A Concise History of the Origins of Cinema (Revised Narration)

You can download the narration for free at: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Chris_J_Mitchell_A_Concise_History_of_the_Origins_?id=o7UnAwAAQBAJ

This documentary concisely covers the vastly complex history of the origins of Cinema. From the very first zoetropes and magic lanterns to the very first motion capture film cameras. Covering the key individuals involved in the creation of cinema, such as, Albertus Magnus, Eadweard Muybridge, Louis Le Prince and the Lumiere Brothers. Any film fan or anyone with an interest in the history of cinema will hopefully find this both interesting and enlightening.

Note: The narration was re-recorded as some people have commented that the audio is too quiet in this video. In the new narration I have also made an addition at 12:50, inserting a part about Louis Le Prince. Also at 18:05 I have made some minor amendments to the Georges Melies section. Please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBahe2_sZk0

It is the first documentary I have ever made. Any questions please ask.

Note: The narration was re-recorded as some people have commented that the audio in the original version was too quite. In the new narration I have also made an addition at 12:50, inserting a part about Louis Le Prince. Also at 18:05 I have made some minor amendments to the Georges Melies section.

Please see the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEf-hjQrLTo about Louis Le Prince. This also references Friese Green.

- Carl Jung is quoted as saying,

"The cinema,
like the detective story,

makes it possible
to experience without danger,

or the excitement,

passion, and desirousness
which must be repressed

in a humanitarian
ordering of life."

Since its inception
in the late 19th century,

cinema has become one
of the most popular

and inspiring forms
of entertainment,

art, education,
and propaganda.

The birth of cinema is one
of many interconnecting events

and inventions around the world,
born out of an array technology

revolving around machinery,
photography, optical illusion,

and a human love to be
entertained and inspired.

[ music ]

- One of the marvels of cinema

is that no one country
can claim its paternity,

and it is
a worldwide endeavor,

encompassing many different
people from around the globe.

It was in 1824, in England,

that Peter Mark Roget first
came up with an explanation

for how moving images create
the illusion of motion.

Although later proven
to be incorrect,

this principle is known
as a persistence of vision.

This, simply defined,
is when a series of pictures,

or frames, are played or
presented at a rate fast enough

to trick the human mind

into thinking it is viewing
a moving image.

The effect of the persistence
of vision,

the writer David
Parkinson notes,

was defined in 1824
by Peter Mark Roget

as the ability of the retina
to retain an image

of an object from
1/20th to 1/5th of a second

after its removal
from the field of vision.

However, it has since been shown
that film seems to move

because the brain, and not
the eye, is accepting stimuli

that it is incapable
of perceiving as separate.

The brain has a perception
threshold

below which images exposed
to it will appear as continuous.

And film's speed of 24
frames per second

is below that threshold,

thus making cinema, itself,
a strange art form

for it is primarily an illusion.

It is a mystery
as to when it was first noticed

that putting images next
to each other

and viewing them
in quick succession

created the illusion
of a moving image.

Around A.D. 180, the Chinese
inventor Ding Huan,

of which no known
picture exists,

is credited
with inventing a device

to utilize its effect
for entertainment.

This invention is called
the zoetrope.

A zoetrope is basically
a cylinder

with various slits in it.

A sequence of pictures
that link to each other

are drawn or placed inside
the cylinder,

and through the slits you can
view inside the illusion

of motion when
the cylinder is spun.

This principle laid the ground
work for later developments

in using photographic images
to create motion images,

or to give it its technical
term: cinematography.

Motion images are one part

of the founding principles
of cinema,

but key to its development
was the projection

of images and shapes.

The origins
of light-projected images

date back to the puppets
of China, India, and Java.

It was not until around
the 17th century

that light-projected imagery
would start to become popular

in Europe in North America.

And it was a magic lantern that
captivated people's attention.

The magic lantern was used
as a form of entertainment,

starting as early
as the 15th century,

and its first
incarnation may even

date back as far as
the time of King Solomon.

Its precise origins
are a mystery

and no original inventor
is known of.

The magic lantern itself
is simply a lantern,

which its light source,
usually created by a wick,

a candle, is used to project
a single slide or shape

on to a wall or flat surface.
The magic lantern relates

directly to the modern
day slide projector

and only contributed in part
to the development of cinema,

albeit an important one.

Various enhancements of
this technology included using

a magic lantern
to project motion images

from a zoetrope that's
building the ground work

for cinematic film projection.

It was developments
in light-projected

entertainment technology

that were to be used
in the newly developing

science of photography

to establish what we know
as cinematography.

The history of photography is
also one of complex inventions

and discoveries around
the world.

The very first developments
in photography

and optics originated thousands
of years ago.

Aristotle wrote and developed
ideas of how human vision works

and studied rays of light.

He used a pinhole camera,
or camera obscura,

so he could study light rays.

Aristotle was one
of the first people known

to study light using
a camera obscura,

although its invention has not
been accredited

to one single person,

and its original development
remains a mystery.

The camera obscura is basically
a box with a small pinhole

that allows a thin ray
of light into the box.

This ray of light can
be viewed as an image

if the camera obscura
is adapted to pick up

the reflection using a mirror
or shiny surface.

Ibn Al-Haytham, who lived
965 A.D. to 1040 A.D.,

an Arab scholar
who was born in Iraq,

further developed
the camera obscura,

and noted that a single
ray of light

that passed through the hole
also carried the image reflected

from wherever the light
was coming from,

and in this sense
that light carries information.

This seemingly simple discovery
was a revolutionary one

in the development in the
history of how vision works.

And it is a principle that paved
the way for the capturing

of photographic images
for use in the pinhole camera.

Initially, the camera
obscura was used

as a sketching aid by artists.

And it wasn't until
around the 1820s

and the development
of chemical photography,

that fixing the image
became a reality,

and photography took
its first steps

into the recognizable form
that it is today.

As far back as the 13th century,

it was known that some
chemicals darkened

or changed color
when exposed to light.

Albertus Magnus,
in the 13th century,

was one of the first people

to note that silver nitrate
darkened when exposed to light.

In the 17th century,

Robert Boyle reported silver
chloride turned black

after exposure to air,

although this was,
in fact, sunlight.

In 1727 Johann Heinrich Schulze
discovered that certain liquids

could be prepared
that would change color

when exposed to light.
At the end of the 18th century

and the beginning
of the 19th century,

Thomas Wedgwood
conducted experiments

where he captured silhouettes

of objects using paper covered
with silver nitrate.

That's making him one
of the first ever

pioneers of photography.

It was not until the work of two
French inventors and scientists

that fixing a still image using
chemical means became a reality.

They were Nicephore Niepce
and Louis Daguerre.

Working in conjunction
they developed a process

to produce fixed images.

Unfortunately,
Nicephore Niepce died

before the work was completed.

But by 1839, Daguerre had
perfected the process

and it was announced at
the French Academy of Sciences.

This process was
called daguerreotype

and produced some of the very
first photographic images.

This image taken in 1838,
or early 1839,

was one of the first
photos taken using

the daguerreotype process.

Its exposure time was
about 10 minutes,

meaning a man standing still
having his shoes cleaned

was the only person
captured in the photo.

Daguerreotype type images
were produced directly

onto a mirror polished silver
plate bearing a coating

of silver halide particles
deposited by iodine vapor.

But the images that were
produced were very delicate

and could be destroyed by even
the slightest handling.

In the year of 1839,

an English inventor
called William Fox Talbot

had been working
on his own type

of chemical photographic
process.

This process called the calotype
process was to greatly advance

a practical application
of photography.

The calotype process created
the method

of negative positive
photographic images,

and this is a precursor
to most photography processes

of the 19th, 20th,
and 21st centuries,

making William Talbot
a very important figure

in the history of photography
and cinema.

The calotype process
also allowed for photos

to be developed on paper;

that's allowing photography
to be open to the masses.

And the same photo could be
produced again and again

using the negative image.

In 1849, in France,

Joseph Plateau was one
of the first

to suggest using a device called
the phenakistoscope

to project photos.

This device, developed in 1839,
was similar to the zoetrope

but more advanced.

Later, in 1877, a device called
the praxinoscope

was created
by Charles-Emile Reynaud.

This was another technological
advancement from the zoetrope,

and in 1889, he created
the Theatre Optique

using the praxinoscope
not only to rotate images

but also, using
an adapted magic lantern,

he projected these images
on to a screen.

But the static photos
used at the time

in such devices proved
to be little better

than pictures in a way of
recording action simultaneously

as it occurred was needed.

Two great innovators were
to work in this field

and develop a process
of series photography allowing

the capturing of multiple images
in chronological order.

They were Etienne-Jules Marey
and Eadweard Muybridge.

Eadweard Muybridge
is most famous

for his sequence of photos
of a horse race,

proving that a horse does
lift all hooves

off the ground when it gallops.

This work was commissioned
for a bet

by the governor of California,
Leland Stanford.

Muybridge proved
the governor correct in 1879

by using film that
had fast exposure time

in a lineup of 12 cameras,

all taking single shots
in quick succession

following the motion
of the horse.

Muybridge then went
on to develop the zoopraxiscope,

which cast onto a screen

the drawings made
of his photographs.

Although this was projection,

it was a big
step towards it.

In 1882, Etienne-Jules
Marey adapted a device

called the photographic revolver
to take a series of photos.

At first, a revolving
plate was used to record

a dozen instantaneous images
in the course of one second.

After various experimentations
and adaptations,

Marey eventually turned
to celluloid film developed

by the Eastman Kodak Company

to produce continuous
strips of images.

Marey went on to produce
numerous photo sequences,

and, although he did try,
he was not able to develop

a projection device
for moving photographic images.

It was a French inventor
by the name of Louis Le Prince

who is recognized to have
recorded the first ever

motion captured
sequences in 1888.

The first short sequences
of moving images ever filmed

were the "Roundhay Garden Scene"

and the Leeds Bridge scene,

These filmed scenes
are recognized

as the first ever motion capture
cinematography sequences.

However, it will forever
remain a mystery

as to the success Le Prince
may have gone to achieve

and what happened to him
in 1890.

For in 1890,
after seeing his brother,

he boarded a train in Dijon
that was heading for Paris

where he would meet with friends
and then go on to America,

where he was planning to patent
his single lens camera.

But he never made it to Paris,

and his luggage, including
his camera, was never found.

After extensive searches
by the French police,

Scotland Yard,
and Le Prince's family,

not a solid clue

to his disappearance
was ever discovered.

There remains till this day
a large amount of speculation

about Le Prince's disappearance.

It is unlikely we will ever know
what happened to Le Prince,

but above all else, he should be
remembered for a contribution

he made towards cinema.

At about the same time,
Thomas Alva Edison

was also developing motion
capture cinematography.

Edison was to fund
his head engineer

William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson

in the development of a photo
sequence capture camera.

Dickson, developing
and adapting elements

from all other motion capturing
devices and knowledge,

developed a film camera called
the Kinetograph in 1890.

A year later, developed
he developed the Kinetoscope,

a large device to view
the motion captured images.

Edison also set up the first
ever movie studio

in the early 1890s,

where various but limited
footage was shot

including the Rice-Irwin kiss,

and the "Fred Ott's Sneeze."

These short movies were limited
to the technology at the time,

with most being unedited
lengths of celluloid

no longer than the strips
of celluloid themselves.

The Kinetoscope was not
a projection device though.

And Edison unwisely disregarded
the possibilities of projection,

and concentrated on peep shows,
thinking they would be just

another whim in
a novelty-hungry age.

During the same period,
two French brothers

were working on their own film
capturing and projection device.

This device, the cinematograph,

was to bring about the dawn
of modern cinema,

and it was the Lumiere brothers
who were the inventors.

It was in 1895,
on the 28th of December,

that one of the most famous
film screenings

in film history took place.

It was held at
the Grand Cafe in Paris,

and customers paid one franc

for the screening
of 10 short Lumiere films.

The screening lasted
for about 25 minutes.

The films included,
amongst others,

"Workers Leaving
the Lumiere Factory"

in Cordeliers' Square in Lyon.

What the Lumiere brothers had
achieved using the combination

and development
of previous technology

was a workable way of
combining the Kinetoscope,

or viewing device,
with a magic lantern,

thus projecting a sequence
of photos to create the illusion

of a moving image,
or as it is also known:

cinematography.

It must be mentioned
that the Lumiere brothers

had done screenings before using
their projection device,

but this is the date
that has gone down in history

and is one
of the first screenings

to charge an entrance fee,

one of the foundations
of modern cinema.

The Lumieres also should be
celebrated for they stand high

in the rank of film innovators
in history,

along with the assistance
of the inventor Jules Carpentier

at their photographic firm,
they invented the cinematograph,

a three-in-one device
that could film, print,

and project images.

It was hand-crankable,
portable,

and soon after its invention,

it was being used
around the world.

Interestingly,
the Lumiere brothers believed

that the cinema of
film projection

will be a short-lived
form of entertainment,

and audiences would soon
become bored of the novelty

and not to wish to pay
for motion images

that they could see
with their own eyes free.

Louis Lumiere is famously
quoted as saying,

"The cinema is an invention
without a future."

The audiences had other ideas

and loved the new form
of entertainment,

constantly creating
a demand for cinema.

As technology of cinema
took film advanced,

so could the creative output
using the new medium.

One of the forebearers
to take advantage

and develop the creative aspects

of cinematography
was Georges Melies.

He is considered by some to be

the father of the
narrative film,

and whom D.W. Griffith

is quoted as saying,
"I owe him everything."

Melies made over 500 films
from 1896 to 1906.

He was one of the first people

to introduce cutting
and chronological editing,

as we see in the movies today.

It was also at this time
the public demand

for the movies was increasingly
and unexpectedly growing.

Around the same time

that Melies was making
his first short films,

Edwin S. Porter, in 1903,
working for Edison,

made the "Life of
an American Fireman,"

which displayed new visual
story telling techniques

and incorporated stock footage
with Porter's own photography.

It acted as a major precursor
to Porter's most famous film,

"The Great Train Robbery,"
also made in 1903.

This had a running time
of 12 minutes

and is considered a milestone
in narrative filmmaking,

and one of the first films
to tell a story,

albeit a simple one.

The first ever device developed
to record sound

before the phonograph was called
the phonautograph.

This was invented in 1857
by Edouard-Leon Scott in France.

This device transcribed
soundwaves onto a visual medium.

The first medium of which was
a lampblackened glass plate,

but this device had no means
of playing the recordings back.

A fascinating insight into this
period of sound recording

was that it was not
realized at the time

that the waveform transcribed

by the phonautograph was
a recording of the soundwave

that only needed
a playback mechanism

to replicate the sound.

In 1895, Thomas Edison
introduced the Kinetephone,

which marks the first time sound
was added to cinematography.

The Kinetephone was not
a projection device,

and sound was added
using a device called

a cylinder phonograph that was
added to the Kinetescope

to produce the Kinetephone.

It was in 1899 that
a sound system called

Cinemacrophonographe,

or Phonorama,
was exhibited in Paris.

This device required headphones
to hear the sound

which was similar
to the Kinetephone.

It was not until Clement Maurice
and Henri Lioret,

in France, developed
the Phono-Cinema-Theatre

that allowed the projection
of sound in theatres.

This system was first exhibited
at the Paris Exposition in 1900,

and is considered
the first public projection

of both recorded sound
and motion image.

Meanwhile, silent
film production was starting

to gain pace around the world,

and what is considered the first
feature length film

was made in 1906 by Charles Tait
in Australia.

It was called
"The Ned Kelly Gang."

At 70 minutes long it had
an unprecedented running time

and only made in a budget
of around $2,250,

although the complete film
has since been lost,

with only around 12 minutes
running time left in existence.

As film technology advanced,

so did the creative and
storytelling possibilities.

It was in the first part
of the 20th century

that one of the first
famous film directors

came to prominence.

His name was D.W. Griffith,

and he's considered one of
the fathers of modern cinema.

It was in 1908 that
a young D.W. Griffith

made his first movie,

"The Adventures
of Dollie."

Still in the period of
silent film production,

its narrative structure and
editing were to set the way

with Griffith's coming skill
with filmmaking.

He was to develop filmic
techniques and codes

that brought in-depth narrative
storytelling to cinema.

He directed around 450 films
and was one of the most

successful directors
of his time.

One of his most notable films,
"Birth of a Nation,"

made in 1915 and based on Thomas

Dixon's American
Civil War movies,

was racist and showed
a lack of integrity

in portray African-Americans.

He would respond to criticism
about this film

by making "Intolerance,"
showed in 1916.

This movie used some of the
biggest film sets and crew sizes

ever at that time.

The story portrayed 2,500 years
of history and showed how truth

and justice are threatened
by hypocrisy and injustice.

Although audience reaction
was muted at best,

Griffith's career faulted
after 1916,

and in 1931, when a
film he made called

"The Struggle" was a failure,

he would endure a 17-year
exile from Hollywood,

never to return to his
once high status.

Griffith certainly was not
the only person developing

filmic codes and narratives,

and his work was in part
continuing on from others

such as Georges Melies
and Edwin S. Porter.

Whatever you may think
about Griffith,

his work showed cinema
technology had entered a truly

advanced form of storytelling
and narrative construction.

In Russia, at the beginning
of the 20th century,

not long after D.W. Griffith

was setting forth
his place in cinematic history,

the Russian director,
Sergei Eisenstein,

was developing his own
distinct form of cinema.

In the 1920s, Russian montage,
as it is known,

came to be a prominent
filmmaking style in Russia.

The basic concept of montage
relies heavily upon editing

and creating meaning through
the collaboration of shots

in a sequence and not
from a storyline.

For example, the three shots
that are shown here

are taken from Eisenstein's
"Battleship Potemkin."

They are played in sequence

to signify the meaning
of Soviet Russia

rising up against
the oppression of the czar.

The term "montage" literally
means putting together,

and for an over-simplified
example:

if you place a shot of an ear,

then the shot of a door next
to each other,

the meaning would be eavesdrop.
This is montage in a nutshell.

In 1925, Eisenstein made one
of his most famous films,

"Battleship Potemkin,"
a revolutionary portrait

of mutiny aboard a Russian
battleship

not long before
the Russian Revolution.

Although praised by critics,

Russian audiences were
indifferent to it

and much preferred entertaining
and emotionally engaging

Hollywood-style
continuity films.

Importantly, montage offered
another approach

to filmmaking other
than a continuity-based style,

and it also showed how far
the technology of cinema

had come in a little
more than 25 years.

The progress of sound recording
and playback for cinema

had been steadily
advancing,

although applying synchronized,

prerecorded sound to film had
encountered many problems

such as recording fidelity,
synchronizing sound to film,

and projecting sound
at a satisfactory level.

These problems were to be
overcome by the advance

of technology
and innovation.

In 1919, an American inventor
called Lee de Forest

developed one of the first
sound-on-film technologies

for commercial application.

In Forest's system,
which he called Phonofilm,

sound was photographically
recorded onto one side

of a strip of film to create
what was called a composite,

where simply two elements have
been composited together.

If the sound was synchronized
exactly to the film,

the playback would be perfect.

Another system developed
and used in the first part

of the 20th century was called
the Vitaphone.

The Vitaphone was
a disc-based system produced

by General Electric and
purchased by Warner Brothers.

The Vitaphone did not
print sound to film,

but on to 16 inch
phonograph records.

These records were then
played using Vitaphone systems

at theatres where the film they
were produced for was playing.

There were many problems
with the Vitaphone system

including synchronization
with the film,

being projected, and
the phonograph records

which could not be edited and
limited the corrective output

for films using
the Vitaphone system.

Taking into account numerous
technological improvements,

it would be sound on film

that would eventually become
the universal standard

for synchronized sound
in cinema.

It was in 1927
that one of the first movies

ever produced contained
synchronized dialogue

sequences was released
to the movie going public.

This film was "The Jazz Singer"
and it used a Vitaphone system.

There had been other films

that had used synchronized
sound and music,

such as "Don Juan"
released in 1926,

that had a musical score played
by the New York Philharmonic.

"The Jazz Singer"
was the first to have dialogue

which accounted
for about 25 percent

of the soundtrack in the movie.

The movie heralded the coming
of the so-called talkies

and signaled the start
of the end for silent films

where talkies were ultimately
more popular

and technologically advanced.

The movie itself is based
on a stage play

by Samson Raphaelson.

It has a culturally
complex storyline,

with a young Jewish man trying
to make it as a jazz singer

against the wishes
of his father.

It was a signifier
of the times

that so-called blackface
makeup was used by Al Jolson,

who plays the lead role.
This was naively racist at best,

and was used to take on
the appearance of an archetype

of African-Americans,

although there is
the assimilation

of African-Americans and Jews

experiencing similar
identities as outsiders,

and this is something that is
put across in the film.

At this point,
cinema had come a long way

bringing together
motion image and sound

with many brilliant innovations,

inventions, passion,
and commitment,

creating one of the most unique

and inspiring art forms
and entertainment

that has ever been produced
in the history of the world,

establishing itself
as a powerful element

in modern societies.

[ music ]