The History of Motion Pictures

Motion pictures have been around since the first one was released in 1878. They have gone through many drastic changes that have improved movie experiences throughout the years. Movies went from black and white to color, from no sound to being able to feel the movie, and from basic graphics to intense computer-generated imagery. Time has played a huge factor in the advancing field of motion pictures. The longer we have had to become comfortable with technology, the better movies have gotten!

The first ever movie was called The Horse in Motion. It was a groundbreaking black-and-white short film.
Using multiple cameras, they captured each shot and then placed all the images together to create a single motion picture. 

British American inventor, Eadweard Muybridge worked for Governor Leland Stanford. Muybridge was in charge of taking pictures of Stanford's horse by using a camera that could work quickly. They decided to set up a series of twelve cameras to do the trick. In October 1878, the Scientific American published this series of pictures with instructions to view through a Zoetrope. Muybridge decided to place these individual images on a rotating disk before projecting them onto a screen through a lantern creating the first motion picture. 

This first movie proved that creating these moving images was possible. A year after creating the first movie, Muybridge invented the Zoogyroscope which allowed him to present photos to an audience. During this same time, French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey invented the Chronophotographic gun that could record twelve photos a second. These two inventions are considered to be the basic concepts for projecting motion pictures. 

Shortly after in the 1880s, the first motion picture camera was invented. Louis Le Prince shot several short films on his invention. Some of these films include Man Walking Around The Corner, Roundhay Garden Scene, Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge, and Accordion Player. 

Thomas Edison and his assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson are often considered the inventors of the first motion picture camera. They worked to invent the Kinetograph in 1888. This camera imprinted around 50 feet of celluloid film at the rate of 40 frames per second. Shortly after in 1894, they created the Kinetoscope. This camera works more traditionally than we're used to by running on a continuous film loop with incandescent lighting. They opened up Kinetograph Parlors to the public so everyone could enjoy these film screenings. 

A Kintescope exhibition in Paris inspired the inventors of the next motion picture camera. In 1895, Louis and Auguste Lumiere introduced the Cinematograph. It ran 16 frames per second, was hand-cranked, and weighed only 20 pounds. A famous Lumiere film called Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory was the first film they created on this device. 

Movies created a new version of entertainment that changed people's lives. It became a popular past-time to attend a movie on the weekends or a fun date night idea. This source of entertainment influenced lives all over the world. By 1914, several national film industries were established. Some of the dominant industries were located in Russia, Europe, and Scandinavia. The more that people started to pay to see movies, the bigger the industry grew, and invested more money into production, distribution, and exhibition. 

It was a fantastic invention to change the way we see films and entertainment, however, had a huge impact on live shows. The movie industry hurt the theatre and actors who put on shows. Actors and actresses lost their jobs and theatres shut down. More people wanted to see go and experience a movie shown in a theater instead. Today, when we go to see a play it feels more authentic than watching a movie. This is because of how much movies have taken over the entertainment industry. 

Movies started off small and barely a few seconds long. Now we sit in a movie theater or on our couch for hours at a time. The evolution of movies is important to look at to understand how the entertainment industry has grown.