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99-762: Richard Warren Schickel (February 10, 1933 – February 18, 2017) was an American film historian , journalist, author, documentarian, and film and literary critic . He was a film critic for Time from 1965–2010, and also wrote for Life and the Los Angeles Times Book Review . His last writings about film were for Truthdig . He was interviewed in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009). In this documentary, he discusses early film critics Frank E. Woods , Robert E. Sherwood , and Otis Ferguson , and tells of how, in

198-548: A Geneva drive on the projectors to oscillatingly cause intermittent movement to advance the frames of the film and he set up the first film studio in Germany in 1900. From 1896, Messter was interested in the search of a method of reproduction and synchronization of the sound effects of the cinematographic performance at the time of the silent movies . So Messter invented the Tonbilder Biophon to show films, in which

297-465: A China Mission . The film, which film historian John Barnes later described as having "the most fully developed narrative of any film made in England up to that time", opens as the first shot shows Chinese Boxer rebels at the gate; it then cuts to the missionary family in the garden, where a fight ensues. The wife signals to British sailors from the balcony, who come and rescue them. The film also used

396-439: A Telescope . The main shot shows a street scene with a young man tying the shoelace and then caressing the foot of his girlfriend, while an old man observes this through a telescope. There is then a cut to close shot of the hands on the girl's foot shown inside a black circular mask, and then a cut back to the continuation of the original scene. James Williamson perfected narrative building techniques in his 1900 film, Attack on

495-649: A change-over to renting prints began. Messter replied with a series of longer films starring Henny Porten, but although these did well in the German-speaking world, they were not particularly successful internationally, unlike the Asta Nielsen films. Another of the growing German film producers just before World War I was the German branch of the French Éclair company, Deutsche Éclair. This was expropriated by

594-487: A commercial 1.5-hour program of 40 different scenes was screened for audiences of 300 people at the old Reichstag and received circa 4,000 visitors. Throughout the late 19th century, several inventors such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe , Louis Le Prince , William Friese-Greene , and the Skladanowsky brothers made pioneering contributions to the development of devices that could capture and display moving images, laying

693-515: A continuity of action across multiple scenes. The use of the intertitle to explain actions and dialogue on screen began in the early 1900s. Filmed intertitles were first used in Robert W. Paul's film, Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost. In most countries, intertitles gradually came to be used to provide dialogue and narration for the film, thus dispensing the need for narration provided by exhibitors. Development of continuous action across multiple shots

792-658: A device he called the Elektrischen Schnellseher (also known as the Electrotachyscope ), which displayed short loops on a small milk glass screen. By 1891, he had started mass production of a more economical, coin-operated peep-box viewing device of the same name that was exhibited at international exhibitions and fairs. Some machines were installed for longer periods, including some at The Crystal Palace in London, and in several U.S. stores. Shifting

891-435: A film language, or " film grammar ". James Williamson's use of continuous action in his 1901 film, Stop Thief! stimulated a film genre known as the "chase film." In the film, a tramp steals a leg of mutton from a butcher's boy in the first shot, is chased by the butcher's boy and assorted dogs in the following shot, and is finally caught by the dogs in the third shot. The Execution of Mary Stuart , produced in 1895 by

990-461: A gramophone played Unter den Linden accompanying the projection of animated images, but it was not a simple add on but to precisely match the series of musical pieces with moving images. In effect, to add sound to the silent cinema, it was necessary to solve problems of synchronization, since the image and the sound were recorded and reproduced by separated devices, which were difficult to initiate and to maintain rigged. On August 31, 1903, Messter held

1089-500: A hearse, pedestrians to change direction, and men to turn into women. Méliès, the director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin , was inspired to develop a series of more than 500 short films, between 1896 and 1913, in the process developing or inventing such techniques as multiple exposures , time-lapse photography , dissolves , and hand-painted color. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with

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1188-491: A lab assistant, William Kennedy Dickson , to help develop a device that could produce visuals to accompany the sounds produced from the phonograph . Building upon previous machines by Muybridge, Marey, Anschütz and others, Dickson and his team created the Kinetoscope peep-box viewer, with celluloid loops containing about half a minute of motion picture entertainment. After an early preview on 20 May 1891, Edison introduced

1287-485: A man drinking beer and a woman using sniffing tobacco. The following year, Smith made The Kiss in the Tunnel , a sequence consisting of three shots: a train enters a tunnel; a man and a woman exchange a brief kiss in the darkness and then return to their seats; the train exits the tunnel. Smith created the scenario in response to the success of a genre known as a phantom ride . In a phantom ride film, cameras would capture

1386-423: A minute long, without recorded sound, and consisted of a single shot from a steady camera. The first decade saw film move from a novelty, to an established mass entertainment industry, with film production companies and studios established throughout the world. Conventions toward a general cinematic language developed, with film editing, camera movements and other cinematic techniques contributing specific roles in

1485-418: A more complete illusion of reality, but for decades such experiments were mostly hindered by the need for long exposure times, with motion blur around objects that moved while the reflected light fell on the photo-sensitive chemicals. A few people managed to get decent results from stop motion techniques, but these were only very rarely marketed and no form of animated photography had much cultural impact before

1584-511: A motion picture gathered at Madison Square Garden to see a staged actuality that purported itself to be a boxing fight filmed by Woodville Latham using a device called the Eidoloscope on May 20, 1895. Commissioned by Latham, the French inventor Eugene Augustin Lauste created the device with additional expertise from William Kennedy Dickson and crafted a mechanism that came to be known as

1683-470: A movie's story and appeal. Although most visual effects work is completed during post-production , it usually must be carefully planned and choreographed in pre-production and production . While special effects such as explosions and car chases are made on set , visual effects are primarily executed in post-production with the use of multiple tools and technologies such as graphic design, modeling, animation and similar software. A visual effects supervisor

1782-555: A paying audience on 1 November 1895, in Berlin. But they did not have the quality or financial resources to acquire momentum. Most of these films never passed the experimental stage and their efforts garnered little public attention until after cinema had become successful. In the latter half of 1895, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière filmed a number of short scenes with their invention, the Cinématographe . On 28 December 1895,

1881-453: A running time of twelve minutes, with twenty separate shots and ten different indoor and outdoor locations. The film is seen as a first in the Western film genre and is significant for the use of shots suggesting simultaneous action occurring at different locations. Porter's use of both staged and real outdoor environments helped to create a sense of space while the placement of the camera in

1980-545: A series of scenes can be hard to determine. Despite these limitations, Michael Brooke of the British Film Institute attributes real film continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, to Robert W. Paul's 1898 film, Come Along, Do! . Only a still from the second shot remains extant today. Released in 1901, the British film Attack on a China Mission was one of the first films to show

2079-440: A significant number of films per year until 1910. When the worldwide film boom started, he, and the few other people in the German film business, continued to sell prints of their own films outright, which put them at a disadvantage. It was only when Paul Davidson , the owner of a chain of cinemas, brought Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad to Germany from Denmark in 1911, and set up a production company, Projektions-AG "Union" ( PAGU ), that

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2178-567: A wider shot established depth and allowed for an extended duration of motion on screen. The Great Train Robbery served as one of the vehicles that would launch the film medium into mass popularity. That same year, the Miles Brothers opened the first film exchange in the country, which allowed permanent exhibitors to rent films from the company at a lower cost than the producers that sold their films outright. John P. Harris opened

2277-537: Is limited to the U.S. market, which has reached a saturation level, so the U.S. seeks additional profits from foreign markets. Movies are defined as "pure" American phenomenon in the United States. New film techniques that were introduced in this period include the use of artificial lighting, fire effects and low-key lighting (i.e. lighting in which most of the frame is dark) for enhanced atmosphere during sinister scenes. Continuity of action from shot to shot

2376-525: Is most widely known today for his 1902 film, Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) , where he used his expertise in effects and narrative construction to create the first science fiction film . In 1900, Charles Pathé began film production under the Pathé-Frères brand, with Ferdinand Zecca hired to lead the creative process. Prior to this focus on production, Pathé had become involved with

2475-544: Is the French filmmaker, Georges Méliès . Méliès was an illusionist who had previously used magic lantern projections to enhance his magic act. In 1895, Méliès attended the demonstration of the Cinematographe and recognized the potential of the device to aid his act. He attempted to buy a device from the Lumière brothers, but they refused. Months later, he bought a camera from Robert W. Paul and began experiments with

2574-451: The Age of Enlightenment . By the 16th century, entertainers often conjured images of ghostly apparitions, using techniques such as camera obscura and other forms of projection to enhance their performances. Magic lantern shows developed in the latter half of the 17th century seem to have continued this tradition with images of death, monsters and other scary figures. Around 1790, this practice

2673-544: The British Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole was filmed for the newsreels as were the suffragette demonstrations that were happening at the same time. F. Percy Smith was an early nature documentary pioneer working for Charles Urban when he pioneered the use of time lapse and micro cinematography in his 1910 documentary on the growth of flowers. Following the successful exhibition of

2772-548: The Edison Company in 1901. A former projectionist hired by Thomas Edison to develop his new projection model known as the Vitascope , Porter was inspired in part by the works of Méliès, Smith, and Williamson and drew upon their newly crafted techniques to further the development of continuous narrative through editing. When he began making longer films in 1902, he put a dissolve between every shot, just as Georges Méliès

2871-686: The Edison Manufacturing Company released The May Irwin Kiss in May to widespread financial success. The film, which featured the first kiss in cinematic history, led to the earliest known calls for film censorship . Another early film producer was Australia's Limelight Department . Commencing in 1898, it was operated by The Salvation Army in Melbourne , Australia. The Limelight Department produced evangelistic material for use by

2970-487: The Latham loop , which allowed for longer continuous runtimes and was less abrasive on the celluloid film. In subsequent years, screenings of actualities and newsreels proved to be profitable. In 1897, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was released. The film was a complete recording of a heavyweight world championship boxing match at Carson City, Nevada . It generated more income in box office than in live gate receipts and

3069-562: The Musée Grévin in Paris. Reynaud's device, which projected a series of animated stories such as Pauvre Pierrot and Autour d'une cabine , was displayed to over 500,000 visitors over the course of 12,800 shows. On 25, 29 and 30 November 1894, Ottomar Anschütz projected moving images from Electrotachyscope discs on a large screen in the darkened Grand Auditorium of a Post Office Building in Berlin. From 22 February to 30 March 1895,

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3168-534: The University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1955. Schickel had two daughters. Following a series of strokes, he died in Los Angeles on February 18, 2017, eight days after his 84th birthday. Schickel received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964. He also lectured at Yale University and University of Southern California 's School of Film and Television . Film historian The history of film chronicles

3267-654: The cinematograph , the prolific Méliès is sometimes referred to as the "Cinemagician." His most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), a whimsical parody of Jules Verne 's From the Earth to the Moon , featured a combination of live action and animation , and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work. thumb VFX today is heavily used in almost all movies produced. Other than films, television series and web series are also known to utilize VFX. àÁ' Bold text' Visual effects are often integral to

3366-438: The double exposure of the film in the camera. The effect was pioneered by Smith in the 1898 film, Photographing a Ghost . According to Smith's catalogue records, the (now lost ) film chronicles a photographer's struggle to capture a ghost on camera. Using the double exposure of the film, Smith overlaid a transparent ghostly figure onto the background in a comical manner to taunt the photographer. Smith's The Corsican Brothers

3465-517: The magic lantern . Shadowgraphy and shadow puppetry represent early examples of the intent to use moving imagery for entertainment and storytelling. Thought to have originated in the Far East, the art form used shadows cast by hands or objects to assist in the creation of narratives. Shadow puppetry enjoyed popularity for centuries around Asia, notably in Java , and eventually spread to Europe during

3564-681: The narrative of films. Popular new media, including television (mainstream since the 1950s), home video (1980s), and the internet (1990s), influenced the distribution and consumption of films. Film production usually responded with content to fit the new media, and technical innovations (including widescreen (1950s), 3D, and 4D film ) and more spectacular films to keep theatrical screenings attractive. Systems that were cheaper and more easily handled (including 8mm film , video, and smartphone cameras ) allowed for an increasing number of people to create films of varying qualities, for any purpose including home movies and video art . The technical quality

3663-486: The negatives of the forward motion in reverse frame by frame, producing a print in which the original action was exactly reversed. To do this he built a special printer in which the negative running through a projector was projected into the gate of a camera through a special lens giving a same-size image. This arrangement came to be called a "projection printer", and eventually an " optical printer ". In 1898, George Albert Smith experimented with close-ups, filming shots of

3762-503: The serpentine dance films – also a staple of the Lumières and Thomas Edison film catalogs. In 1906, she made The Life of Christ , a big-budget production for the time, which included 300 extras. German inventor and film tycoon Oskar Messter was an important figure in the early years of cinema. His firm Messter Film was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, with which it merged eventually. Messter first added

3861-450: The 1899 film Cendrillon ( Cinderella ) . In Méliès' films, he based the placement of the camera on the theatrical construct of proscenium framing, the metaphorical plane or fourth wall that divides the actors and the audience. Throughout his career, Méliès consistently placed the camera in a fixed position and eventually fell out of favor with audiences as other filmmakers experimented with more complex and creative techniques. Méliès

3960-522: The 1960s, he, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris , rejected moralizing opposition of the older Bosley Crowther of The New York Times who had railed against violent movies such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967). In addition to film, Schickel also critiqued and documented cartoons, particularly Peanuts . Schickel was born in Milwaukee , Wisconsin, the son of Helen (née Hendricks) and Edward John Schickel. He received his B.A. in political science from

4059-480: The American film business, creating many "firsts" in the film industry, such as adding titles and subtitles to films for the first time, releasing scrolls for the first time, introducing film posters for the first time, producing color pictures for the first time, taking out commercial bills for the first time, contacting exhibitors and studying their needs for the first time. The world's largest film supplier, Pathé ,

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4158-478: The Cinématographe was an instant success, bringing in an average of 2,500 to 3,000 francs daily by the end of January 1896. Following the first screening, the order and selection of films were changed often. The Lumière brothers' primary business interests were in selling cameras and film equipment to exhibitors, not the actual production of films. Despite this, filmmakers across the world were inspired by

4257-612: The Cinématographe, development of a motion picture industry rapidly accelerated in France. Multiple filmmakers experimented with the technology as they worked to attain the same success that the Lumière brothers had with their screening. These filmmakers established new companies such as the Star Film Company , Pathé Frères , and the Gaumont Film Company . The most widely cited progenitor of narrative filmmaking

4356-562: The Danish film industry, but by 1913 they were producing their own strikingly original work, which sold very well. Russia began its film industry in 1908 with Pathé shooting some fiction subjects there, and then the creation of real Russian film companies by Aleksandr Drankov and Aleksandr Khanzhonkov . The Khanzhonkov company quickly became much the largest Russian film company, and remained so until 1918. In Germany, Oskar Messter had been involved in film-making from 1896, but did not make

4455-470: The Edison Company for viewing with the Kinetoscope , showed Mary Queen of Scots being executed in full view of the camera. The effect, known as the stop trick , was achieved by replacing the actor with a dummy for the final shot. The technique used in the film is seen as one of the earliest known uses of special effects in film. The American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter started making films for

4554-419: The Edison Company, such as the 1894 film Fred Ott's Sneeze . Advances towards motion picture projection technologies were based on the popularity of magic lanterns, chronophotographic demonstrations, and other closely related forms of projected entertainment such as illustrated songs . From October 1892 to March 1900, inventor Émile Reynaud exhibited his Théâtre Optique ("Optical Theatre") film system at

4653-519: The Edison and Lumière studios, loose narratives such as the 1895 Edison film, Washday Troubles, established short relationship dynamics and simple storylines. In 1896, La Fée aux Choux ( The Fairy of the Cabbages ) was first released. Directed and edited by Alice Guy , the story is arguably the earliest narrative film in history, as well as the first film to be directed by a woman. That same year,

4752-518: The First World War was Denmark. The Nordisk company was set up there in 1906 by Ole Olsen , a fairground showman, and after a brief period imitating the successes of French and British filmmakers, in 1907 he produced 67 films, most directed by Viggo Larsen, with sensational subjects like Den hvide Slavinde (The White Slave) , Isbjørnejagt (Polar Bear Hunt) and Løvejagten (The Lion Hunt) . By 1910, new smaller Danish companies began joining

4851-444: The German government, and turned into DECLA when the war started. But altogether, German producers only had a minor part of the German market in 1914. Overall, from about 1910, American films had the largest share of the market in all European countries except France, and even in France, the American films had just pushed the local production out of first place on the eve of World War I. Pathé Frères expanded and significantly shaped

4950-465: The Italian film La mala planta (The Evil Plant) , directed by Mario Caserini had an insert shot of a snake slithering over the "Evil Plant". By 1914 it was widely held in the American film industry that cross-cutting was most generally useful because it made possible the elimination of uninteresting parts of the action that play no part in advancing the drama. Visual effects VFX involves

5049-535: The Kinetoscope era that preceded it. Despite this, early experimentation with fiction filmmaking (both in actuality film and other genres) did occur. Films were mostly screened inside temporary storefront spaces, in tents of traveling exhibitors at fairs, or as "dumb" acts in vaudeville programs. During this period, before the process of post-production was clearly defined, exhibitors were allowed to exercise their creative freedom in their presentations. To enhance

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5148-659: The Salvation Army, including lantern slides as early as 1891, as well as private and government contracts. In its nineteen years of operation, the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, making it one of largest film producers of its time. The Limelight Department made a 1904 film by Joseph Perry called Bushranging in North Queensland , which is believed to be the first ever film about bushrangers. In its infancy, film

5247-411: The action a second time, while filming it with an inverted camera, and then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the first. The first films made using this device were Tipsy, Topsy, Turvy and The Awkward Sign Painter . The earliest surviving example of this technique is Smith's The House That Jack Built , made before September 1900. Cecil Hepworth took this technique further by printing

5346-577: The advent of chronophotography. Most early photographic sequences, known as chronophotography , were not initially intended to be viewed in motion and were typically presented as a serious, even scientific, method of studying locomotion. The sequences almost exclusively involved humans or animals performing a simple movement in front of the camera. Starting in 1878 with the publication of The Horse in Motion cabinet cards, photographer Eadweard Muybridge began making hundreds of chronophotographic studies of

5445-399: The arts such as (oral) storytelling , literature, theatre and visual arts. Cantastoria and similar ancient traditions combined storytelling with series of images that were shown or indicated one after the other. Predecessors to film that had already used light and shadows to create art before the advent of modern film technology include shadowgraphy , shadow puppetry , camera obscura , and

5544-557: The brothers gave their first commercial screening in Paris (though evidence exists of demonstrations of the device to small audiences as early as October 1895). The screening consisted of ten films and lasted roughly 20 minutes. The program consisted mainly of actuality films such as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory as truthful documents of the world, but the show also included the staged comedy L'Arroseur Arrosé . The most advanced demonstration of film projection thus far,

5643-533: The business, and besides making more films about the white slave trade , they contributed other new subjects. The most important of these finds was Asta Nielsen in Afgrunden (The Abyss) , directed by Urban Gad for Kosmorama, This combined the circus, sex, jealousy and murder, all put over with great conviction, and pushed the other Danish filmmakers further in this direction. By 1912, the Danish film companies were multiplying rapidly. The Swedish film industry

5742-601: The creation of a corporate trust between the major film companies in America known as the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) to limit infringement on his patents. Members of the trust controlled every aspect of the filmmaking process from the creation of film stock, the production of films, and the distribution to cinemas through licensing arrangements. The trust led to increased quality filmmaking spurred by internal competition and placed limits on

5841-478: The development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. There were earlier cinematographic screenings by others, however, the commercial, public screening of ten Lumière brothers ' short films in Paris on 28 December 1895, can be regarded as the breakthrough of projected cinematographic motion pictures. The earliest films were in black and white, under

5940-421: The device by creating actualities. During this period of experimentation, Méliès discovered and implemented various special effects including the stop trick , the multiple exposure , and the use of dissolves in his films. At the end of 1896, Méliès established the Star Film Company and started producing, directing, and distributing a body of work that would eventually contain over 500 short films. Recognizing

6039-429: The device's original goal of providing visual accompaniment for sound recordings. Limitations in syncing the sound to the visuals, however, prevented widespread application. During that same period, inventors began advancing technologies towards film projection that would eventually overtake Edison's peep-box format. The Skladanowsky brothers , used their self-made Bioscop to display the first moving picture show to

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6138-410: The direction of Alice Guy , the industry's first female director. Her earlier films share many characteristics and themes with her contemporary competitors, such as the Lumières and Méliès . She explored dance and travel films, often combining the two, such as Le Boléro performed by Miss Saharet (1905) and Tango (1905). Many of Guy's early dance films were popular in music-hall attractions such as

6237-437: The executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor's place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing the dummy's head. Techniques like these would dominate the production of special effects for a century. It was not only the first use of trickery in cinema, it

6336-408: The first "reverse angle" cut in film history. The following year, Williamson created The Big Swallow . In the film. a man becomes irritated by the presence of the filmmaker and "swallows" the camera and its operator through the use of interpolated close-up shots. He combined these effects, along with superimpositions, use of wipe transitions to denote a scene change, and other techniques to create

6435-571: The first permanent theater devoted exclusively to the presentation of films, the nickelodeon , in 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The idea rapidly took off and by 1908, there were around 8,000 nickelodeon theaters across the country. With the arrival of the nickelodeon, audience demand for a larger quantity of story films with a variety of subjects and locations led to a need to hire more creative talent and caused studios to invest in more elaborate stage designs. In 1908, Thomas Edison spearheaded

6534-419: The first sound projection that took place in Germany at the "Apollo" Theater in Berlin. Both Cecil Hepworth and Robert W. Paul experimented with the use of different camera techniques in their films. Paul's 'Cinematograph Camera No. 1' of 1895 was the first camera to feature reverse-cranking, which allowed the same film footage to be exposed several times, thereby creating multiple exposures . This technique

6633-597: The focus of the medium from technical and scientific interest in motion to entertainment for the masses, he recorded wrestlers, dancers, acrobats, and scenes of everyday life. Nearly 34,000 people paid to see his shows at the Berlin Exhibition Park in summer 1892. Others saw it in London or at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair . Though little evidence remains for most of these recordings, some scenes probably depicted staged comical sequences. Extant records suggest some of his output directly influenced later works by

6732-539: The groundwork for the emergence of cinema as an artistic medium. The scenes in these experiments primarily served to demonstrate the technology itself and were usually filmed with family, friends or passing traffic as the moving subjects. The earliest surviving film, known today as the Roundhay Garden Scene (1888), was captured by Louis Le Prince and briefly depicted members of his family in motion. In June 1889, American inventor Thomas Edison assigned

6831-399: The industry by exhibiting and selling what were likely counterfeit versions of the Kinetoscope in his phonograph shop. With the creative leadership of Zecca and the capability to mass-produce copies of the films through a partnership with a French toolmaking company, Charles Pathé sought to make Pathé-Frères the leading film producer in the country. Within the next few years, Pathé-Frères became

6930-529: The integration of live-action footage (which may include in-camera special effects) and generated-imagery (digital or optics, animals or creatures) which look realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, time-consuming or impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer-generated imagery (CGI) have more recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and relatively easy-to-use animation and compositing software. In 1857, Oscar Rejlander created

7029-408: The intentional staging and recreation of events for newsreels "brought storytelling to the screen". With the advertisement of film technologies over content, actualities initially began as a "series of views" that often contained shots of beautiful and lively places or performance acts. Following the success of their 1895 screening, The Lumière brothers established a company and sent cameramen across

7128-486: The largest film studio in the world, with satellite offices in major cities and an expanding selection of films available for presentation. The company's films were varied in content, with directors specializing in various genres for fairground presentations throughout the early 1900s. The Gaumont Film Company was the main regional rival of Pathé-Frères. Founded in 1895 by Léon Gaumont , the firm initially sold photographic equipment and began film production in 1897, under

7227-626: The machine in 1893. Many of the movies presented on the Kinetoscope showcased well-known vaudeville acts performing in Edison's Black Maria studio. The Kinetoscope quickly became a global sensation with multiple viewing parlors across major cities by 1895. As the initial novelty of the images wore off, the Edison Company was slow to diversify their repertoire of films and waning public interest caused business to slow by Spring 1895. To remedy declining profits, experiments, such as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film , were conducted in an attempt to achieve

7326-462: The motion and surroundings from the front of a moving train. The separate shots, when edited together, formed a distinct sequence of events and established causality from one shot to the next. Following The Kiss in the Tunnel , Smith more definitively experimented with continuity of action across successive shots and began using inserts in his films, such as Grandma's Reading Glass and Mary Jane's Mishap . In 1900, Smith made As Seen Through

7425-488: The motion of animals and humans in real-time. He was soon followed by other chronophotographers like Étienne-Jules Marey , Georges Demenÿ , Albert Londe and Ottomar Anschütz . In 1879, Muybridge started lecturing on animal locomotion and used his Zoopraxiscope to project animations of the contours of his recordings, traced onto glass discs. In 1887, the German inventor and photographer Ottomar Anschütz started presenting his chronophotographic recordings in motion, using

7524-475: The narrative potential afforded by combining his theater background with the newly discovered effects for the camera, Méliès designed an elaborate stage that contained trapdoors and a fly system . The stage construction and editing techniques allowed for the development of more complex stories, such as the 1896 film, Le Manoir du Diable ( The House of the Devil ) , regarded as a first in the horror film genre, and

7623-478: The number of foreign films to encourage the growth of the American film industry, but it also discouraged the creation of feature films. By 1915, the MPPC had lost most of its hold on the film industry as the companies moved towards the wider production of feature films. With the worldwide film boom, more countries now joined Britain, France, Germany and the United States in serious film production. In Italy, production

7722-566: The opposite effect in The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder (1901). The Chief's movements are sped up by cranking the camera much faster than 16 frames per second, producing what modern audiences would call a " slow motion " effect. The first films to move from single shots to successive scenes began around the turn of the 20th century. Due to the loss of many early films , a conclusive shift from static singular shots to

7821-441: The potential of film as exhibitors brought their shows to new countries. This era of filmmaking, dubbed by film historian Tom Gunning as "the cinema of attractions", offered a relatively cheap and simple way of providing entertainment to the masses. Rather than focusing on stories, Gunning argues, filmmakers mainly relied on the ability to delight audiences through the "illusory power" of viewing sequences in motion, much as they did in

7920-432: The short length (often only one shot) of many actualities, catalogue records indicate that production companies marketed to exhibitors by promoting multiple actualities with related subject matters that could be purchased to complement each other. Exhibitors who bought the films often presented them in a program and would provide spoken accompaniment to explain the action on screen to audiences. The first paying audience for

8019-459: The use of dissolving views and the chromatrope allowed for smoother transitions between two projected images and aided in providing stronger narratives. In 1833, scientific study of a stroboscopic illusion in spoked wheels by Joseph Plateau , Michael Faraday and Simon Stampfer led to the invention of the Fantascope, also known as the stroboscopic disk or the phenakistiscope , which

8118-431: The viewers' experience, some showings were accompanied by live musicians in an orchestra, a theatre organ, live sound effects and commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist. Experiments in film editing, special effects, narrative construction, and camera movement during this period by filmmakers in France, England, and the United States became influential in establishing an identity for film going forward. At both

8217-499: The world to capture new subjects for presentation. After the cinematographer shot scenes, they often exhibited their recordings locally and then sent them back to the company factory in Lyon to make duplicate prints for sale to whoever wanted them. In the process of filming actualities, especially those of real events, filmmakers discovered and experimented with multiple camera techniques to accommodate for their unpredictable nature. Due to

8316-453: The world's first "special effects" image by combining different sections of 32 negatives into a single image, making a montaged combination print . In 1895, Alfred Clark created what is commonly accepted as the first-ever motion picture special effect. While filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots , Clark instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary's costume. As

8415-572: Was already doing, and he frequently had the same action repeated across the dissolves. In 1902, Porter shot Life of an American Fireman for the Edison Manufacturing Company and distributed the film the following year. In the film, Porter combined stock footage from previous Edison films with newly shot footage and spliced them together to convey a dramatic story of the rescue of a woman and her child by heroic firemen. Porter's film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), had

8514-561: Was also refined, such as in Pathé's le Cheval emballé (The Runaway Horse) (1907) where cross-cutting between parallel actions is used. D. W. Griffith also began using cross-cutting in the film The Fatal Hour , made in July 1908. Another development was the use of the point of view shot , first used in 1910 in Vitagraph's Back to Nature . Insert shots were also used for artistic purposes;

8613-399: Was also the first type of photographic trickery that was only possible in a motion picture, and referred to as the " stop trick ". Georges Méliès , an early motion picture pioneer, accidentally discovered the same "stop trick." According to Méliès, his camera jammed while filming a street scene in Paris. When he screened the film, he found that the "stop trick" had caused a truck to turn into

8712-483: Was described in the catalogue of the Warwick Trading Company in 1900: "By extremely careful photography the ghost appears *quite transparent*. After indicating that he has been killed by a sword-thrust, and appealing for vengeance, he disappears. A 'vision' then appears showing the fatal duel in the snow." Smith also initiated the special effects technique of reverse motion . He did this by repeating

8811-551: Was developed into a type of multimedia ghost show known as phantasmagoria . These popular shows entertained audiences using mechanical slides, rear projection, mobile projectors, superimposition , dissolves , live actors, smoke (on which projections may have been cast), odors, sounds and even electric shocks. While many first magic lantern shows were intended to frighten viewers, advances by projectionists allowed for creative and even educational storytelling that could appeal to wider family audiences. Newly pioneered techniques such as

8910-415: Was exploited primarily in the form of newsreels and actualities. During the creation of these films, cinematographers often drew upon aesthetic values established by past art forms such as framing and the intentional placement of the camera in the composition of their image. In a 1955 article for The Quarterly of Film Radio and television, film producer and historian Kenneth Macgowan asserted that

9009-403: Was first used in his 1901 film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost . Both filmmakers experimented with the speeds of the camera to generate new effects. Paul shot scenes from On a Runaway Motor Car through Piccadilly Circus (1899) by cranking the camera apparatus very slowly. When the film was projected at the usual 16 frames per second, the scenery appeared to be passing at great speed. Hepworth used

9108-464: Was furthered in England by a loosely associated group of film pioneers collectively termed "the Brighton School ". These filmmakers included George Albert Smith and James Williamson , among others. Smith and Williamson experimented with action continuity and were likely the first to incorporate the use of inserts and close-ups between shots. A basic technique for trick cinematography was

9207-727: Was historical epics, with large casts and massive scenery. As early as 1911, Giovanni Pastrone 's two-reel La Caduta di Troia ( The Fall of Troy ) made a big impression worldwide, and it was followed by even bigger productions like Quo Vadis? (1912), which ran for 90 minutes, and Pastrone's Cabiria of 1914, which ran for two and a half hours. Italian companies also had a strong line in slapstick comedy, with actors like André Deed , known locally as "Cretinetti", and elsewhere as "Foolshead" and "Gribouille", achieving worldwide fame with his almost surrealistic gags. The most important film-producing country in Northern Europe up until

9306-444: Was popular in several European countries for a while. Plateau thought it could be further developed for use in phantasmagoria and Stampfer imagined a system for longer scenes with strips on rollers, as well as a transparent version (probably intended for projection). Plateau, Charles Wheatstone , Antoine Claudet and others tried to combine the technique with the stereoscope (introduced in 1838) and photography (introduced in 1839) for

9405-465: Was rarely recognized as an art form by presenters or audiences. Regarded by the upper class as a "vulgar" and "lowbrow" form of cheap entertainment, films largely appealed to the working class and were often too short to hold any strong narrative potential. Initial advertisements promoted the technologies used to screen films rather than the films themselves. As the devices became more familiar to audiences, their potential for capturing and recreating events

9504-484: Was smaller and slower to get started than the Danish industry. Here, Charles Magnusson , a newsreel cameraman for the Svenskabiografteatern cinema chain, started fiction film production for them in 1909, directing a number of the films himself. Production increased in 1912, when the company engaged Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller as directors. They started out by imitating the subjects favoured by

9603-506: Was spread over several centers, Turin was the first major film production centre, and Milan and Naples gave birth to the first film magazines. In Turin, Ambrosio was the first company in the field in 1905, and remained the largest in the country through this period. Its most substantial rival was Cines in Rome, which started producing in 1906. The great strength of the Italian industry

9702-492: Was the longest film produced at the time. Audiences had probably been drawn to the Corbett-Fitzsimmons film en masse because James J. Corbett (a.k.a. Gentleman Jim) had become a matinee idol since he had played a fictionalized version of himself in a stage play. From 1910 on, regular newsreels were exhibited and soon became a popular way of discovering the news before the advent of television –

9801-505: Was usually lower than professional movies, but improved with digital video and affordable, high-quality digital cameras . Improving over time, digital production methods became more popular during the 1990s, resulting in increasingly realistic visual effects and popular feature-length computer animations . Various film genres have emerged during the history of film, and enjoyed variable degrees of success. The use of film as an art form traces its origins to several earlier traditions in

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