Early Film History

1. Early Film History Dr. Beatty

2. Camera Obscura • 4th century BCE - Aristotle • 15th century – Da Vinci • A dark chamber that admits light through a small hole. It projects an inverted image of the scene facing it. • Camera Obscura

3. Photographs • What does photograph mean? • 1802 Thomas Wedgwood, “The Godfather of Photography,” tried to fix the images made in the camera obscura, by using a process depending on the chemical action of light on silver salts. • First recorded attempt to produce photographs, but they faded quickly.

4. First Photograph • 1816 Joseph Niepce used metal plates to capture the first permanent photographic images. • Called heliographsbecause they were drawn by the sun.

5. Photography • Sir John Hershel • 1939 Coined the word photograph and applied the terms negative & positive to film. 1839 Discovered hypo could be used as a Photographic fixer to make pictures permanent. Told Talbot and Daguerre

6. Photographs • 1839 Niepce’s partner Louis Daguerre used silver copperplate and created the ____? • Two famous photos • How long did you have to pose?

7. Photography • William H. F. Talbot • Invented the negative / positive photographic process. (Herschel the terms) • Built upon work of Wedgwood& Herschel He was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium

8. Film • Invented roll film in 1884 • 1887 Mass production of “paper” film coated with gelatin emulsion • 1889 substitutes clear plastic film for paper • Who am I?

9. George Eastman • 1888 received a patent for camera using roll film. • Marketing Genius • “You press the button and we do the rest” • Processing fee of $10 • Kodak

10. Continuous Action • Eadweard Muybridge • Leland Stanford’s$25,000 bet • How much didit cost Stanford towin the bet?

11. Marey • 1882 Etienne-Jules Marey the first to shoot multiple photos with a single camera. • His Photochronograph camera revolved around a glass plate 10 times per second and exposed a photo with each revolution.

12. Thaumatrope • Invented by Dr. William Fitton or perhaps Peter Mark Roget who used it to demonstrate “persistence of vision” to the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1824 Dr. John Ayer marketed as A scientific toy in 1825 • Thaumatrope

13. Zoetrope • 1834 William Horner invented modern Zoetrope. • Earliest version invented in China 180 CE by Ting Huan. • An American developer named the toy , became popular in 1860s. • Video

14. Persistence of Vision • Purely sensory and exists only in the retina, e.g., afterimage of a bright light in a dark room. • To perceive motion from picture, however, one must perceive 1) apparent motion and 2) continuity.

15. Frames Per Second • Movies are an optical illusion • Silent movies 16 fps • Sound movies 24 fps • It is possible to view the black space between frames and the passing of the shutter by closing your eyelids, then rapidly blinking open and closed. If done fast enough, you will randomly trap the image between frames or during shutter motion.


16. Shutter • A commonly-held misconception is that film projection is simply a series of individual frames dragged very quickly past the projector's intense light source; this is not the case. • The shutter gives the illusion of one full frame being replaced exactly on top of another full frame.

17. Shutter • A rotating petal or gated cylindrical shutter interrupts the emitted light during the time the film is advanced to the next frame. The viewer does not see the transition, thus tricking the brain into believing a moving image is on screen. • Modern shutters are designed with a flicker-rate of two times (48 Hz) or even sometimes three times (72 Hz) the frame rate of the film, so as to reduce the perception of screen flickering.

18. Shutter

19. Flicker • It takes about 12 fps for us to perceive motion • 16 fps for the motion to begin to look smooth • 48 fps or more to reach Critical Flicker Frequency (CFF) -- Flicks? • Sound movies use a two blade shutter (or more) & project 48 images per second, 24 of which are different

20. Flicker • The film is advanced from one frame to another only during the last part of the shutter’s revolution. • Advancing the frame takes about 1/150th of a second • Intermittent movement is the term for the starting and stopping of film. • About half the time we spend watching a movie, the screen is literally blank

21. The Phi Phenomenon & Beta Movement • 1912 Max Wertheimer refuted “persistence of vision” re continuous image from moving pictures • Instead, he proposed 2 psychological rather than physiological reasons • One of three founders ofGestalt psychology

22. The Phi Phenomenon and Beta Movement • In 1912 Max Wertheimer published his "Experimental Studies on the Seeing of Motion," the classic work on apparent motion that is cited as the founding work of Gestalt Psychology.   • He presented two separated lines in rapid succession.  When the time interval between the lines was just right, the observer reported seeing movement between them -- a disembodied movement in which the line did not move from one place to another.  Though the observer still saw stationary lines flashing on and off, movement was experienced between them. 

23. The Phi Phenomenon and Beta Movement • Wertheimer isolated what he considered three primary stages of apparent motion:  (1) beta movement (the object at A seen as moving across the intervening space to position B), (2) partial movement (each object seen moving a short distance), and (3) phi movement (objectless or pure motion). • He also disproved “Persistence of Vision”

24. Latest Research • Psychologists began to explore the relationship of apparent motion to real motion. • Kohlers examined how the perception of apparent motion and real motion differ. • In 1971 he and J.R. Pomerantz tested the effect of spatial intermittency on the illusion of motion.  They found that when two elements appeared on the screen, good illusory motion was seen with proper timing. 

25. Latest Research (cont’d) • Found two types of apparent motion: • 1) Short-Range Apparent Motion is the perception of motion from multi-element or closely spaced displays. • 2) Long-Range Apparent Motion is the perception of motion resulting from more widely spaced displays.

26. Short Range Apparent Motion • They concluded that our perception of motion is therefore an illusion that has nothing to do with either persistence of vision or phi movement. • What does account for the optical illusion? Short-Range Apparent Motion

27. Short Range Apparent Motion • The visual system can (and does) distinguish between long-range and short-range apparent motion, but it seemingly cannot distinguish between short-range apparent motion andreal motion.  • To the visual system the motion in a motion picture is real motion.

28. What Does It Mean? • The concept of the passive viewer implied by the myth, the one upon whose sluggish retina (or brain) the images pile up, must be replaced by an enlightened understanding of how viewers actually interface with motion pictures.  If we viewers process the motion in a motion picture the same way we process motion in the real world, then we must ask how we process motion in the real world.  The short answer to this question is that we process movement in active meaning-seeking ways.  We rapidly sample the world about us, noting the things that change and the things that do not change.

29. Edison • Feb 1889 Edison writes a caveat to the Patents Office about a moving picture camera using a strip of film. • Assigns employees and office space to work on it. • William Dickson was head of his motion picture department

30. Edison • 1890 Edison assigns William Heise to work with Dickson. • Heise and Dickson begin wrapped sheets of coated celluloid around cylinders and start taking bigger photos.

31. Monkeyshines • First film shot in the U.S. • Made to test the original Kinetography format on sheet film. • Shot by Dickson and Heise.

32. Edison • 1891 Dickson and Heise build camera that uses perforated celluloid ¾ inch wide. Film ran horizontally through the camera. • Dickson Greetingwas the first film shot using perforated celluloid.

33. Edison • 1891 Edison applies for first camera and viewer patents. • 1892 Dickson and Heise build camera that runs vertically. • Oct 1892 Kinetograph weighs hundreds of pounds. • 1893 begin using this camera to make 35 mm films.

34. Early Edison Co. Films • Blacksmithing Scene • Early Edison films • The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (A RECREATION) • Annie Oakley

35. Edison • 1893 Black Maria film Studio

36. Lumiere Brothers • August and Louis Lumiere • Started dabbling with Kinetoscope and Kinetograph and created their own camera

37. Lumiere Brothers • 1895 shot their first film. • Dec 28, 1895 in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris. First movie theatre to paying audience. • Workers Leaving the Factory • The Arrival of a Train at La Ciota

38. Lumiere Brothers • They established the exposure rate of 16 fps which became the standard for silent movies. • Edison was using 40fps for Kinetoscope but soon adopted their speed. • The name of the Lumiere Brothers’ invention the Cinematographe.

39. Some Lumiere Brothers’ Films • The Gardener and The Little Scamp • Feeding the Baby

40. George Melies • Was a magician • Lumiere Brothers – realism • Melies anti-realism • The Conjuror

41. Melies • The Hilarious Posters • A Trip to the Moon • Between 1896 and 1913, he made 500 films. • “The Father of Special Effects” • D.W. Griffith said“I owe everything to him.” http://www.moma.org/images/collection/FullSizes/Melies_TripMoon_largest.jpg