Film history before the Lumiere brothers

Asked to name the first film to ever exist many people would think of The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, Lumière brother’s movie, which got especially famous for the story connected to it. It is said that while screening the movie, people got so scared thinking that the train is real, that they were running out of the cinema theatre in panic. We don’t know how much of the story is true or fiction but even though it is one of the first films to ever exist, there have been multiple events important to film history that happened even before the Lumiere brothers decided to take a look at filming. This is the area of film history that I’m going to focus on in this post. More specifically years 1878 till 1895. Although it’s a quite short period, it’s crucial for film history as this is where it all started.

Let’s start with Leland Stanford asking Eadweard Muybridge to take pictures of a running horse for him in order to analyse its movement. It was also a bet where he had to prove that there is a moment where the horse will have all 4 feet off the ground while running. He indeed won the bet and unconsciously started the film history as well. Let’s go back to the movie itself. Muybridge installed 12 cameras along the track which took 24 pictures in total. Not only that he took those pictures, but he also invented a whole projector to view the pictures one after another getting the illusion of movement. His projector was called a Zoopraxiscope, in which taken pictures were put on a disc and then projected onto the wall as the disc moved all around. It would only hold a limited amount of pictures so it wouldn’t allow any longer movies, just a short scene lasting a couple of seconds.

One helpful invention that helped to create cameras and projectors which held longer footage was the invention of a film roll. And as for film, I don’t mean the moving picture itself but a celluloid strip with a light-sensitive surface, which is exposed to light captured the image. It was introduced by Eastman in 1889 and quickly noticed by Thomas Edison who saw the potential it held and with his assistant W.K. Dickson quickly started working on two machines. Specifically the kinetoscope and kinetograph. As you might notice all of the equipment ending with -scope for example Kinetoscope, Vita scope, Zoopraxiscope etc. are the projectors and viewing machines and if the name ends with – graph it’s the camera. Just small detail making them easier to distinguish, from the abundance of names we will go through today.

Back to Edison- an important change that he made, which made the filmmaking process more efficient was adding little holes on both sides of the film roll. In the camera, hooks would move the film strip by holding on to the holes. Thanks to that the film strip was more securely placed in the camera, and the process was much faster, as Edison recorded his movies at 46 fps. Now the industry standard is 24 fps, so it was a very quick process. Then he used the film rolls in the Kinetograph that I’ve told you about before. This camera allowed to record a max of 20-second videos, it was also really heavy and hard to move around. That’s why Edison’s films were recorded in a studio so the camera stayed in one place at all times. His film studio was called the Black Maria, where a lot of different dancers, acrobats and showmen were invited to show their talents in a short engaging scene. Of course, the footage was recorded in black and white and it was silent. Movies recorded in a studio were later shown in entertainment parlours filled with Kinetoscopes. They did not project the movies onto a wall, the viewer had to look inside the Kinetoscope to watch the movie, it was also accompanied by a phonograph, another Edison invention which allowed them to listen to music while watching the scenes shown. That was the first time that movies were distributed for entertainment purposes even though it was a completely different experience than going to the cinema now. Everyone saw the movies individually so it was much more private than seeing the movie with many other people at the same time. 

The privacy of Edisons’ screenings was changed by the Skladanowsky brothers and later the Lumiere brothers. Firstly max and Emil Skladanowsky invented the Bioscop, which was a projector, which allowed them to make public screenings of their movies. In 1895 they were showing movies such as „The boxing kangaroo” and ” The serpentine wrestler” to a bigger audience. The films they created were still somewhat similar to Edison’s movies as they still showed sports figures. 

And now let’s talk about the Lumiere brothers. Before pursuing the filmmaking path they were known for photography. Now day a local Kinetoscope exhibitor had asked them to find a way to produce films cheaper than Edison. They did a great job soon introducing the Cinematograph a.k.a the camera solving all problems with the previous cameras. I’m just a little bit obsessed with it. And let me tell you why: it was much smaller and more portable than the kinetograph, so the Lumiere brothers’ films went out of a studio to an everyday environment. Except for being a camera it also served as a projector. The Cinematograph shot movies at 16 frames per second and it soon became the industry standard and stayed that way for a long time. 

Due to the portability of their camera, they recorded everyday situations, for example well known Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory and The Arrival of a Train at a Station

At first, they showed their movies to a small audience of scientific and commercial groups, and the screenings were private. The first open screening happened on December 28th 1895 when they showed 10 movies, all around 50 seconds long. Their business grew quickly, soon offering 20 shows a day, and then they were showing their movies all around the movies. 

Thats how we got from the very beginnings of cinema to the well known Lumière brothers. Soon I will write more about next periods of film history, so if this post was interesting and helpful for you, make sure to check out next posts as well.

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See you soon 🙂