European Contributions
LUMIERE BROTHERS - Louis and Auguste
1) The Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste,
2) invented a projection system that helped make the cinema a commercially viable enterprise
internationally.
3)Their family company, Lumière Frères, based in Lyon, France, was the biggest European
manufacturer of photographic plates.
4) In 1894, a local Kinetoscope exhibitor asked them to produce short films that would be
cheaper than the ones sold by Edison.
5) Soon they had designed an elegant little camera, the Cinématographe,
which used 35mm film and an intermittent mechanism modeled on that of the sewing
machine.
6) The camera could serve as a printer when the positive copies were made.
7)Then, mounted in front of a magic lantern, it formed part of the projector as well.
8) One important decision the Lumières made was to shoot their films at sixteen frames per
second (rather than the forty-six frames per second used by Edison);
9)this rate became the most commonly used international film speed for about twenty years.
10) The first film made with this system was Workers Leaving the Factory, apparently shot in
March 1895.
11) It was shown in public at a meeting of the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie
Nationale in Paris on March 22.
12) Six further showings to scientific and commercial groups followed, including additional
films shot by Louis.
Workers Leaving the Factory (Auguste & Louie Lumière, 1895)
Click Here for first Lumiere Film
DECEMBER 28, 1895 - Exploiting the success
On December 28, 1895, one of the most famous events in film history took place.
1)The location was a room in the Grand Café in Paris.
2)In those days, cafés were gathering spots where people sipped coffee, read newspapers, and
were entertained by singers and other performers.
3)That evening, fashionable patrons paid a franc to see a twenty-five minute program of ten
films, about a minute each.
4)Among the films shown were a close view of Auguste Lumière and his wife feeding their
baby, a staged comic scene of a boy stepping on a hose to cause a puzzled gardener to squirt
himself (later named L’arroseur arrosé, or “The Waterer Watered”), and a shot of the sea.
5)Although the first shows did moderate business,
6) within weeks the Lumières were offering twenty shows a day,
7) with long lines of spectators waiting to get in.
8)They moved quickly to exploit this success,
sending representatives all over the world to show films and make more of them.
Baby's Meal (Auguste & Louie , 1895)
Click Here for clip of Baby's Meal
Ian Christie
1) Film scholar Ian Christie gives an interesting lecture on the first film exhibitions.
2) The reception of moving pictures in 1894-96 has been much mythologised.
3)Were spectators really frightened of an approaching train?
4) Did they imagine seeing their departed relatives reanimated on screen?
5) How much attention was actually paid to this new phenomenon among so many
contemporary novelties and wonders?
6) Moving pictures may not have been the innovation once claimed, but within a
decade few could doubt that they had become a major force in changing the
Edwardian world.
What Really Happened at the First Moving Picture Shows (Gresham College, 2018) Click Here for Ian Christie lecture 49:47 minutes
Describes Britain's film past and the Eidophusikon
Duration of Magic Lantern Shows - end of 18th beginning of 19th - accompanied by speech and music. History goes back to 16th - 17th century. Continues to this day, The Magic Lantern Society in London.
Kinetoscope - wholesome, refined and suitable for ladies. Movie Theatres later were not suitable for women.
Cinematograph - demonstrated through 1895 - by Lumiere's
Bioscope - sept in Berlin demonstrated 1895 first in field
Robert Paul - developed his own camera and was going to do a projector
Salon Indien - recreated in an exhibition last year - extravagantly decorated room. Neither Lumiere brother were interested in showing it, their father was. After 1st show not attended until people brought friends - took off by word of mouth. Enormous success, 2,500 francs a day. 6-8 shows a day. ran until 1900. A lack of evolution - 30 second films.
Their first film, leaving the factory. Not casually shot, was choreographed. Version 3 - bicycle and dogs. First film they found suitable for showing to public. 50 second bits of celluloid for next many years.
George Melies - magician wants to buy them. Heard Robert Paul is willing to sell projectors after his presentation. Bought one of them from R.W. Paul and sawed off name and tried to pass it as here.
Paul offered a residency at the Alhambra in London. Grandest music halls in London in 1896 - projects from behind the curtain.
Suggested he do more entertaining.
A Soldier's Courtship (1896) Huge boost to program - when fiction enters the program otherwise live events or simply filmed.
Paul also filmed topical events - filmed The Prince's Derby (1896) one of his most celebrated films.
The Train - Vertical screening gave some depth - Cinema's founding myth - hammed up that they ran screaming from the auditorium - evidence?
Liquid, mobile and luminous - metal with smoke rising...appearance of vapor. Also the movement of the sea mesmerized audiences. Some had never seen the sea. Seeing things they never witnessed...i saw it at the movies - there it is for real.
Accompanist music - anything with a C motif - shot for the kinetoscope the sea...Thomas Edison put into his projected show on Broadway. British Sea subject.
Paul - later - "The appeal of the sea, just feet from your chair. A sea cave near England. He copyrighted this film. An artistic film, but the sea is the subject.
BBC mark of 100 years of Cinema - presented on Saturday on 8pm...Program called
Tales from the City. Terry Gilliam narrates. References this Documentary film clip
Theaters at first were known as dingy and disreputable places. People would come and go when they wanted. People would come in sick - where huge hats in front of you. Drink liquor. Unruly - the gloom had unlocked their inhibitions - popular with prostitutes. Man tried to kill himself at the same time as a man did on the screen. This was in England, in France they attracted the creme of society. Some woman changed it like in paris and usherettes, a foyer to meet their freinds. Just like paris. Madame Vasaieller -- opened them in Russia.
In 1908 a new type of cinema appeared...summarizes audiences and bx in 1890's
2) a parallel process of invention was going on in England.
3) The Edison Kinetoscope had premiered in London in October 1894,
and the parlor that displayed the machines did so well that its owners asked R. W. Paul,
a producer of photographic equipment, to make some extra machines for it.
4) For reasons that are still not clear, Edison had not patented the Kinetoscope outside the
United States, so Paul was free to sell copies to anyone who wanted them.
5) Since Edison would supply films only to exhibitors who had leased his own machines,
Paul also had to invent a camera and make films to go with his duplicate Kinetoscopes.
Paul and Birt Acres 1895
1)By March 1895, Paul and his partner, Birt Acres, had a functional camera,
which they based partly on the one Marey had made seven years earlier for analyzing
motion.
2)Acres shot thirteen films during the first half of the year, but the partnership broke up.
3) Paul went on improving the camera, aiming to serve the Kinetoscope market,
4) while Acres concentrated on creating a projector.
5) On January 14, 1896, Acres showed some of his films to the Royal Photographic Society.
6) Among those was Rough Sea at Dover, which became one of the most popular first films.
Rough Sea at Dover (Birt Acres, 1896)
Click Here for the film
No comments:
Post a Comment