The Origins of Film

'Moving Pictures' began with serial photography. In 1870, Eadweard Muybridge used a row of 12 cameras to capture a galloping horse.

In 1882, Etienne-Jules Marey invented a photographic gun (hence the phrase 'shooting film') that could take a dozen photographs per second. It was this device that birthed the first 'moving pictures.'

In the early 1890s, Thomas Edison invented the Kinetograph, for photographing motion pictures, and the Kinetoscope, for projecting them. He and the first film production studio, Black Maria, shot and projected the earliest motion pictures. They were brief, crude, single-shot 'home videos' showing cars, trains, firemen, and a sneeze.

The Lumiere brothers of France invaded the developing entertainment medium with a combination camera, printer and projector called the Cinematographe (hence the term 'cinema') in 1895.

Next came Georges Melies, another Frenchman. He used his background as a magician to create the most important early special effects film, the 14-minte A Trip to the Moon, in 1902. It was composed of a couple dozen scenes showing off the special 'illusions' that could be pulled off on film. With A Trip to the Moon and other shorts, Melies introduced such basic components of film as narrative plots, dynamic characters, trick photography, dissolves, wipes, fade-outs, fade-ins, superimpositions, stop motion, and slow-motion.

It was Edwin S. Porter, though, who is the 'Father of the Story Film.' With 1903's The Great Train Robbery, he created the first film with a 'story' and cross-cutting between simultaneous events. The Great Train Robbery was also the world's first box-office hit, and suddenly film was something you could make money producing.

Between 1907 and 1912, American auteur D.W. Griffith made several hundred shots that further developed the 'story' film with titles like Her First Adventure (1908) and An Unseen Enemy (1912)

The hour-long running time of Australia's The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) allowed it the distinction of being the first feature-length film. Alas, it is lost forever. The first feature-length American film to be shown in its entirety was Oliver Twist (1912).

As it became increasingly obvious that films could make a lot of money, the early movie production studios began to arise. IMP (to become Universal Films) and the Fox Film Corporation (to become 20th Century Fox) were founded in 1912. Paramount Pictures arrived in 1916, followed by Gold-wyn Pictures Corporation (to become MGM) in 1917. In the next dozen years, more big players followed: United Artists in 1919, Warner Bros. In 1923, Columbia in 1924, and RKO in 1928).

The first 'movie stars' were Mary Pickford and especially Charles Chaplin, who used his 'Tramp' character to create some of the finest early comedies, including The Rink (1916), The Immigrant (1917), and The Kid (1921).

The world's first blockbuster arrived with D.W. Griffith's controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915). The 3-hour Civil War epic was a stunning piece of cinema with dramatic battles, detailed costumes, groundbreaking cinematography, and more.

The following decades proved to be one of tremendous growth and innovation for the film industry, and produced such masterpieces as Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The Gold Rush (1925), and Metropolis (1927).

In 1927, The Jazz Singer popularized the 'talkie' - a film with audible dialogue.

The 1930s saw such blockbuster hits as Frankenstein (1931), King Kong (1933), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - the first traditionally animated feature-length film - and Gone With the Wind (1939).

The rest, as they say, is history...