We explain everything about the history of cinema and who were its first creators. In addition, what are its characteristics and advances.
History of cinema
The history of cinema is the reclamation of inventors, inventors and events that gave birth to cinematography . It extends from its mudos in black and white, to its contemporary, digital and abundant aspects in computerized special effects.
This is a story that It includes almost two centuries, from the end of the 19th century until the present time and that goes hand in hand with the photographic invention. Cinema is a technique of capture, editing and reproduction of images and sound. It operates based on photosensitive supports, computer apparatus and specialized projectors, to offer the audience the printing of the movement.
This technique has been perfected today with the incorporation of digital technology and the professionalization of the film trade. Its own artistic language has been achieved that Nowadays he is recognized as the “seventh art” and that, as an entertainment industry, it mobilizes large amounts of money throughout the world.
Origin of cinema
The formal origin of cinema dates back to the nineteenth century, with the invention of photography . With it the first steps were taken towards the generation of the printing of the movement, thanks to the retinal persistence (the minimum forgivement of the images seen in the human retina when they are projected at high speed) and at the beginning of the dark chamber.
The first film projection exhibited to the public took place in Paris on December 28, 1895. It consisted of a projection of the exit of some workers from a factory in Lyon . It was recorded by the famous Lumière brothers, who in a year produced more than 500 films of no more than a minute.
Only 35 people attended that first projection but the voice ran very quickly in Paris and soon there were multitudes eager to see the new invention, announced as Cinématographhe Lumière.
The anecdote that one of its first projections is also famous the front filming of a train that reached the station involved . The audience, fearful that the train hit them, fled from the room.
Background of the cinema
So that the invention of the lumière could exist, numerous discoveries had to give previously . Some even date back to the sixteenth century, when the German priest Atanasio Kircher invented the magic flashlight, a rotating image device that simulated the movement and served to entertain children.
In the 18th century, Gaspard Robert popularized the public projection of images painted on glass plates, which he baptized as Ghosts. In the nineteenth century there were more experiments with moving images . One of the most important was the Straboscope (1833) by Simon von Stampfer that allowed to see at very slow speeds (or still) an object that revolved on itself.
In 1874 the photograph was invented . Based on this invention, French Jules Janssen created the “photographic revolver”, an ancestor of today’s camera. Shortly after, the American Edward VERYBRIDGE managed to reproduce the gallop of a horse from photographs taken as a series of his career.
But cinema as such was only possible when Thomas Alva Edison invented the incandescent bulb in 1889 and then the kinetographer, a device that synchronized the sound and capture of an image, trying to capture the moment lived. The latter gave rise to the subsequent inclusion of audio in the cinema.
The magic of Georges Méliès
One of the great precursors of the cinema was Georges Méliès. Due to the enthusiasm that caused him, he decided to invest in the technology of the Lumière brothers. He proposed important innovations that changed the naturalistic, realistic and liabilities character of the Lumière recordings.
On the contrary, Méliès created fiction stories endowed with special effects cardboard scenographies, makeup and jumps in the edition. They were children’s fables and fantastic stories, thanks to those who are still remembered today as the “cinema magician.” Among them were “Journey to the Moon” (1902) and “The impossible trip” (1904), inspired by the books of Julio Verne.
Pioneers: León Gaumont and Alice Guy Blaché
Others important precursors of cinema at the end of the 19th century They were León Gaumont and Alice Guy Blaché, their secretary and associate. The latter, after witnessing the projections of the Lumière brothers, convinced his boss, who owned a sale of photographic devices, to venture into the cinema.
Together they undertook the production of films, which Guy herself scripted and filmed including one of the first fiction feature films: The Fée Aux Choux“The fairy of the choles” in 1896. In these first films there was an important presence of theatrical techniques, and subsequently tincture was incorporated for the first time, allowing the images to be in color.
Pioneer: Charles Pathé
Pathé was another cinema entrepreneur fruit of the exhibitions of the Lumière brothers . He manufactured his own cameras with which he started his productions. He also tried to combine the phonograph with the cinematographer, to capture audio and video at the same time, although without much success.
Subsequently, yes it prospered in the business world of cinema : He founded the first film company that combined the three branches of the film industry: production, distribution and exhibition, called Pathé Frères (“Pathé brothers”).
In this company Many innovations of cinematographic language took place like nearby cinematographic planes, not general. Ferdinand Zecca, who made an actor, director, screenwriter and decorator.
Mute cinema and sound cinema
Already in 1902, Edison took the first steps towards the audio and image record at the same time although with very little quality yet. Also, thanks to chronophone De León Gaumont in 1910, the possibility of including sound in the films began to glimpse.
However, The cinema was silent during his first 30 years . The projections with live music continued to be accompanied until 1927, when the first sound feature film was possible, through the synchronization of an album reproduced at the same time as the film. This first sound film was The Jazz singer of the Warner Bros Pictures Inc In the United States.
The cinematographic language
The pioneers of cinematographic language, who ended the tendency to film the cinema as if it were recorded, were two:
- David W. Griffith. American filmmaker, author of The birth of a nation (1915), a silent film that reported the foundation of the United States and was the first film blockbuster in history. He first employed alternate and non -fixed plans, a mobile camera, total or partial plans and shots and other changes that founded part of the way of making films that we still understand.
- Sergei Eisenstein. Filmmaker of the Soviet Union whose key work is The battleship potmkin (1925), silent film that tells the mutiny inside a Tsarist battleship in full October revolution. She is considered the best film in history and is one of the most studied in cinema, given her assembly technique, which she has had school since then. It is the first film to use shocking images to generate an emotional reaction at the audience.
Color cinema
The invention of color cinema It was a concern of the pioneers of cinema that as Méliès proceeded to color one by one the frames of their films. It was a very little effective and expensive technique.
However, in 1915 it appeared Technicolora company that worked for years in the production of film systems based on primary colors, which Initially allowed insert color sequences into black and white films . Only in 1929 the first feature film was projected: On with the show!
In 1932 a third color was incorporated into the palette and a system was achieved based on the three primary, which gave great results. He was used by Disney in his animations. Finally this system was replaced in 1950 by the one proposed by the company Eastman Kodakmuch simpler and more effective.
Hollywood and Mecca del Cine
The success of cinema in the United States was overwhelming . Thomas Alva Edison, who was already a powerful national businessman, tried to keep the intellectual property of the cinematographer. This caused enormous tensions with independent film producers, reaching the conflict to judgments and even the shooting.
As a consequence, Many creators emigrated from New York Towards a small town near the border with Mexico, called Hollywood. There were born those who are still some of the great American film studies, such as 20th-Century Fox, Paramount, Universal and Metro-Goldwin-Mayer.
The studies not only produced and financed the films, but also They controlled the distribution in full . In a short time they managed to rise as the “mecca of the American cinema” and began the call “Star System“Of the great cinema celebrities.
Digital cinema
The spirit of cinema changed greatly after the appearance of computers . The digital world allowed, on the one hand, filming directly in much more flexible and better digital formats.
Digital special effects were incorporated that did not require technical artifice, but of computer and post-production programs. In addition, new animation techniques and new film formats were created, generating a true revolution in the industry.
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References
- The history of cinema at https://curosphere-historia.com/
- A Concise History of the Origins of Cinema (video) at https://www.youtube.com/
- A Vary Short History of Cinema At https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/
- History of the Motion Picture at https://www.britannica.com/
