Film History

Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the

During the 1890s, Thomas Edison, a worldly known inventor invented a new technological creation that stunned and mesmerized anybody that viewed it, moving pictures, otherwise known as movies. Just by cycling through a long strip of tiny subsequent photographs on a projection machine, the speed of the machine coincided with the sequentialism of the pictures to create the illusion of fluent motion, creating the first of what society knows movies to be today. This new innovation sparked a new desire for imagination and creativity, and created a platform that allowed the deepest imaginations of the mind to utilize and display on screen. The transition from silent film to talkies, otherwise known as sound film, opened up new doors of cinematography and composing, and allowed works of art to be seen and heard identically globally.

Ever since Thomas Edison invented the Kinetiscope in 1894, films have been reaching its way to the heart of American culture. Since the roaring twenties, where the United States began to see the first movie theaters to the 1960’s, where films are officially a source of leisure and escape from reality. Films influenced American culture between the 1920’s through 1960’s by becoming an increasingly popular form of leisure for years to come while causing scandals, riots, and movements about films or about the idea of films in general by displaying issues in society such as racism, forming a need for censorship laws. Films have also provided a fantasy world for their audiences by showing a film about someone in their perfect life using ethical

The motion camera was first conceived allowing the establishment of film production companies; technological limits meant films were silent and generally less than a minute in length.

In 1894 they created what was called a Cinématographe. With the birth of the cinema camera a new medium of expression was born. Thus allowing artists to capture life in a new light.

The birth of film began in 1872, when Leland Stanford bet a friend that a horse lifts all four of its legs off the ground when running. To settle the disagreement, Stanford employed photographer Eadweard Muybridge to take pictures. After settling the debate, Muybridge developed the first primitive cinema that he called “zoöpraxiscope”. The first films lasted only about a minute long, were black and white, and had no entertainment

The universe of movies and film has created the some of the most outstanding things over the years. Film is an amazing topic. It is outstanding how much it has evolved over the years. It started in black and white, and with no sound. Now we have things like 3D.

Theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin claims that narrative films are mainly a “product of construction” and cautious compilations of “selections of images that have been shot” (Renée).

In “The myth of total cinema”, Bazin asserts that film produces reality with minimum human intervention, and as technology evolves, film will resemble reality with more fidelity and gives the example of sound addition. He talks about two types of films and filmmakers: the ones who believe in reality and the ones who believe in image.

‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’

In the world we live in today, anyone can pick up a handheld video camera and record their son’s soccer game or daughter’s school play, but to really capture the beauty of an event takes true talent. It takes the expertise of a cinematographer or director of photography as they are also known, to capture the true essence of an event and scene. Thomas Edison even once said, “By faithfully reproducing and kind or type of movement, it [cinematography] constitutes man’s most astonishing victory to date over forgetfulness. It retains and restores the things memory alone can’t recover, not to mention its auxiliary agencies: the written page, drawing photography. … Like them, cinematography prevents the things of yesterday that are useful to tomorrow’s progress from sinking into oblivion; amongst these one must count moving things, which only a few years ago were considered impossible to fix in an image” (Neale, 54). A picture, whether it be a photographed image or a filmed image is nothing when it has not been looked at with the proper eyes. When expressed through the proper lens and eye an image can really be worth a thousand words.

From Eadweard Maybridge and Louis Le Prince’s brilliant idea of finding ways to string together series of still photographs creating an impression of time passing, to Dziga Vertov’s masterpiece in Man with a Movie Camera where he felt as though the movie camera had the capacity not just to record reality but to reveal an unseen world to the audience; Cinema and the way we see it has become breathtaking and unbelievable to say the least. In Edward Ross’s Filmish, he talks about how much cinema has captivated audiences. A few things I found important and interesting that he talked about was what Tom Gunning calls the Cinema of Attractions, how George Méliès “tricked” the eye with his illusory style, and lastly, how camera angles and

During the mid to late years of the 19th century, a new form of entertainment emerged. Film entered the stage of innovation. New marketing and technological innovations developed for film to become the art it is today. In the 1830s, Joseph Plateau designed the Phenakistoscope. This device had a picture in the middle of a wheel made with mirrors and small openings. When spun, the Phenakistoscope made the picture appear to move. The name changed to Zoetrope in the 1860s and producers advertised the product as an accessory every home needed (Dixon & Foster, 2008). Later inventions that preceded the first motion picture camera include: Henry Du Mont’s Omiscope, Henry R. Heyl’s Phasmatrope, Eadweard Muybridge’s Zoöpraxiscope, Etienne-Jules Marey’s fusil photographique and Eastman Kodak’s chronophotographs (Parkinson, 1997). With a design by Thomas Edison, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson built the first modern movie camera, the Kinetograph, in 1890 (Dixon & Foster, 2008). In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiére patented the Cinématographe, a machine that combined the engineering of a camera and a projector (Bergan, 2006). Businessmen capitalized on the growing need for a place to witness these brand new films, thus they charged people to see them in their living rooms (Potter, 2014). These creations made movie-making a reality.

No matter who a person thinks invented the motion picture camera, whether it was Louis Lumiere or Thomas Edison, I'm sure they had no idea what it would become at the turn of the century. Motion pictures, has become an entertainment medium like no other. From Fred Ott's Sneeze to Psycho to Being John Malkovich, the evolution from moving pictures to a pure art form has been quite amazing. Different steps in filming techniques define eras in one of the most amazing ideas that was ever composed. Silent to Sound. Short to long. Black and white to color. Analog to Digital. All were important marks in the History of Motion Pictures. "It's different than other arts. It had to be invented"

Film Industry has been expansively affected by the changes in technology. The mechanical and digital innovations give cause to the influence of equipment, distribution and the way in which films are made and consumed. New trends shape directors and filmmakers to expand creatively towards telling stories in motions. The film industry has developed to one of the most important tools of communication, it's cause so powerful affecting the way individuals and societies think, act and behave. Among the new Era approaching film, and seeing celluloid film fade is that of the Digital Era and a camera that saw celluloid films passing hastened.