Film History
presented by
Helen Stephenson
The beginnings of film . . .
• Mechanical
• Similar to still photography
• Patents on film-making
mechanisms
• Started as business
Thomas Edison
Showmen and magic
Muybridge’s Horse in Motion, 1872
Zoopraxiscope
Nickelodeon
Late that Night in the Bedroom
First films – 1800s
• Thomas Edison’s Monkeyshines 1 and 2,
1890?
•
Kinetograph – first motor-driven camera
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, Assistant
•
Kinescope - projector
Parlor Kinescope
First films – 1800s
• Louis Le Prince
• Single-lense camera patented
in 1886
• Roundhay Garden Scene, 1888
First public showing
• Paris, Dec 28, 1895
• Auguste & Louis Lumiere
• “Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory”
• 46 seconds
First narrative film
• Edison’s studio
• The Great Train Robbery, 1903
Meanwhile in France
• Georges Melees
• Documentaries and
narrative shorts, 1896
Georges Melees
• “The creator of the art of cinema”
538 films
Georges Melies Life