use tighter apertures which created a large depth of field in his film. This rendered every detail of the background and created a sharp focus. This practice became known as deep focus, and was popular from the 1940’s onward.
Chapter 17
Television Boosts Film Making
Films of the 1950s were of a wide variety. As a result of television, the studios and companies sought to put audiences back in theaters. They used more techniques in presenting their films through widescreen and big-approach methods, such as Cinemascope, VistaVision, and Cinerama as well as gimmicks like 3-D film.
Big production and spectacle films perfect for this gained popularity with the many historic and fantasy epics likeThe Ten Commandments (1956), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, andBen-Hur (1959).
The science fiction genre began its golden age during this decade with such notable films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, The War of the Worlds. There were also Earth-based subjects, such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954),
Director Alfred Hitchcock was at the peak of his craft with films such as Dial M for Murder, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958).
Director Satyajit Ray, who began his career in the 1950s, was also at the peak of his career during this decade, with films such as The Apu Trilogy (1955-1959), Jalsaghar (1958) and Parash Pathar (1958). The Apu Trilogy in particular are considered the defining films in the ‘Parallel Cinema’ movement of Bengali cinema and are among the greatest films of all time.
Akira Kurosawa’s films Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954) are also among the greatest films of all time.
Chapter 18
Split Screens – 1960s
Several studio-made films in the 1960s popularized the use of split screen.
Split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images.
A split screen combined two or more actions filmed separately by copying them onto the same negative, called the composite.
In filmmaking split screen is also a technique that allows one actor to appear twice in a scene. The simplest technique is to lock down the camera and shoot the scene twice, with one “version” of the actor appearing on the left side, and the other on the right side. The seam between the two splits is intended to be invisible, making the duplication seem realistic.
Chapter 19
Era of Blockbusters – 1970s
During the 1970s, a new group of American filmmakers emerged, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick, andRobert Altman. Great critical and commercial successes, like Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Coppola’s The Godfather films happened in this decade.
Later the phenomenal success in the 1970s of Spielberg’s Jaws and Lucas’s Star Wars in particular, led to the rise of the modern “blockbuster”. Hollywood studios increasingly focused on producing a smaller number of very large budget films with massive marketing and promotional campaigns like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
In world cinema, the 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the popularity of martial arts films, largely due to its reinvention by Bruce Lee. This began with The Big Boss (1971), which was a major success across Asia. Enter the Dragon released after Bruce Lee’s death in 1973 went on to become the most successful martial arts film in cinematic history, popularized the martial arts film genre across the world, and cemented Bruce Lee’s status as a cultural icon.
Chapter 20
Indian film industry is christened Bollywood
Musical films were quickly gaining popularity in the cinema of India, where the term “Bollywood” was coined for the growing Hindi film industry in Bombay (now Mumbai) that ended up dominating South Asian cinema, overtaking the more critically acclaimed Bengali film industry in popularity. Hindi filmmakers combined the Hollywood musical formula with the conventions of ancient Indian theatre to create a new film genre called “Masala”, which dominated Indian cinema throughout the late 20th century.[49]
These “Masala” films portrayed action, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all at once, with “filmi” song and dance routines thrown in. This trend began with films directed by Manmohan Desai and starring Amitabh Bachchan, who remains one of the most popularfilm stars in South Asia. The most popular Indian film of all time was Sholay (1975), a “Masala” film inspired by a real-life dacoit as well as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and the Spaghetti Westerns.
Chapter 21
Computer Generated Imaging (CGI) Begins – 2-D Movies
The late 1970s also saw the adoption of early computer generated imaging (CGI) by movie production companies and their special effects teams.
The technology was originally developed in research labs at various universities, where researchers were attempting to convert their computer data into pictures.
Yul Brenner’s robotic cowboy in Westworld is considered the first instance of 2-D CGI in film. It was followed by films such as Tron and Young Sherlock Holmes.
Chapter 22
Launch of the Steadicam – 1976
Cameraman Garret Brown solved the problem of shaky shots in 1976 when he invented the Steadicam.
Garret Brown’s work with the Steadicam includes:
- Rocky
- The Shining
- Return of the Jedi
Chapter 23
Era of VCR & Sequels – 1980s
During the 1980s, audiences began increasingly watching films on their home VCRs. The sale and rental of films on home video became a significant “second venue” for exhibition of films, and an additional source of revenue for the film industries.
It was also the era of sequels. Two follow-ups to Star Wars, three to Jaws, and three Indiana Jones films helped to make sequels of successful films more of an expectation than ever before.
Chapter 24
The Digital Camera – 1980s
Sony introduced digital camera technology – its first digital camera, Mavica – in 1981.
However, it took a while for the technology to catch on. Many directors felt that developed film was a better quality than digital – though digital was more convenient and the cameras were easier to handle.
Chapter 25
The 1990s : Special Effect Films & Animated Full Length Feature Films
Cinema was increasingly dominated by special-effects films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991),Jurassic Park (1993) and Titanic (1997)
Animated films aimed at family audiences also regained their popularity, with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994).
During 1995, the first feature length computer-animated feature, Toy Story, was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney. After the success of Toy Story, computer animation would grow to become the dominant technique for feature length animation.
During the late 1990s, another cinematic transition began, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology. Meanwhile DVDs became the new standard for consumer video, replacing VHS tapes.
Chapter 26
The 21st Century – DVDs & IMAX Films Gain Popularity
Home theatre systems became increasingly sophisticated, as did some of the special edition DVDs designed to be shown on them. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released on DVD in both the theatrical version and in a special extended version intended only for home cinema audiences.
There has been a revival in 3D film popularity the first being James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss which was released as the first full-length 3-D IMAX feature filmed with the Reality Camera System. This camera system used the latest HD video cameras, not film, and was built for Cameron by Emmy nominated Director of Photography Vince Pace, to his specifications. The same camera system was used to film Spy Kids 3D: Game Over (2003), Aliens of the Deep IMAX (2005), and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005).
After James Cameron’s 3D film Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time, 3D films have gained increasing popularity with many other films being released in 3D, with the best critical and financial successes being in the field of feature film animation such as DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon and Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar’s Toy Story 3.
Avatar is also note-worthy for pioneering highly sophisticated use of motion capture technology and influencing several other films such asRise of the Planet of the Apes.
Life of Pi is one probably the most fantastic 3 D movies made till now. It is not only 3-D but has great artistry work in the way water has been shown on 3-D, the animated 3-D tiger that looks like a real tiger, the way the tiger is integrated in the scenes with the real-life character – Pi.
Chapter 27
Increasing Globalization
There has been an increasing globalization of cinema during this decade, with foreign-language films gaining popularity in English-speaking markets. Examples of such films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin), Amelie (French), Lagaan (Hindi-Urdu), Spirited Away (Japanese), City of God (Portuguese), The Passion of the Christ (Aramaic), Apocalypto (Mayan), Slumdog Millionaire (parts in Hindi-Urdu), and Inglourious Bastards (multiple European languages)
As of 2010, the largest film industries by number of feature films produced were those of India, the United States and China.
Resources
http://adambhalalough.com/post/464410070/edisons-home-projecting-kinetoscope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_film
http://ths1.ttsd.k12.or.us/cs/studentwork08/rebe_hubbweb/1930.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_color_feature_films
http://sammi182011.blogspot.in/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s_in_film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_screen_(filmmaking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi_(film)
http://screenrant.com/life-of-pi-movie-reviews/
http://ths1.ttsd.k12.or.us/cs/studentwork08/rebe_hubbweb/1800.html
http://www.earlycinema.com/timeline/
http://www.filmsite.org/pre20sintro2.html
http://ths1.ttsd.k12.or.us/cs/studentwork08/rebe_hubbweb/1900.html
http://www.filmsite.org/20sintro.html
http://movies.about.com/od/animatedmovies/a/history-animated-films.htm
http://wichm.home.xs4all.nl/filmsize.html
http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/admiral-cigarettes-1897
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7660793
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_M%C3%A9li%C3%A8s
http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/Nickelodeon.html
http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/40933#.VFpDdvSUdmo
http://dailydesignidea.wordpress.com/tag/garrett-brown/
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/sonyhistory-g.html
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my parents for helping me select the topic of my ASP. Thank you to my father for helping me name my blog. Thank you to my mother for editing the contents and helping me search for images and setting up my blog. Thank you to my pets for not destroying my project while I was working on it!
joshonthejob 