The Introduction of The First Movie

What is movie? Movies, also known as films, are a form of visual communication and also a motion picture that uses dynamic pictures and sounds to tell stories or notices .Film has been around for well over a century. People around the world see movies as a form of entertainment and a way of entertainment. For some people, interesting movies may mean movies that make them laugh, feel scare, cry, sad and for others.

Most of the movies produced can be played on the big screen in the cinema and at home. After the movie is displayed on the movie screen for weeks or months, it can be sold through several other media. They are played on pay-TV or cable TV and sold or rented on DVDs or videotapes so that people can watch movies at home. You can also download or stream movies. Older movies are shown on TV.

Movie cameras or camcorders can take photos very quickly and fast, typically 28 or 29 shots per frame. When a movie projector, computer or television displays an image at this rate, it appears that the content displayed in the image set is indeed moving. The sound and audio can be recorded at it can be added later or the same time or. The sounds in a movie usually include people’s voices that are called conversation, music called tracks, and sound effects, and active sounds that occur in movies such as a door open or a gun being fired, animation, video games and music. In the 20th century, cameras used photographic film. Even though there is usually no movie, the product is often referred to as a “movie.”

Louis Le Prince’s work represents the world’s first video. Le Prince uses a paper strip coated with a photographic emulsion and a chronograph camera to enable him to record the motion of the object by taking each phase at short intervals. George Eastman invented the technology in 1884, but no one has used it for five years! The video takes 1.66 seconds and there is almost no plot. However, the survival of this life is a miracle, as proof of technological development. This is the prototype of the upcoming revolution.

In 2012, employees of the Bradford National Media and Technology Museum stumbled upon the first color video in history. Previously, the oldest color film was created using the so-called Kinemacolour technology in 1909, but it turns out that the process of filming color film was invented and patented ten years ago – invented by photographer Edward Turner in 1899. The novelty of Turner technology is that each color is shot with special filters such as red, green and blue. Each scene of the video is taken three to four times separately, and a color image is produced when combined. Unfortunately, Edward Turner did not complete the forecast in time; he died in 1902 and could not see the video.

History of The Invention of Film

Film has been around since the late 1800’s. Important figures like Thomas Edison, The Lumiere Brothers, and Eadweard Muybridge have made cinema possible. We now recognize very talented directors and producers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Greta Gerwig, and Jonah Hill for their accomplishments in the film industry. Film plays a huge role in society and has become a big part of the arts. In an interview with Tom Sherak, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he said, “Film is a reflection of society, both present and past. I think the film and it’s innovations sometimes has to catch up to society but sometimes it leads society too. Movies are stories, movies are people who come out with ideas about something they want to say, something they want to tell someone. Movies are a form of communication and that communication, those stories, come from societies…” Film is important to our society in the way it makes us feel emotionally. Directors are able to tell their story the way they want to through motion picture in hopes to emotionally connect them to the characters and writers. The way films make people feel varies from person to person and that is what is so special about this art.

Film was first invented with the horse in motion by Eadweard Muybridge. Het set up a bunch of cameras that would be tripped to take a photo when the horse ran by to answer the question: When a horse trots, do all four hooves leave the ground simultaneously? These photos were pieced together and shown as stop motion. The answer was then clear that all four hooves leave the ground simultaneously when a horse runs. “As a horse sped by, it tripped wires connected to the cameras, which took 12 photos in rapid succession. Muybridge developed the images on site and, in the frames, revealed that a horse is completely aloft with its hooves tucked underneath it for a brief moment during a stride… Muybridge’s stop-motion technique was an early form of animation that helped pave the way for the motion-picture industry, born a short decade later” (Time). Following Muybridge, Thomas Edison and William Dickson invented a device called the Kinetoscope. This device passed rolls of film rapidly through a projector-like machine to create a moving picture. “Kinetoscope, forerunner of the motion-picture film projector, invented by Thomas A. Edison and William Dickson of the United States in 1891. In it, a strip of film was passed rapidly between a lens and an electric light bulb while the viewer peered through a peephole. Behind the peephole was a spinning wheel with a narrow slit that acted as a shutter, permitting a momentary view of each of the 46 frames passing in front of the shutter every second. The result was a lifelike representation of persons and objects in motion” (Britannica).

After the Kinetoscope, a machine called the Cinematographe was introduced by the Lumiere Brothers. This device was hand cranked and projected film at sixteen frames per second. “by early the following year the brothers had come up with their own device, which they called the Cinématographe. Much smaller and lighter than the Kinetograph, it weighed around five kilograms and operated with the use of a hand-powered crank. The Cinématographe photographed and projected film at a speed of 16 frames per second… Two pins or claws were inserted into the sprocket holes punched into the celluloid film strip; the pins moved the film along and then retracted, leaving the film stationary during exposure” (Pruitt).

In 1927 the first spoken word film was introduced by Warner Bros called “The Jazz Singer”. In an article by Engineering and Technology History Wiki, it said, “The first feature-length film produced by the Warner studio with the new equipment was the 1926 film Don Juan, which featured music and synchronized sound effects but no speech. The second feature film that used this new equipment was The Jazz Singer, which opened in October 1927. It, too, was mostly a silent film set to music, and even had the traditional “title cards” to indicate the dialog of the actors, but some of the music included vocal parts. At one point lead actor Al Jolson looked into the camera and spoke lines that included the famous words, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Wait a minute, I tell ya, you ain’t heard nothin!’” The era of the talkies was launched.”

Then, in 1928 the first cartoon with synchronized sound was released, Disney’s steamboat ‘Steamboat Willie’, which was also the first Mickey Mouse film released. “Disney’s Steamboat Willie is a landmark in the history of animation. The first film starring Mickey Mouse to be released with synchronized sound, it threw silent animation into obsolescence and launched an empireAudiences were stunned by the vitality of the film’s characters. Unhampered by the difficulties of using new equipment with live actors, Disney was able to fuse technology with hand craftsmanship, naturalism with abstraction…” (MoMA). Following the cartoon, the first 3D film was created called “The Power of Love”. It used anaglyph glasses with opposite coloured lenses creating the 3D effect. “The 3-D filming process involved using two cameras, or a single twin-lensed camera, to represent both the right and the left eye of the human viewer. Images from the two cameras were then projected simultaneously onto the screen. Moviegoers had to view [the film] through special stereoscopic glasses to see its full 3-D effect. The lenses were specially tinted so that the viewer would see the right- and left-eye images only with the eyes for which they were intended”.

Finally, in 1939 the first technicolor film was introduced with the release of The Wizard of Oz by using a three strip film process. “Technicolor wasn’t a type of color film; instead, it was a process in which a specially modified motion picture camera recorded the same scene through colored filters on three different strips of film. These strips were then processed separately and used to ‘print’ colors onto each finished print of the film sent to theaters” (Lintelman). Currently, films are made digital, with 2.35 aspect ratio, and in 8k with the post production being done in 4k. Due to the technological improvements, cameras used to film today provide directors with crystal clear shots and scenes are easy to view.

Works Cited

1. Bradford National Media and Technology Museum. (2012, September 12). The First Color Film in the World. Retrieved from https://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/blog/the-first-colour-film-in-the-world/
2. Eadweard Muybridge. (n.d.). In Britannica.
3. Film. (2021, March 16). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
4. History of Film. (2021, April 12). In Wikipedia.
5. Le Prince, Louis Aimé Augustin. (2018, March 26). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Aime-Augustin-Le-Prince
6. Movie. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster.
7. Sherak, T. (2013, January 18). How Movies Affect Society. In Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-movies-affect-society_b_2508424
8. The Kinetoscope. (n.d.). In History.com.
9. The Lumière Brothers. (n.d.). In Britannica.
10. Winston, B. (2019). Lies, Damn Lies, and Documentary: Documentary Film and the Documentary Mode in the Twenty-First Century. In International Journal of Communication, 13, 4475-4493.