ENG195 Film as Art Fall 2007 M. Dembrow, Instructor
The Physico-Psychological Basis of Film
You might wonder how it is that film--the art of motion--can be composed of reels of individual still images. Silent films run at 16 still frames (images) per second; sound films provide 24 separate pictures per second. Yet in both cases what we see is a flow of motion.
How do those still images translate into motion? Well, at the basis of cinema are a couple of quirks in the way that we humans see the world. We tend to perceive motion when we are shown a series of discontinuous images, each a slight change from the last; this perception of continuous movement from a discontinuous image series is due to:
PERSISTENCE OF VISION - image held on retina
THE PHI PHENOMENON - tendency to "read" series of still images as flow of motion
People have known about these principles (though not always in scientific terms) for many centuries. But it was only in the last century that tinkerers and inventers were able to combine various inventions that used these principles in order to create motion pictures as we know them.
The Genesis of Moving Pictures
TECHNOLOGICALLY, we can define cinema as
MOVING
PHOTOGRAPHY
PROJECTED ON A SCREEN
How did this technology develop?
A. The Illusion of Movement synthesized or reproduced: various devices were produced in the 19th Century based on the persistence-of-vision studies of Roget and Faraday:
--1832 Plateau's Phenakistiscope
Stampfer's Stroboscope
--1834 Horner's Zoetrope
--1837 Anschutz's Tachyscope (used photographs)
B. Photography (reality mechanically reproduced):
1. Still Photography:
--1250 prototype of camera obscura developed
--1839 Louis Daguerre announces daguerrotype process, which produced positive photographs on metal (Daguerre used earlier discoveries by fellow Frenchman Nicephore Niepce.)
--1839 William Fox Talbot announces Talbotype process, which made paper prints from a negative
--1851 Frederick Scott Archer's collodion process, first practical process on glass; very fast exposures
--1889 George Eastman patents flexible photographic roll film (celluloid)
2. Photographing Movement
--1877 Eadward Muybridge's first experiments with zoopraxography, analyzing motion by means of multiple cameras
--1882 E.J. Marey invents multiple-exposure camera; first motion-picture camera, using glass plate
--1888 Marey's "Chronophotographic" camera uses rolls of paper film
C. Projection:
--1646 The Magic Lantern created by Athanasius Kircher; consists of a light source, a lens, and a glass plate or slide with images drawn on it (the first slide projector)
--1851 Langenheim brothers make photographic magic lantern slides
--1853 Uchatius invents the Projecting Phenakistiscope
D. Photographing and Projecting Motion: The Roads Meet
1. Necessary Prerequisites:
TRANSPARENT FILM for projection
FLEXIBLE FILM
ADVANCING FILM--sprockets and sprocket-holes
SHUTTER (to close off light source briefly, in order to create black space between images, thereby allowing each image to be held on the retina)
INTERMITTENT MOTION--mechanism to hold film stationary while shutter was open, so as to insure a bright image
2. Realization:
--1888 Louis Augustin Le Prince, a Frenchman working in Britain, patented all the necessary components, but disappeared mysteriously in 1890 before exploiting his discoveries.
--1891-94 W.K.L. Dickson develops Kinetoscope and Kinetograph for Edison; Edison chooses not to develop a projecting device.
--1895 Louis & Auguste Lumiere complete the Cinematographe during the spring; hold several private showings, with the first public projection held on December 28 at the Grand Cafe in Paris
--1896 Many others produce machines similar to the Cinematographe, including Armat-Edison's Vitascope, R.W. Paul's Bioscope, and Oskar Messter's Bioskop.
Refinements on the Lumiere claw mechanism for securing intermittent motion include the Latham Loop & the Maltese Cross (Messter).
By the end of the 19th Century patents existed for movies with synchronous sound and for various color processes, though they weren't really exploited until the late 1920s and 1930s.
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