FILM HISTORY THE BEGINNINGS

THREE WAYS TO LOOK AT FILM HISTORY

1 Art2 Business3 Technology

InventorsEarly film is a result of inventorsNot artist.

Photography

1816 - Nicephore Niepce made first photographic images.

1839 - Louis Daguerre created clear, sharp images on silver copperplate. Required 15 minutes exposure

time.

1841 - Only 3 minutes needed for exposure.

Eadweard

Muyb

ridge

1872 - Set up 12 cameras along a track, tied strings to the shutters which were tripped as the horse ran down the track.

Created movement with photography.

Etienn

e-Jules M

arey

1882 Invents

“photographic gun.”

Lens in the muzzle, paper in the chamber.

Pull trigger and have 12 rapid exposures.

Eventually 100 exposures

KIN

ETO

SCOPE

October 1889 Dickson shows Edison projection with sound.

Quality is poor. Edison opts for

silent, individual showings of films.

Invents Kinetoscope.

Projection

Projection was difficult problem To solve . Its roots go back as far As 1646.

Magic Lantern

1646 Father Athanasius kircher made drawings of a box that could reproduce an image through a lens.Ancestor of present day slide projectors.

18th Century

Showman travel across Europe

Showing magic lantern shows.

Used drawn images in the beginning.

Eventually used photograph.

19TH CENTURY

Photo plays drew viewers to story just as film does today.

Combination of magic Lentern shows , live actors , and photography.

Some lasted up to 2 hours and told melodramatic stories.

Prove the potential of projected film.

Projection Problems

Projector needs a powerful lightSource to make image clear.

Film has to run smoothly past this light source without tearing.

History of French cinema

France can, with some justification, claim to have invented the whole concept of cinema. Film historians call 

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the 50-second film by the Lumière brothers first screened in 1895, the birth of the medium.

Lumiere Brothers

1894Tinker with

Edison’s Kinetoscope.

Designed their own machine within a year.

Auguste and Louis

Cinematographe

Machine shot the pictures, printed them, and projected them.

The camera was portable.

A hand crank provided the power.

December 28, 1895First theater opens

to the paying public.Basement of a Paris

café.Lumieres’ show:

Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory.

Arrival at Lyon.A Baby’s Meal.

» The first audience to experience a moving film did so in 1895. The film, by

the“Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)”

» Their film “Train Entering the Gare de Ciotat (1895)” caused people to faint with fear as the train loomed from the screen into the theatre auditorium.

» These films did not carry a story or narrative - they merely showed a moving image on the screen.

» Lumiere brothers was called

Georges Méliès

But the best-known early pioneer, who made films with some kind of cherishable narrative value, was Georges Méliès, whose 1902 short A Trip to the Moon is generally heralded as the first science-fiction film, and a landmark in cinematic special effects. Meanwhile, Alice Guy-Blaché, Léon Gaumont's one-time secretary, is largely forgotten now, but with films such as L'enfant de la barricade trails the status of being the first female film-maker.

Contribution of Melies

Melies Directed 531 Films between 1896 to 1913

Masterpieces

A Trip to the Moon (1902)

The Impossible Voyage (1904)

SILENT ERA . MOVIES WITHOUT SOUNDThe earliest American films, which appeared around 1895, were primarily aworking-class pastime. Because they told stories without words, they appealed to the large, mostly illiterate immigrant population in the United States. After 1900, film became a more middle-class phenomenon, as filmmakers exploited film’s storytelling potential by adapting bourgeois novels (which incorporated middle-class values) for the screen.Until 1914, the major national film industries resided in Italy, France, and the United States. However, World War I devastated the Italian and French film industries, allowing American producers to gain the upper hand on the global market. The major American production companies pooled their film technology patents and used their patent leverage to impose block booking on exhibitors (movie theater owners), which forced exhibitors to buy lower-quality product along with high-quality product.

"Silent Era" (1895–1929)

A Silent Film is a “Film” with no synchronized recorded sound.

Intertitles• Intertitles were used to narrate story points

Elements (1894 – 1929)

• The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" (1894–1929)

"Silent Era" (1895–1929)

Tinting

Live music & Sound

Acting Techniques

• From the beginning, music was recognized as essential

•Silent Film Actors emphasized body language & facial expression

• A shade of a color, especially used for showing different moods

Hobart Bosworth 1914

Hobart Bosworth, a silent screen actor from

Ohio, started a production company in Los Angeles in order to make Jack London stories into films. Jack London even cameod as a sailor in the first picture, “The Sea Wolf” (1913). Bosworth finished building the Occidental Studios lot in July.Charlie Chaplin makes his first movie, “Making a Living,” filmed on 35 mm in Los Angeles under the auspicous banner of the Keystone Pictures Studio, syndicate of the famousKeystone

Cops.

French cinema in the silent era

The towering achievement of French cinema in the silent era was undoubtedly Abel Gance's six-hour biopic of Napoleon (1927), which like many large-scale productions of the time, has had a choppy subsequent history.

Cecil Hepworth

Cecil Milton Hepworth (19 March 1874 – 9 February 1953) was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was among the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920s at his Walton Studios. In 1923 his company went into receivership.“

“Vivaphone”By 1910, Hepworth was also the inventor of Vivaphone, an early sound on disk system for adding sound to motion pictures. The device used phonograph records to record and play back the sound. Hepworth's vivaphone was distributed in Britain and also in the United States and Canada

poetic realism

The early sound years saw an explosion of talent. Playwright Marcel Pagnol put adaptations of his celebrated Marseilles plays into production – first Marius (1931), then Fanny (1932), and finally César (1936), which he directed himself. René Clair made the musical, Under the Roofs of Paris (1930). But the period really belonged to the pioneers of "poetic realism"

EUOROPE FILM HISTORY 1936

 Vigo, Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier and Marcel Carné. Masterpieces abounded in the interwar period: Vigo's scabrous satire Zero de Conduite(1933) was followed by the lyrical L'Atalante (1934). Tragically, it was his last film, as he succumbed to tuberculosis the same year, aged just 29. Renoir's career took off withBoudu Saved from Drowning (1932), and thereafter produced a string of brilliant films up to the outbreak of the second world war: A Day in the Country (1936),

The Mature Early Film Industry in Europe

PATHÉMost powerful film company after the decline of Lumière & Méliès.

Founded by Leon Gaumont in 1898, Pathé's only serious rival before the 1920s

Directed a very popular detective serial called Fantômas

Italy

• Ambrosio was the first & Largest Company (1905)• Most substantial rival was “Cines” in Rome• (The Fall of Troy) created Worldwide Impression

Northern Europe

• The Nordisk company was set up in Denmark in 1906 by Ole Olsen

The Mature Early Film Industry in Europe

Sweden

• Swedish Film Industry was smaller than Danish Industry

• Charles Magnusson started fiction film production in 1909

Russia

• Russia began its film industry in 1908 with Pathé

The Mature Early Film Industry in Europe

Germany

• Oskar Messter had been involved in film-making from 1896

• Paul Davidson set up Production Company named “Projektions-AG "Union“ (PAGU)”

The Mature Early Film Industry in Europe

Influence of WW-I

France

• Film Production Personnel became the part of General Military Mobilization

• Biggest Companies retired from production

Italy

• Italian film production held up during the war

• Production moved into subject matter called “Diva Films”

Denmark & Sweden

Influence of WW-I

• Danish Production led to a very sharp decline during the War

• Nordisk distribution and cinema chain was expropriated by the German government

• Swedish production was more in balance & Films were superior than Denmark’s

Influence of WW-I

Germany

• German film industry was seriously weakened by the War

• Joe May made a series of thrillers and adventure films through the war years

Russia

• Russian film industry was not harmed by the war because of its large local market

End of Edison Age

The movie makers also wanted to move far away and escape the control of Thomas Edison, the patent holder for movie making technologies at that time, and also to be as far away as possible fromthe roving eyes of the newly formed government agency of the IRS, The Internal Revenue Service, the tax collector in the USA.Once Hollywood became the center of the film industry in the US, a system had to be established which introduces us to the studio system. The system was first and foremost designed to ensure the cost and quality of the movies being produced.There was a clear division of labor from the producer, to the screenwriter to the actors and director. All screenplays had to be approved by the producer and established a kind of guideline and draft of what the end product will be. Soon MGM, Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, and Warner Bros. were leading the film industry in a well-defined system. Smaller studios like Universal Studios, United Artists, and Columbia Pictures were also rising to take their share of the evolving industry. The age of Edison was coming to an end, and a new entrepreneur with high expectation, Adolf Zukor, took control of Paramount Pictures and tried to lead the studio system.

ESTAB

LISHM

ENT

OF H

OLLY

WO

OD

When one hears the word’ Hollywood’, the first thing that pops in mind is m. Hollywood was established in 1853, with a single adobe hut on land outside Los Angeles, California.

1886Landowners Harvey & Daeida Henderson Wilcox name their ranch Hollywood after Daeida met a woman in Ohio whose country house was called “Hollywood” for the English holly and woods.

WHY HOLLYWOOD ESTABLISHED INL. A ?

It all started with a few independent studios that ventured as far away as possible from “the trust”, mainly Thomas Edison and his lawsuits, and so they headed to L.A. to distribute, produce, and exhibit their movies.

The fact that Los Angeles was far away from New York helped make it the home for independent film studios. Even though there was still a presence of the major film studios in Los Angeles, it was not till after independent film studios realization of the positive aspects about L.A.’s location that Hollywood was finally established

TH

E FO

UR

MA

JOR

POSIT

IVE

A

SPECT

S

The four major positive aspects were basically the fact that ….

L.A. was sunny all year long.

The property was inexpensive.

It was an open shop town,

The variety of locations and geography.

Rival of Europe film Industry

Having a broad based US culture, there was a sudden wide appeal and people all over the world became suddenly interested in Hollywood movies. As for European cinema, while they were still in competition, the effects of WWI destroyed the European film industries. It was mainly due to the conversion to propaganda films. Therefore, while Europe was suffering from the war trying to focus on propaganda instead of the film industry, Hollywood was growing with a strong system and eventually became the leading film industry of the world. European cinema tried to make a comeback but was never able to achieve the heights of the Hollywood system, and to this day, Europe has failed to recover from the effects of WWI on their film industries placing Hollywood ahead of their time.

Short Background of Hollywood

1902The Electric Theater, the first movie theater built for that purpose , by Thomas Lincoln Tally in downtown Los Angeles. Admission was 10 cents for a one-reel movie.

1911The first motion picture studio in Hollywood was built by the Nestor Motion Picture Company on Sunset and Gower corner. Nestor Studios merged one year later with Universal Film Company.

1912Thomas Lincoln Tally shows the first color movie at the Electric Theater in Hollywood Universal Studios founded. Mack Sennett opens the Keystone Film Co.

Early History of Hollywood films

During the early history of Hollywood films, movies were produced quickly and cheaply, and the actors had to perform most of their own stunts.

Films could be shot anywhere, regardless of noice, since they were silent, and they were.

The early Hollywood history of movie making were full of fake car accidents, bank robberies in front of cameras, gun battles, and lots of dare devil

stunts performed daily in the streets of Hollywood.

HO

LLY

WO

OD

SIG

N

1923To publicize a new housing development, a sign is erected for Hollywood land. The -land was taken off in 1949.

The history of the Hollywood sign began when a real estate developer put up a large electric sign with letters 50 feet high, to advertise his newly built homes in the Hollywood Hills. In those days the sign spelled “Hollywoodland”, the name of the development.

The sign eventually fell into disrepair, but it was rescued by the Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce and restored without the “land”. Now it’s simply spelled Hollywood.

Today the Hollywood sign is the best known symbol of the movie industry in the World.

1924Louis B. Mayer heads the new MGM Studios, a conglomeration of three Metro Pictures (founded 1916), Goldwyn Pictures (founded 1917), and the Louis B. Mayer Co. (founded 1918), all owned by Marcus Loew.

Hollywood Golden Age

The Hollywood 1930s and 1940sComprise golden age of Hollywood

Big MoneyStudio SystemStar systemSound and color

BIG MOVIE

Movies were an unprecdented mass medium during the 1930s and 1940s . During the war years an estimated 85-90 million people went out to see a movie a week (that’s over half of the U.S population at the time.)

The Studio System

The studio system allowed Hollywood to become an international powerhouse, both Financially and culturally:THE BIG STUDIOS

MGMParamount20th century FoxRKOWarner Brther

First Animated Film

1937Disney releases “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” – the first animated feature – using the new Three-Strip Technicolor process.

THE ADVENT OF SOUND AND COLOR

Talkies emerged as a simple novelty initially. They were often poor quality production, and the introduction of sound dialogue hampered the flexibility of what had been an almost exclusively visual medium.

Color tinting had been used in film almost from the start ,but the marriage of movies and color was not consummated until the mid 1930s

Hollywood walk of fame

The Hollywood Walk of Fame comprises more than 2,500 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California. The stars are permanent public monuments to achievement in the entertainment industry, bearing the names of a mix of actors, musicians, directors, producers, musical and theatrical groups, fictional characters, and others. The Walk of Fame is administered by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and maintained by the self-financing Hollywood Historic Trust. It is a popular tourist destination, with a reported 10 million visitors in 2003.

IN 1960Joanne Woodward becomes the first actress to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1986 Ted Turner buys the MGM movie library for 1 billion dollars and begins to colorize classic black and white movies and air them on his cable network.

Hollywood Biggest blockbuster

1998“Titanic” beomes the most expensive film ever made at 200 million dollars and recieves 14 Oscar Nominations and 11 wins.

Hollywood the most powerful film industryWe always talk about technology and advancements in technology. But one field that is most benefited from the development of technology is film industry. Every year Billions of dollars are spend on technology by the producers to make their movies as effective as possible. Many movies come with the technology that we can see in future and the possible development in the field.

Let’s see few movies which are based on the latest technology and hacking.TRANSFORMER:DIE HARD 4.0EAGLE EYETRON LegacyINCEPTIONAvatarWALL-E