Survey 6: Recording History in Motion

Essentially all motion picture depicts the illusion of motion by displaying multiple pictures that appear in rapid succession.

The foundation of motion picture technology can be brought back to Eadweard Muybridge’s zoetrope & zoogyroscope, which both showed the illusion of a horse in motion by spinning multiple pictures. These pictures were taken by setting up multiple cameras that would be triggered one after the other in rapid succession by a tripwire set off by the horse running by.

Kinetograph & Kinetoscope

Working in Thomas Edison’s lab, William K. L. Dickson developed a tool that would allow multiple pictures to be taken in rapid succession without needing multiple cameras; the kinetograph. The kinetograph used rapid intermittent (stop & go) film movement to take motion pictures.

To show the movies shot on the kinetograph, they also developed the kinetoscope. The kinetoscope was an early motion picture exhibition device that allowed one viewer at a time to watch the movie through a peephole at the top of the device.

Kinetoscopes were quite successful and many ‘kinetoscope parlours’ opened all over America. Kinetoscope parlours were a place people could go to view the short films. These could almost be considered the very first precursor to movie theatres.

Left: a man watching a film through the peephole of a kinetoscope
Right: the inner workings of the kinetoscope

As much as the kinetograph/kinetoscope was revolutionary in the history of film, it had quite a few drawbacks. Firstly, it was too big and heavy to move, so everything had to be shot inside a studio. Second, it required a huge amount of light, which limited the time of day to shoot. Editing was not possible, so every movie was one take. Finally, only one person was able to view the films at a time, which meant people often had to wait in line a while to view the film.

The Lumière Brothers & The Cinématographe

The next development in motion pictures was developed by Auguste and Louis Lumière. The cinématographe, meaning “writing with movement,” was able to make and project motion picture. The cinématographe was better than the kinetograph in multiple ways: it was compact and light enough to carry, required no electricity, and most importantly, projected film.

On December 28th, 1895, The Lumière Brothers had a screening of 10 short films in Paris. This event was a hit and popularized cinema. The genre of movies the brothers produced was named “actualités” which means ‘commonplace occurrences’. Films of people leaving a factory or off-boarding a train, a baby having lunch, etc.

“Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” showed on December 28th, 1895 at the Lumière Brother film screening in Paris.

Although nowadays we would get bored quite quickly with this genre, these films of everyday occurrences were very successful at the time. The novelty eventually wore off and people wanted to see more. This is when storylines had to come into motion pictures.

George Méliès

George Méliès was a magician by trade who made paramount developments in film editing and effects. His movies are considered to be the first to contain stories as well as science fiction. He came up with multiple editing techniques known as ‘in-camera effects’ including double exposure, split-screen, and matting. His most successful and well known to this day film was “A Trip To The Moon” which ran a whopping 14 minutes long (a long movie for the time).