The Advancement of Movies

By: Curtis

While everyone knows that the best movies come out of Hollywood, has anyone ever thought about how movies came to be? Has anyone thought about when the first film was shot or by whom? If your answer is some random guy who had too much time, you are wrong. The first motion picture film was actually for something that you would never think of. The very first film was taken because of a $25,000 bet.

Some very bored people betted on whether the hooves of a horse would touch the ground when they were trotting. A person names Eadweard Muybridge was hired to find out who won the bet. This was in 1871 so there was no video recorders or phones. He set up 12 cameras that was evenly spread around racetrack and the horse trot began. We don’t care about who won the bet or who the betters were, all we need to know is that Muybridge was the first person ever to film a motion picture.

With the start of the first interesting film, Thomas Edison, (Yes, the one who invented the lightbulb) described something that people could watch. Then, between 1889 and 1892, William Kenney-Laurie Dickson developed the Kinetoscope, which is similar to those tiny 3D rollercoaster rides that only sits one person at a time. Edison created the very first film studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Even though Edison thought of the Kinetoscope, he did not pay $150 for international copyright, he had only paid for national copyright. In Britain, a gentleman named Robert W. Paul copied the Kinetoscope and developed a hand-cranked portable in 1896. On April 3, 1896, Thomas Armat and others invented a projector called the Vitascope. The French inventors then came in and developed portable movie cameras with the projector. The first film that was shown to the public was on March 22, 1895 in France. It was a romance film. The first film to actually tell a story was created by George Melies in 1902 with the title of “A Trip to the Moon”. It was the first to use lights.

During that time, it was just entertainment for the working class. At that time came the producers, distributers and the exhibitors. The earliest motion picture industry in America was created by Edison. Hollywood emerged because of Edison’s motion pictures. The creation of Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) made many people moved west due to Edison’s control in New Jersey. It was also because the land in California back then was extremely cheap. Edison established that a single reel is the maximum you can use. A reel is about 8 to 10 minutes. During that time, the studio had its systems. The studio controlled everyone that was in the studio and it had the ability to control who had its films. It basically kept their own stars and had monopoly. They sold their movies as a package deal and the theaters had to buy a of them in order to get the good films.

In 1926, Don Juan created the very first sound movie. It had sound but no actors talked. Al Jolson was the one who created the very first talking movie called “The Jazz Singer”. As time went on, studios had to deal with filming equipment and sound equipment in order for a movie with sound to be good. They were not able to cut off the sound at that time so they had to film the sound accordingly. The hardship movies had to deal with as TV came out was enormous. Movies had to cooperate with television channels in order for them to keep going. The first color movies that came out were “Gone with the Wind” and “Wizard of Oz” and that cause an uproar because they were in color.

In 1976, video systems came into homes of the people. The very first HD movie that was created was Star Wars: A New Hope. They also used computer effects in Star Wars, they were the first to do so. Then, in 1998, Netflix was created and since then, Netflix grew into the giant it is now.

Work Cited

Ewold, David. "Film." MI 101. Wells Hall, East Lansing. 21 Sept. 2016. Lecture.