On this day in 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumiere sold tickets to a bunch of French folk and used a magic box to project an image on a screen.
Some of the riveting films displayed held such titles as “Train leaving the Station” and “Workers leaving the Factory”. They pretty much write themselves.
These were single take shorts that lasted no more than a minute each. Rumor has it that several people ran out when the train was pulling out of the station because they thought a train was coming straight at them. This does not dissuade the theory that the French are cowards.
This night was declared the birth of movies because it was the first time that tickets were sold and money was made. The actual birth of the moving image is fuzzy to say the least. Did it start with Muybridge? The zoetrope? Maybe Plato’s philosophy about life being a shadow play was the fist reference to a moving image. Even old cave paintings made illusions of the images moving, so we could date it back as far as our troglodyte ancestors.
My favorite story is about Louis Le Prince who had invented a magic box that recorded moving images in 1890. He got on a train to go show off his device in Paris and disappeared on the way there. He was never heard from again. At the next years World Fair, Thomas Edison had shown up with a device very similar to Le Prince’s. A cinematic conspiracy is born.
The progress of movies, to me, seems to be pushed further and further on a yearly basis. Editing, color, sound, smaller cameras, video, CGI, it just keeps building and growing. The tools that are available today all started with those little wooden boxes with hand cranks and a brass lens case.
Just remember folks, don’t let the technology get in the way of trying to tell good stories. That seems to be the biggest drawback of all of the nifty toys that exist today.
I’ll end with a quote form Louis Lumiere who said, “The Cinema is an invention without a future.”
Whoops.
Louis Le Prince (Image from 1890 milk carton)
No comments:
Post a Comment