Early Cinema

1. Early Cinema
1893 - 1903

2. Technological Advances
• Film: Rapid
succession of still
images.
• Need technology
to allow long
series of images
on a support
system.

3. Early Cameras
• 1839 patent Daguerreotype
• 1872 - Muybridge - uses 12
cameras in a 50 feet long
shed alongside the track of
the horse
• 1882/1888 – Etienne-Jules
Marey.
– Interested in animal
movement.
– 12 images on a revolving disc.
• 1889 Kodak introduces
celluloid.
• 1888 Marey introduced
intermittent motion
through use of Maltese
Cross gear on camera

4. Early Film Production
• Thomas Edison (1847- 1931)
• 1893 Edison Studios
– assistant W.K.L Dickson creates
camera.
– Kinetograph
• 9 May 1893: First public presentation
of motion pictures
– Brooklyn Institute of the Arts &
Sciences
• Characteristics of Edison films
– Illuminated by the sun, but shot
indoors
– Long shot (no close ups)
– 30-45 secs
– One long take (no editing)
– No camera movement
– No real plots/stories

5. Early Film Exhibition
• Exhibition
– Kinetoscope: individual
“peep show”
– Kinetosope parlors
• First, April 14, 1894, Holland
Brothers’ amusement arcade at
1155 Broadway in New York City.
– ten Kinetoscope peepshow machines
– twenty-five cents to view five machines
• Patents on motion picture
technology
– Motion Picture Patents
Company (aka, The Trust) l.
Kinetoscope parlor In San Francisco

6. Early Film Production
• August and Louis Lumière
– Projection system.
– “…did not invent cinema, (but) they largely
determined the specific form the new medium was
to take” (p. 401).
• Similarities with Edison films
– Sunlight.
– Long shot (no close-ups)
– No editing
– Short: 60-70 secs.
• Differences
– Scenes of everyday life
– Shot outdoors on location (using sunlight)
– No actors. Used real people in everyday situations
– Little or no camera movement.
• Exhibition
– Exhibited as fairground oddity.
• 28 December 1895 first public screening with
admission charged
– Edison’s Vitascope 1896

7. Introduction of Narrative
• Georges Méliès: Trip to the Moon (1902)
– Magician
– Used camera for “transformation.”
– Mise-en-scène
• Similarities with Edison & Lumiere films
– No editing within scenes
– Long shot
– Little camera movement.
– Exhibited as fairground oddity
• Differences from Edison & Lumiére film
– Actively told stories, with real plots.
– Fabricated sets.
– Actors. acrobats. magicians.
– Special effects (camera "tricks").
– Hand-coloring.

8. Introduction of Narrative
• Edwin S. Porter (1870-I941)
– touring projectionist turned exhibitor
– Great Train Robbery (1903).
• Differences from Méliés
– Begins to break scenes down into
individual shots
– Outdoor scenes-on location
– Primitive camera movement
– Primitive framing variation
– Close-ups-but only rarely
– Temporal overlap
• Burch: overlap, proximity, alterity
• Exhibition
– Nickelodeon – Pittsburg, Great Train
Robbery
– June 19, 1905
• 1904 – present: Narrative most
prominent type of filmmaking.

9. The nickelodeon
• Pittsburgh, Harry Davis, June
1905, 96 chairs
• 1904-1905 - “nickel madness”
• 1907: 2500 in U.S., 200 in
Manhattan alone;
• five per block in Harlem;
• Films still interspersed with live
entertainment - 15min.
– “the poor man’s amusement,”
the “workingman’s theater”
– New York’s Lower East Side:
Yiddish acts;
– 1913, over 200 theaters
catering to blacks
– However, not only working
class, immigrant
neighborhoods, but
entertainment districts

10. Continuity Editing
• Brighton School
• Cecil M. Hepworth: Rescued by
Rover (1905)
– Continuity
• Family affair.
– Margaret Hepworth wrote
the story and played the
mother
– Cecil Hepworth played the
father
– Barbara Hepworth, eight
months old, played the
heroine
– Blair, the family dog, was
the hero

11. Early vs. Later Silent Film
Before 1904
• autarchy and unicity of the
frame (each frame is
"complete" in itself and does
not "communicate" with
others)
• noncentered quality – entire
frame contains images, where
do we look?
• "exteriority" of character (lacks
psychology that close-ups give
us) and of spectator (we
remain "outside" the action)
• nonclosure - the stories seem
to be left open ended
or ending was optional
After 1908
• unity of frames
• spatial composition of frame
• psychology of character
• narrative closure